Endangerment Finding, bird flu, what counts as professional degrees, and more
The Dose (Feb 24)
Northeast folks, I hope you have a lot of hot chocolate on hand. YLE team members are sending me pictures of snowbanks taller than small children. Stay strong! And be careful shoveling snow. (Not so fun fact: hundreds of thousands of people end up in the hospital after shoveling snow; extreme physical exertion and freezing temperatures can hit your heart hard.)
While many of you are digging out, literally, major federal decisions are reshaping the systems that affect your health. Whether public health and nursing degrees “count” for federal aid, to the rollback of environmental health protections (and the major tensions at play), to an increase in bird flu cases, this week’s Dose spans workforce, air, outbreaks, and, as always, some good news, too.
And there are things you can do.
Let’s dig in.
Action item: Want your degree to count? Submit a comment.
Students in public health, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs (and many other essential fields) are at risk of losing access to adequate federal student aid under a new rule proposed by the Department of Education. You can help by sharing your story before a public comment deadline on March 2.
What’s happening? Last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill set a new limit on federal student loans for graduate students, capping per-student lending at $100,000—unless you’re a student in a “professional degree program.” Professional students are eligible for up to $200,000 in federal loans.
But what counts as a professional degree? In November, the Department of Education agreed on a draft definition that included just 11 programs: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology, and clinical psychology.
Several essential fields—public health, nursing, social work, physician assistant programs, engineering, and others—were removed from that list.
What this means for students: If this stands, students in these programs could lose access to federal financial aid. Specifically, lower borrowing limits that won’t cover students’ real costs, fewer scholarship pathways, and limited eligibility for loan-repayment programs.
What this means for public health: It will make it harder to enter these careers at a time when our country needs more of these professionals. The broader consequences are significant: fewer trained professionals, more barriers for students from low-income backgrounds, and added strain on already stretched health and social systems.
What you can do: Submit a public comment supporting an expanded definition of professional programs. Take note: The Department of Education’s 30-day public comment period ends March 2!
Link: https://www.regulations.gov/document/ED-2025-OPE-0944-0001
There are instructions at that link, but here are some more tips:
Your personal experience is important—use it!
Introduce yourself and your connection to the issue. For example, “I am a public health professional who relies on federal loan repayment to serve rural communities.”
Be specific about impact. Explain how this change would have affected you; how it would affect your patients, clients, or community; or what happens to workforce pipelines if access shrinks.
Connect it to other shared priorities in your community. This change will likely exacerbate existing health care workforce shortages, rural health gaps, maternal health access challenges, and mental health crises.
Explain unintended consequences. Students whose loan needs exceed the program cap will rely on higher-cost private loans, and fewer graduates may choose lower-paying service roles that currently qualify them for loan forgiveness programs.
2. Keep it simple and kind.
Be concise. This doesn’t have to be a heavy lift! A few clear paragraphs are enough. Short and focused comments are more likely to be read and cited (and easier to write).
Stay professional. Calm, clear, evidence-based comments carry more weight. So avoid attacks, sarcasm, or partisan framing.
3. We’re stronger when we act together.
Encourage institutional submissions if you’re a part of a university, hospital, or public health department. This carries weight.
Encourage others to share their story. The number of individual comments, with personal details, plays an important role in shaping final decisions.
Endangerment Finding repeal knocks down public health guardrails
If 2025 was the year of rollbacks on public health infrastructure, 2026 seems to be the year of rollbacks on environmental health protections. Those that were designed to keep our air clean, our water safe, and toxic chemicals out of our homes.
One of the latest changes: the Endangerment Finding (2009) was rescinded. This is the scientific and legal foundation that lets the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It’s allowed the government to limit emissions, including those from cars and power plants, and is foundational to the Clean Air Act.
But the Trump administration repealed it. To justify this action, the administration put five handpicked researchers who reject scientific consensus on climate change to work. A Republican-appointed federal judge ruled last month that the administration violated the law by convening the group without open meetings, public records, or balanced representation of viewpoints.
The science behind the Endangerment Finding is clear: carbon dioxide, methane, and other pollutants worsen asthma, heart and lung disease, and pregnancy outcomes, and contribute to early death. More exposure means more disease. An environmental nonprofit found that by 2055, the repeal will result in:
15,400 to 58,000 premature deaths
9 million to 37 million asthma attacks
26,000 to 92,000 ED and hospital visits
5 million to 15 million lost school and work days
But like most policies, the public tension isn’t just about science. You can see that playing out between the lines:
The invisible shield. Clean air policy is one of those public health systems that works quietly in the background. When people experience a heart attack or an asthma exacerbation, they may be told to change lifestyle habits or medications. But it is equally important to recognize the powerful population-level forces shaping health in the background, like air quality protections. When those protections work, people don’t see them.
