By Grey Moran for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

As avian flu enters an even more virulent phase, federal funding for animal disease outbreak research has been caught in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration - one of many initiatives targeted by the ongoing, sweeping review of federal government spending. This coincides with a muzzling of the Centers of Disease Control and U.S. Department of Agriculture's public communications on avian flu.

The research in question, the Animal Health and Disease Research (AHDR) Capacity Program, is funded by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a federal research and grantmaking body. "All NIFA Requests for Applications are currently under review," wrote Faith Peppers, the communications director for NIFA and liaison for multiple multistate research projects looking at aspects of avian flu, in a February 12th email to Sentient.

The NIFA program supporting avian flu and other animal disease research at universities and veterinary colleges was included on this spreadsheet, reported by the New York Times last month, that lists about 2,600 federal assistance programs under review.

For other science agencies, the review process has reportedly involved scouring federal assistance programs for a lengthy list of key words relating to diversity and equity, among other topics, to comply with the Trump Administration's executive orders.

"So they're going through [to] see which of those grants that are right now funded fall under this word classification," Channapatna Prakash, who previously served as the panel manager for the USDA's biotechnology risk assessment grant program, tells Sentient. "And I think they are going to sunset those grants." While it's not clear what this particular review process will look like, he assumes it is similar.

In recent years, the program's multi-state research funding has supported a wide range of scientific insights and innovations into the spread and prevention of avian flu, including research into "how avian influenza spreads from wild birds to poultry flocks," and the role of mallard ducks and contaminated water sources in spreading the virus.

The funding has also supported research into the "new vaccines and regimens to provide better protection against a broader range of avian influenza variants," and the development of tools and automated systems to better detect and surveil the virus and health of animals, according to the USDA's long list of the program's many avian flu research highlights.

For now, the program - which includes ongoing, collaborative research across land grant universities into avian flu - has not had funding frozen, Richard Rhodes III, the executive director of a coalition of agricultural experiment stations participating in the multi-state research projects in the northeast, told Sentient in a February 13th email.

However, the future of new projects under this program remains uncertain as application requests are being evaluated to comply with executive orders. Peppers didn't respond to a request to clarify whether this review also included any freeze on government spending, or questions about what the review entails and when it will conclude. Another U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson responded with the following statement, which appears to have also been sent to other journalism outlets:

"The Trump Administration rightfully has asked for a comprehensive review of all contracts, work, and personnel across all federal agencies. Anything that violates the President's Executive Orders will be subject for review. The Department of Agriculture will be happy to provide a response to interested parties once Brooke Rollins is confirmed and has the opportunity to analyze these reviews."

While the president has the authority to review federal contracts and funding arraignments, a freeze on funding while this is being carried out would be illegal, according to Adam Winkler, a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and a professor at the UCLA School of Law. "The president doesn't have authority to simply unilaterally cut off all of these federal funds just because he wants to get one of his policy goals furthered," Winkler tells Sentient.

The USDA also funds research into avian flu through the National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program (NADPRP), which provides "tens of millions in funding to States, producer organizations, universities" to carry out projects on animal disease outbreaks threatening the livestock industry.

The current projects include a $455,649 award to Minnesota Department of Agriculture, funded through mid-2026, to research culling poultry infected or exposed to avian flu with nitrogen gas - a method considered less cruel than the mainstream culling method in the U.S. of killing birds en-mass by heat stroke.

The existing projects under this program also appear to not be disrupted or frozen at this time, according to a USDA spokesperson: "NADPRP funding for all current cooperative agreements that were started prior to January 20, 2025 are continuing and recipients (cooperators) are continuing those projects and receiving funds." The spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions, however, about the status of future agreements.

"As Trump, Elon Musk, and his DOGE team continue to reach out to make serious changes or close multiple important government agencies or de-fund critical programs, the only bright spot I see is the NADRP website (under APHIS) is still there," Dr. Pat Basu, the former chief public health veterinarian for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service under the Obama Administration, told Sentient in an email.

Yet as the Trump Administration continues to test the limits of its executive powers, this bright spot may be brief. "However, NADRP may be low on a priority list for DOGE, but it may still be cut off," wrote Basu. "If the NIH funding for ALL research can be cut off over the weekend, nothing seems off-limits for this team."


Grey Moran wrote this article for Sentient.


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Multnomah County plans major public health cuts to address a $21 million budget gap and the Oregon Nurses Association said the cuts put programs for first-time parents and disease prevention at risk.

