Demographic Health

Naomi Sanders tried to set up her TikTok account so she wouldn’t see videos about eating disorders, but she says they’re impossible to avoid.“I still see posts related to eating disorders on my feed at least three times a day,” says the 15-year-old high-school sophomore from Bellingham, Wash., who’s been struggling with unhealthy eating habits since middle school. Nine months after a Wall Street Journal investigation showed that TikTok’s algorithms were flooding teens’ For You pages with videos encouraging weight loss and…

Social-media companies that operate in California will have to consider the health and well-being of children under a first-of-its-kind bill signed into law Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Called the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, the law will require makers of social-media apps like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to study products and features that are likely to be accessed by minors and mitigate any potential harm before releasing them to the…

Walmart Inc. WMT -1.47% is expanding the types of medical situations for which its employee health plan would cover abortions and the cost of travel, to include conditions such as ectopic pregnancy. The shift at Walmart, the country’s largest private employer, is another sign of how companies are grappling with the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this summer to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. On Friday…

A group of workers at Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.94% has asked the company to stop collecting data on users seeking information about abortions, according to a petition sent to Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai this week. The petition, signed by more than 650 workers, also called on the company to remove search results for crisis pregnancy centers, which it said were misleading to those seeking…

Roche RHHBY -1.38% Holding AG Chief Executive Severin Schwan is to step down in March, following a 15-year tenure marked by the marriage of the Swiss healthcare giant and California’s Genentech, the blockbuster success of three cancer drugs and the challenge of replacing them when lower-cost competition arrived.Mr. Schwan also presided over setbacks in his long run at the top of the company. Genentech lost a rare challenge to U.S.…

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has put a spotlight on a small manufacturer of abortion pills, which are emerging as a flashpoint between advocates and opponents of the procedure. Abortion-rights advocates have for decades lobbied for more access to mifepristone, the abortion medication that Danco Laboratories LLC manufactures under the brand name Mifeprex and sells for about $50 a pill. They want the Food and Drug Administration to remove safety restrictions on the drug, make it available without a prescription or expand…

The latest report notifying federal health regulators that a baby died after it had consumed Abbott Laboratories ’ baby formula mentions the cronobacter bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration said.Cronobacter is the same bacteria that previously sickened at least four other infants, including two who died, between September 2021 and February after they had consumed Abbott formula. The bacteria occurs naturally in the environment and can live in dry, powdered foods. It can be fatal in…

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are set to decide whether to recommend Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 to 17 years. Children in the age group already have access to Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE. The advisers are scheduled to discuss on Thursday whether Moderna’s shot should also be made available for that age range.…

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating a new report of another child’s death after consuming Abbott Laboratories ’ baby formula, the agency said Wednesday. The FDA said it learned about the death, which occurred in January, from a consumer complaint it received on June 10. The FDA said its investigation is in preliminary stages, and it will provide an update as it learns more. The FDA didn’t say which Abbott formula the baby had…

Medicare’s prescription-drug program could save billions of dollars annually if it purchased generic acid-reflux, cancer and other drugs from a new pharmacy backed by investor Mark Cuban, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.Mr. Cuban, the billionaire internet entrepreneur and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, launched his pharmacy in January with an eye toward disrupting the $365 billion U.S. prescription-drug market by sidestepping health-insurers and selling commonly used…