Economics versus health (at least that’s how it feels). The economic impact of policy decisions is immediate and tangible. Families feel gas prices, job losses, industry slowdowns, and everything in between. This is often pitted against health, but this is a false dichotomy. Because in reality, long-term economic strength depends on healthy lungs, healthy hearts, and healthy communities.
Distant verses local. In many rural communities, environmental policy has come to symbolize a distant government regulating from afar without fully understanding local realities. In rural Alaska, for example, electric vehicles don’t make sense because towns can be hundreds of miles apart, and the most pressing air quality issue in Fairbanks is wood-burning stove emissions during extreme winters, which is a very different problem from tailpipe pollution. When policy feels mismatched to lived experience, people do not see health protection but rather constraint.
What’s next? Courts are taking this up because it conflicts with a previous Supreme Court decision. A coalition of environmental and health organizations sued the EPA and its administrator Lee Zeldin in the D.C. circuit last week.
What this means for you: More exposure to pollution will mean more health risks. The good news is that many state-level initiatives are continuing to move forward. We can also raise awareness, as clean air and clean water are among the most bipartisan issues in this country, with more than 80% of Americans supporting them.
Good news
There’s always good news worth celebrating:
Access to evidence-based information. A permanent legal agreement now prevents the government from erasing research for ideological reasons, helping ensure clinicians and patients can rely on complete, evidence-based information. This win was the result of a lawsuit filed when peer-reviewed research linking endometriosis to suicide risk was removed from a federal patient safety website (PSNet) because it mentioned LGBTQ+ patients.
Promising research for immunocompromised patients. Fred Hutch Cancer Center scientists took a meaningful step toward protecting people from Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which is a virus linked to cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other serious conditions. By testing human antibody genes in a mouse model, they developed monoclonal antibodies that successfully blocked EBV infection. There’s more work to do: human trials are still down the road. But the research is promising!
Question grab bag
“Can you do one on avian flu? Nobody is reporting on it well. NJ is having a lot of dead birds, and people are blaming road salt and cold weather.”
Bird flu (avian flu or H5N1) is still active!
In the past 30 days, a total of 9.42 million birds nationwide have been affected. (In contrast, 1.4 million birds nationwide were affected by avian flu over the three months of September, October, and November of 2025.)
The high numbers are mainly due to a big outbreak in Pennsylvania. More than seven million birds (mostly commercial poultry and backyard flocks) have tested positive in recent weeks in the South and Central regions of the state. The state is now requiring 214 nearby dairy farms to test bulk milk tanks to make sure the virus isn’t spreading among cows again. Colorado also has a large outbreak, with more than 1 million birds affected at one facility.
In New Jersey, USDA has not detected any commercial flocks impacted by bird flu in the past 30 days. But New Jersey is in the migration path of Pennsylvania, so it could be (and likely is) circulating among wild birds, which may explain the dead birds you’re seeing.
What this means for you: So far, not too much unless you own birds in your backyards. (Here is what you should do with backyard flocks.) Also, egg prices haven’t changed yet, but many are keeping an eye on this.
Bottom line
Stay warm, stay healthy, and stay loud.
Love, YLE
Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. Hannah Totte, MPH, is an epidemiologist and YLE Community Manager. YLE reaches more than 425,000 people in 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:
Thank you for sharing the link enabling us to share our stories about professional degrees. In the early 90’s, I finished my 4th degree; a doctorate in counseling and psychotherapy. I emerged with $20K in debt; a figure unimaginable today. Even with little debt, it is a slow start. Thousands of hours are necessary for licensure, during which time most of us see the low-paying clients others won’t/can’t take. Even then, it is not a highly lucrative field. It is a labor of love. I now supervise new therapists who are working toward their permanent license. All are struggling to make ends meet while paying off student loans. It is unfathomable to consider what they would be enduring if their debt load was even greater. The scandal is that, at a time when we have a dire shortage of mental health providers, the administration is taking action that would only make that problem worse. I’ve shared the link with my clinic, encouraging them to share their stories and pass the link along to others.
Fyi note typo: "$100,00" missing a zero. Could be misread as $10K.