BY: Rick Pollack, President and CEO, AHA

JULY 24, 2026 – The record-breaking number of Americans who followed the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup were treated to many memorable highlights, courtesy of a blend of skill and athletic talent from veteran players and younger, rising stars who are just hitting their stride and will provide fans with new thrills for years to come.

Whether in sports, business, healthcare or any other profession, fields advance when talented, motivated and capable people are coached and supported in their efforts to hone the skills needed to become future leaders.

This is especially true in healthcare, where the list of critical skills required to help hospitals and health systems adapt and thrive in today’s fast-changing and transformative environment continues to grow.

Why Healthcare Needs a New Generation of Skilled, Adaptable Leaders

The ideal healthcare leader brings bold perspectives and specialized skills — from technology and data analytics to population health and workforce transformation. Tomorrow’s leaders must have the curiosity, knowledge, skills and adaptability to navigate change and create a culture of innovation, accountability and inclusion.

Our field is already blessed with many outstanding leaders who are deftly navigating today’s complex healthcare environment and working to guide their organizations to a bright future. And we are pleased to support a pipeline that promises more gifted leaders coming up through the ranks ready to sustain and advance progress into the future.

The AHA Next Generation Leaders Fellowship: Building Healthcare’s Leadership Pipeline

The AHA Next Generation Leaders Fellowship focuses on developing leaders and empowering them to bring about real and lasting change in the hospitals and health systems they serve, as well as in our field overall.

This month, we introduced our largest-ever cohort of Next Gen Fellows 46 talented thinkers and doers who will tackle key challenges affecting healthcare. The group includes 12 Age-Friendly Fellows supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation and five fellows supported by the Richard J. Umbdenstock Scholarship to help their communities improve access to care. There are also four fellows from state hospital associations.

Representing a wide range of backgrounds, fellows come from 26 states and Washington, D.C., across urban, suburban and rural communities. The class has made significant contributions to their respective hospitals and health systems through a wide range of roles, including quality, medicine, operations, nursing, market intelligence, business development and geriatrics.

The highly interactive 12-month fellowship program provides tomorrow’s healthcare leaders with the tools, experience and ability to drive innovation in healthcare delivery as they expand their knowledge of leading change, navigating the new healthcare environment, driving transformation, improving care delivery and developing operational strategies for success.

Its unique design pairs each fellow with an executive-level mentor who guides them through the planning and execution of a year-long capstone project at their hospital or health system, tackling key issues and challenges affecting healthcare affordability, cost, quality and safety.

The results are impressive and a preview of great things to come. A few examples of recent capstone projects include:

  • Reducing the high turnover rate for certified nurse aides by increasing opportunities for career advancement and developing a program to offer free education and training during an employee’s regular work shift.
  • Assisting a large healthcare system with a seamless transition from fee-for-service to value-based care by building new bridges to align with accountable care networks.
  • Accurately predicting inpatient bed capacity and demand, increasing early hospital discharges by 26% and, over time, decreasing diversions to the emergency room by 78%.

Preparing Hospitals and Health Systems for Tomorrow’s Demands

As the demand for care grows, due in part to managing an aging population, we are encountering a demographic wave unlike anything in our history. It is more important than ever to bring fresh eyes and fresh thinking to strengthening a healthcare system that will continue to meet the needs of patients, families and communities into the future.

Michelle Hood, who oversees the Next Gen program as AHA executive vice president and chief operating officer, notes, “The 2027 class will help deliver clinical and operational breakthroughs and innovations to America’s hospitals and health systems and provide new opportunities to discover solutions for the challenges affecting healthcare today.”

Please visit our website to learn more about the program and spread the word about its mission and goals as we work together to advance health for all.



Statement attributable to:
Toluwalasè A. Ajayi, M.D.
Board chair, American Medical Association

JULY 24, 2026

“As measles cases continue to surge across the U.S., now is the time to make sure you and your family are protected. Getting vaccinated remains our strongest defense against this disease that is both highly contagious and entirely preventable.

“Measles spreads before people even know they’re sick. It can cause serious complications—including pneumonia, brain swelling, blindness, and even death. When vaccination rates fall, the consequences are felt far beyond case counts—patients face preventable illness, families and communities are put at risk, and diseases like measles return and spread.