The nurses union warned the cuts will hurt everyone, especially vulnerable communities.

Leigh Richards, community health nurse for the Multnomah County Nurse Family Partnership and a union member, said the program has been in the county for 25 years and is now set to be cut entirely. Richards explained the Partnership supports low-income, first-time parents with health visits, crisis care, and more.

"We're able to offer a combination of that case management and health assessments that just aren't offered in the same way by other programs," Richards explained.

Richards added the Nurse-Family Partnership is smart financially, saving governments $5 for every dollar spent. She pointed to ample data showing the program boosts academic achievement and reduces rates of abuse and arrests, among other things. Another program facing deep cuts is Communicable Disease Prevention and Tracing.

Kevin Mealy, communications manager for the Oregon Nurses Association, said the prevention program played a key role during COVID. He warned cutting it now would leave the largest county in the state unprepared for potential threats like measles and bird flu.

"Coming out of a pandemic, surely we have learned our lesson that we need to invest in that ounce of prevention," Mealy contended.

Mealy encouraged Multnomah County residents to contact their commissioners about the cuts and sign the petition started by the union to save the programs. He added the cuts will affect everyone far into the future.

"We can't rebuild this public health infrastructure nearly as quickly as it can be cut," Mealy cautioned.

Multnomah County commissioners will vote on the final budget June 12.

April is National Stress Awareness Month. Stress is the body's way of processing work, personal, and family pressures, or other triggers.

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found a link between stress and chronic pain, which is defined as pain that persists for three months or more and lasts beyond the normal healing time of an injury or illness.

Former chiropractor Dr. Sean Pastuch is CEO of Active Life, a personal coaching company focusing on chronic pain-management options.

He suggested that biological, psychological and social interventions could be effective forms of treatment.

"The connection between all of those three things -- the physical, the mental, and the emotional -- is that when we think about pain, no one's defining what the word means," said Pastuch. "So, if we evaluate what the word 'pain' means, then we come to find that in order for there to be pain, there needs to be a negative emotional component to it."

He said that if you feel something, you have to decide if you like the way it feels or not. And what is viewed as pleasurable to some may feel painful to others.

The study also says depression and anxiety caused by chronic pain may contribute to a poor quality of life and reduce life expectancy.

A 2022 Indiana Chronic Care Policy Alliance report shows almost 8% of adults have chronic pain, with arthritis as the leading disorder.

Patsuch said patients face obstacles in finding a physician who can identify their pain, which means fewer or no opportunities to receive treatment.

"The reason why doctors struggle to help people with chronic pain, and why the confidence level among doctors is low," said Pastuch, "is because of all the medical schools, fewer than 15 actually have dedicated curriculum to supporting a patient with chronic pain."

Of the medical schools that offer a pain-management curriculum, he said the majority focus on students in the anesthetics department.

Patsuch suggested that when a patient is with their doctor, to use words other than "it just hurts." They need to be able to describe what hurts and ask, "How do I want to resolve it?"




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By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Chrystal Blair for Michigan News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

What's on the menu for a healthy microbiome? High-fiber foods, like broccoli and lentils are key - according to two new studies with two vastly different approaches published in Cell and Nature. As the debate about the role ultra-processed plant-based meat substitutes should play in a healthy diet rages on, these new studies focus on a more balanced, plant-forward approach, finding that a diet high in plants (fruits, vegetables and legumes) is good for a healthy gut. In addition to reducing climate emissions then, adapting a plant-forward diet can help to create a balanced gut microbiome, which in turn can reduce inflammation and risk of developing chronic diseases.

Each of our microbiomes is a nexus of bacteria, specific to factors like our environment, stress and age. Microbiomes can be vastly different among people - and even twins - that they're often likened to a microbial fingerprint of sorts. But we know that diet plays a large role in forming healthy gut bacteria. An Italian team of researchers set out to identify if there are signature microbiomes for vegans, vegetarians and omnivores (people who eat both plants and meat) out of a group of nearly 22,000 people living in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. And, as it turns out, there is a pattern of key bacteria associated with each dietary cohort.

How Much Does Diet Affect Your Microbiome?

"As more and more people adopt vegan and vegetarian diets, we wanted to find out how different their microbiomes are and which microorganisms are responsible for these differences," Gloria Fackelmann, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology, University of Trento, said in a press release. According to the paper, published in Nature, vegan and vegetarian diet signatures were associated with a healthy cardiometabolic system and production of beneficial fatty acids.

