addiction

Why are drug overdose deaths decreasing?

Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images

After years of catastrophic increases in overdose death rates across the U.S., something unbelievable happened in 2024. That year, U.S. overdose deaths decreased 27%, and preliminary data from 2025 shows another meaningful drop.

“It is unprecedented to see overdose deaths come down so dramatically, so quickly,” epidemiologist Brandon Marshall told me. But it’s unclear what caused the decline, or whether it will continue. A new report from the Commonwealth Fund identifies potential contributing factors in the U.S. and abroad. Read more from me about what policies it found may have helped to prevent deaths, and what questions there are about the future.

disability

HHS flip-flops on disability lawsuit

Seventeen states sued the Department of Health and Human Services in 2024, alleging that a landmark disability law was unconstitutional. Two years later, a different federal agency is joining that lawsuit — on the states’ side.

The Justice Department announced Monday that, on behalf of HHS, it was joining Texas, Florida, and Alaska in their suit to dismantle parts of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits disability-based discrimination by recipients of federal funds. They specifically have asked a federal court to strike every mention of community integration from the rule. (Louisiana and Montana, which left the suit, have returned to the ranks along with the DOJ.)

If the states succeed, it would upend decades of legal precedent, though experts say existing case law still prioritizes disabled people living in their communities over nursing homes or institutions. Regardless, the Justice Department’s joining this suit is an early sign that the agency will make good on its June memo, which stated that it would no longer enforce the community integration mandate. — O. Rose Broderick

health tech

A path to patients for AI devices

The FDA has yet to release clear guidance on how it intends to regulate medical devices that use generative AI. In the meantime, four were recently accepted into an agency pilot program that will allow digital health companies to release their products without marketing authorization. The idea, STAT’s Mario Aguilar writes, is that the companies will collect data on how their devices perform in the real world, share it back with the agency, and eventually submit their products for FDA review under a traditional regulatory pathway.

Experts are watching the program to get a better sense of how the agency interacts with companies and how it may impact future regulatory decisions. Read more from Mario on the devices that got the go-ahead.