“The MMR vaccine has protected our communities for decades. There is no cure for measles, but vaccination is a safe and effective way to prevent it. Choosing to vaccinate protects not only you and your family, but also babies, people with weakened immune systems, and others who can’t be vaccinated. Protecting yourself helps protect your entire community. If you have questions about measles, please talk with your doctor.”



JULY 22, 2026  – Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a notification urging every State Medicaid Director to phase out the use of mercury-containing dental fillings by restricting or ending their respective state’s Medicaid coverage for dental procedure codes for “dental amalgams.” Dental amalgams are a material that combines mercury with other heavy metals to fill cavities but pose health and environmental risks.

“Mercury has no place in the mouths of our children or in modern American health care,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “For decades, we have relied on a material that contains one of the world’s most toxic heavy metals when safe, effective mercury-free alternatives are widely available. The Make America Healthy Again agenda means confronting outdated practices that needlessly expose Americans to toxic substances. Taxpayer dollars should support the safest care available—not yesterday’s materials. It’s time to turn the page on dental amalgam and help every state move toward safer, mercury-free care.”

“Americans should feel confident that the health care they receive is always working in their best interest,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “That’s why we’re urging state Medicaid programs to end the use of mercury-containing dental fillings. This is a straightforward and meaningful step that reflects our shared commitment to safe, higher quality care for all Americans and supports the Trump Administration’s broader goal to Make America Healthy Again.”

The notifications, sent via email, reminded State Medicaid directors of a “a February decision by the Indian Health Service to end the use of mercury-containing dental amalgam in its facilities by 2027.”

“This reflects growing environmental and health concerns regarding mercury exposure, along with global efforts to reduce the use of mercury-containing materials,” the notification added.

Evidence has shown that mercury exposure from dental amalgam could pose elevated health risks to vulnerable populations, including pregnant women and their babies, women trying to become pregnant, children under the age of six, people with neurological diseases or impaired kidney function, and other groups.

“State Medicaid programs should consider restricting or ending coverage for dental procedure codes related to dental amalgam (D2140-D2161), or incentivizing providers to use procedure codes for resin-based composite filling materials (e.g., D2330-D2394),” the notification said. “Because State Plans do not typically include this level of detail, a state plan amendment is likely not necessary to effectuate this type of policy change.”

The notifications also reminded states that the U.S. “is a party to the international Minamata Convention on mercury, and as of November 2025, there is a commitment among parties to the Convention to phase out the use of dental amalgam by 2034.”

Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS is taking decisive action to reform America’s food, health, and scientific systems to Make America Healthy Again. Advancing mercury-free medical interventions is a cornerstone of the MAHA Agenda.



NIH-supported findings identify a new aspect of human brain aging that may contribute to age-related cognitive decline and dementia risk.

JULY 23, 2026 – A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study indicates that the immune cell landscape of the hippocampus, a brain region critical for learning and memory, rapidly undergoes substantial remodeling beginning in midlife. This previously unrecognized shift suggests a potential mechanism by which aging may contribute to chronic neuroinflammation commonly observed in neurodegenerative disease.

“Aging is the single largest risk factor for dementia, but our understanding of how it drives disease is still incomplete,” said Richard Hodes, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA). “This previously hidden microglial shift, now uncovered by innovations in technology and thinking, may be an important clue to help us complete the puzzle.”

Using advanced single-cell analysis techniques, a collaborative team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the New York Genome Center and the University of California, Irvine analyzed postmortem hippocampal tissue from 40 neurologically healthy adults ranging in age from 20 to 95 years. The findings suggest that the brain’s primary immune cells, called microglia, progressively decline between approximately 50 and 75 years of age, becoming replaced by cells with elevated inflammatory signatures and other features resembling characteristics of peripheral blood-derived immune cells.

These results call into question the longevity of microglia which emerge during embryonic development, which scientists have long thought renew throughout the human lifespan.

To investigate how aging affects the human brain at an unprecedented resolution, the researchers applied traditional measures of gene expression alongside more advanced techniques to analyze the genome’s 3D architecture and array of chemical modifications, called the epigenome.