"Our data showed that omnivores on average ingest significantly fewer healthy plant-based foods than vegetarians or vegans," the researchers wrote, adding that "optimizing the quality of omnivore diets by increasing dietary plant diversity could lead to better gut health." Omnivores had strong signals of bacteria like A. putredinis, associated with meat consumption, which the paper links to inflammatory bowel disease and an increased risk of colon cancer. However, an important caveat - Fackelmann notes that they didn't measure health markers of these specific participants, they instead looked to the scientific literature of what is known about these bacteria (They did, however, study stool samples - more on this in a bit).

That doesn't mean that excluding animal products automatically equals a healthy microbiome. Here's where that balanced diet comes back in. A varied diet of fiber-rich foods like plants is key. "Avoiding meat or dairy products does not necessarily have a positive effect if it does not come with a variety of quality plant-based products," Nicola Segata, research lead on the paper, said in a press release.

For the microbiome, a critical ingredient is fiber. "Your microbiota is tuned towards digesting fiber predominantly, so eating a largely plant based diet gets more of those nutrients to them," Eric Martens, a professor of microbiology and immunology at University of Michigan Medical School, who was not involved in the studies, tells Sentient.

There was less bacterial diversity in vegetarians and vegans than in omnivores, but another important detail is that diversity doesn't always equal an optimal microbiome. On the one hand, a diverse microbiome means more bacteria, so more opportunity for defense against infections and ability to break down various food types. But that's assuming those bacteria are beneficial and not all bacteria are. A person could have a diverse array of harmful microbes, which would negate the whole concept. So while diversity is important, of more importance is what bacteria are present, rather than how many. "When people hear diversity, we hear about it in the context of biodiversity and always more diversity is better. But for the gut...higher diversity wouldn't exactly equate to having a more favorable microbiome composition," Fackelmann tells Sentient.

In the Nature study, the participants' stool samples were analyzed using shotgun metagenomic sequencing, which yields highly specific information about the species of gut bacteria present. Interestingly, they found that vegans had more soil-derived microbes and omnivores more dairy, highlighting that gut bacterial members may come directly from the food we eat.

Looking To a Non-Industrialized Diet for Answers

In a different vein, a team of microbiologists based in Ireland tested the effects of a non-industrialized diet on the microbiome - in other words, mostly plants and low in processed foods. "Industrialization has drastically impacted our gut microbiome, likely increasing the risk of chronic diseases," Jens Walter, a professor of Ecology, Food, and the Microbiome at University College Cork, tells Sentient. Walter and his colleagues developed a diet - called the NiMe diet (Non-industrialized Microbiome Restore) - high in plants and fiber and low in meat and processed foods, based on the eating habits of rural Papua New Guineans.

In a strictly human controlled trial, 30 participants followed this diet and consumed L. reuteri, a beneficial bacterium found in the gut of rural Papua New Guineans but rarely found in industrialized microbiomes. Unlike the Nature study, Walter and his colleagues directly measured the health risk factors of participants and found that after just three weeks, the diet had decreased low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by 17 percent, reduced blood sugar by six percent and reduced levels of a protein associated with heart disease. Martens put more emphasis on the findings of this paper, as the authors both staged a dietary intervention and measured the health effects, rather than finding correlations with the scientific literature.

The magnitude of the findings was surprising, Walter tells Sentient. "I didn't think a three-week study would be enough to improve blood glucose or cholesterol," he says. Another surprise was that participants lost weight even though the calories were the same as their usual diet. The researchers are sharing their "NiMe diet" with the public via online free recipes on Instagram.

In practice, shifting to a non-industrialized diet may be difficult. We are increasingly consuming more ultra-processed foods and less whole foods than we were just two decades ago. Misleading food marketing claims and the rise of various dubious "wellness" trends also make grocery shopping for a healthy diet that much harder. Keep it simple, Martens says. He recommends supplementing your diet with plant-based fiber from whole sources as opposed to picking up the quick-fix fiber snack bar.

The Bottom Line

No matter the specific details of your diet, the microbiome is crucial in all stages of life to maintain health. Research shows food and lifestyle changes can bolster protection against chronic diseases, although this tends to be challenging for most Americans just based on what we actually eat. Small incremental changes towards eating more plants may feel like a less daunting prescription. These studies, among others, act as a signal that dietary tweaks and increased intake of high fiber food like plants can reap significant microbiome and health benefits.


Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.


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