“Gene expression tells us what a cell is doing today, but epigenetic signatures preserve information about where a cell came from,” said first author Nathan Zemke, Ph.D., director of single-cell genomics at the UC San Diego Center for Epigenomics. “By combining these approaches, we uncovered a major shift in the identity and lineage of immune cells in the aging human brain’s immune cells that gene expression data alone would not have revealed.”

Their findings also indicated that cells known to maintain the protective blood-brain barrier deteriorated with age. And across many brain cell types, aging accompanied a widespread and coordinated disruption of genome architecture.

“The progressive structural disruptions were closely linked to shifts in gene regulation and cell identity, potentially revealing a fundamental feature of aging in the human brain,” said Bing Ren, Ph.D., a corresponding author of the study, scientific director and CEO of the New York Genome Center, and professor of genetics and development at Columbia University.

Future studies will investigate the mechanisms driving the loss of resident microglia and determine whether the newly identified immune-cell transition contributes directly to Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related neurological disorders.

“Understanding these cellular transitions may provide new opportunities to develop interventions that preserve brain function and reduce vulnerability to neurodegenerative disease,” said Xiangmin Xu, Ph.D., professor and director of Center for Neural Circuit Mapping at UC Irvine, and a corresponding author of the study.

NIH supported this research through NIA grants R01AG067153 and R01AG082127 and the NIH Common Fund 4D Nucleome (4DN) program grant 1U01DA052769. This study is part of a collection of 4DN-supported papers published in Science and Science Advances that offer unprecedented insight into how the human genome’s 3D organization influences development, aging, and a host of diseases.

About the National Institute on Aging (NIA): NIA seeks to understand the nature of aging and diseases associated with growing older, with the goal of extending the healthy, active years of life. https://www.nia.nih.gov

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

Reference

Nathan Zemke et al. Epigenetic and 3D genome reprogramming during the aging of human hippocampus. Science. 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.adt8307



JULY 24, 2026 – National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., today announced the selection of Courtney F. Aklin, Ph.D., as director of NIH’s National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Dr. Aklin is currently the Acting Director and Acting Scientific Director at NINR, positions she has held since April 2025. In these roles, she has led the NINR’s scientific and organizational strategy, strengthened NIH-wide collaborations and advanced research priorities that position nursing science to address complex health challenges. She is expected to begin her permanent role as the NINR director on July 26, 2026.

“Nursing science plays a vital role in improving health outcomes for patients and families at every stage of life,” said Dr. Bhattacharya. “Dr. Aklin has spent more than two decades at NIH, and for more than a year, has effectively led NINR as Acting Director. She knows this Institute, she knows its people, and she knows the science. I’m confident she will be an outstanding director for NINR.”

As NINR director, Dr. Aklin will oversee NINR’s annual budget of nearly $200 million, the majority of which supports extramural research at institutions across the United States. NINR researchers and supported science teams conduct rigorous, solutions-oriented research to address pressing health challenges, improve care delivery, and inform practice. The Institute’s extramural and intramural research programs advance science across a range of real-world settings and populations, including research focused on conditions of daily life, the distribution of health and disease, disease prevention and management, and systems and settings of care. Across these programs, NINR also invests in research training and career development to prepare the next generation of nurse scientists.

Dr. Aklin has more than 21 years of scientific, strategic, and executive leadership experience at NIH, with a career dedicated to advancing biomedical research, strengthening scientific organizations, and accelerating the translation of evidence into improved health. Prior to assuming her current roles at NINR, Dr. Aklin served as the NINR Deputy Director beginning in September 2023. She additionally served as Acting Associate Deputy Director of NIH from December 2021 to September 2023 and was also a senior advisor within the Immediate Office of the Director (IMOD), where she advised NIH leadership on complex scientific and organizational priorities, enterprise strategy, and high-impact initiatives supporting the effective operation of IMOD. She also previously served as the Chief of Staff at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

At the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Dr. Aklin led programs that expanded research capacity and strengthened the biomedical workforce by supporting the development of emerging neuroscience research programs at universities and medical schools. Prior to her work at NINDS, she managed and advanced the fear and anxiety research portfolio at the National Institute of Mental Health. She came to NIH in 2004 as an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Science and Technology Policy Fellow to work on activities related to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.

Dr. Aklin is a licensed clinical psychologist whose expertise spans behavioral, translational, and implantation science. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.A. in business administration and psychology from the University of Richmond.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.