Imperial College scientists analysed health records before and after introduction of air pollution reduction zones

Low emission and clean air zones attract controversy whenever they are proposed, but there is growing evidence that they work in improving air quality. The Bradford zone was followed by a reduction of about 25% in GP visits for heart and breathing problems and survey data shows that the central London zone was followed by a reduction in the likelihood of a person taking sick leave.

Now analysis of health records has found emergency admissions to hospital reduced after the introduction of the T-charge and ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in central London.

Doctors say therapy that genetically modifies person’s T-cells could offer cure for chronic autoimmune disease

Five lupus patients in England are in remission after being treated with a revolutionary therapy that genetically modifies their own cells, in a medical breakthrough that could offer people a cure, doctors have said.

CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy involves removing a type of white blood cell also called T lymphocytes, which are crucial for hunting out infected or damaged cells, and engineering them to spot and destroy disease. The T-cells are then fed back into the patient via an infusion to reset their immune system.

One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people

Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.

The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.

New Farm Bill places caps on non-US foods; nutritionists say it restricts availability of healthy meals for kids

School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas”, said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Bananas are nutrient-dense foods that many children like. That makes them popular offerings in school cafeterias, since any healthy food that a kid will eat prevents waste and ensures that child isn’t eating either nothing or something less wholesome instead.

Regulator approval means patients who meet criteria will be able to purchase tablets with private prescription

Patients in the UK will soon be able to buy the Wegovy weight-loss pill, the medicines regulator announced on Thursday.

It is the first GLP-1 receptor agonist tablet for weight-loss to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), making the UK the third country to authorise the pills, behind the US and the United Arab Emirates.

When I started nursing at 21 we were able to deliver timely, good care. That has become nearly impossible

• Sophie (not her real name) is a member of the Royal College of Nursing and a senior A&E nurse in a hospital in the south of England

I began my career as an A&E nurse in 2010, when I was 21. It was a completely different world. If a patient needed immediate attention, there was easily the capacity for two nurses to look after them straight away. The NHS target of seeing patients within a four-hour window wasn’t something we gave much thought to, as it was pretty much a given that a patient would be admitted, transferred or discharged within that time. I don’t ever recall seeing a patient and feeling awful about how long they had waited.

It’s amazing to think how common it used to be for emergency departments to be almost empty at times in the evenings. As well as being much needed respite from the demands of the job, it was also a valuable time to learn from more senior colleagues. Nurses with decades of experience would take new recruits under their wings and help us practise our skills. That time is when I learned to plaster limbs and dress wounds. I wish I could do the same for my junior colleagues now. We used to be able to give timely, good care – now it has become near impossible.

Sophie (not her real name) is a member of the Royal College of Nursing and a senior A&E nurse in a hospital in the south of England

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Data published for the first time recorded 2,241 daily cases of A&E corridor care, with 699 patients also treated in other inappropriate settings

Almost 3,000 patients a day in England are receiving care in hospital corridors due to an unavailability of beds in A&E units across the country, according to official figures.

Corridor care occurs when a patient receives treatment in a setting that is clinically inappropriate and is deemed to be undignified and unsafe.

London, the east of England and the West Midlands have highest number of cases, as UKHSA urges families to get children vaccinated

Two children in England have died from measles, health officials say, as data shows more than 100 new reported cases in the last fortnight.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Thursday that two children had died this year, one from “acute measles” and the other from the “late effects of measles”.

There’s a downside to too much convenience: it harms our bodies

There is a seductive fantasy being floated by AI executives that all the efficiency their products will bring us will lead to humans finally returning to their essential, best selves. Picture it: when this day arrives, we’ll spring from our chairs, push aside our keyboards and, supposedly, do all things we’ve been meaning to do: hike, cook and finally take a pilates class.

It’s true – AI has already taken some workday drudgery, such as reading and writing contracts, presentations and quarterly reports, off some people’s plates. Within a few years, we’re told, a team of invisible digital assistants will take over mundane domestic chores too: making medical appointments, renewing our car insurance and planning. The vision is enticing: finally, the moment when we can stop switching-switching-switching between screens and devices, put our health first and flourish. Unfortunately, if the history of innovation teaches us anything, it’s that labor-saving technology has rarely, if ever, triggered healthier habits.

Drive-throughs and microwaves did not lead to more time spent walking in nature. When escalators replaced stairs, email took over from walking over to talk to a colleague, and wandering through the video store was swapped out for streaming from the couch, few of us considered how these tiny conveniences would chip away at our physical health, year after more efficient year. A task that took almost no effort used to be described with the saying: “You hardly need to lift a finger.” Now, we literally lift a finger and – tap – the chore is done.

Exclusive: Transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, says cycling and walking plan focuses on ‘everyday travel needs’

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Ministers are to launch a major push to get more children walking and cycling to school as part of a wider boost for “active travel” by the transport secretary Heidi Alexander.

In the first significant change to active travel policy since the Boris Johnson era, thousands of new safe routes and crossings will be built around schools in England, with a target of having at least 60% of all children walk, cycle or wheel to school by 2035.

NHS bosses urge all hospitals in England to use ‘digital triage’ process to combat overcrowding in emergency services

Patients who turn up at A&E with non-urgent ailments could be told to come back another time under NHS plans to stop hospitals becoming overcrowded and avoid the service’s usual winter crisis.

Eighteen hospitals in England are already using “digital triage assessment” to help A&E staff decide which patients need to be seen right away or be dealt with in another way. If patients do need urgent care they are treated at once in the usual way. But if they have more minor ailments and can wait, they are told to come back later that day or the next day, or are referred to a community-based service, such as a GP or pharmacy.

Outbreak driven by falling vaccination and misinformation as federal public health cuts hamper state response

The US has recorded more than 2,000 confirmed measles cases so far this year – near the total of 2,228 recorded in all of 2025, and on track to become the worst year for measles in decades as states struggle with the loss of federal funding for public health.

The virus continues to spread in unvaccinated and under-vaccinated communities, including among babies too young to be vaccinated, and it reveals the depths of the twin crises of misinformation and public health in the US.

My wife, Rachel Downey, was a health and social affairs journalist who went on to become a communications strategist at the Department of Health. There she worked at the heart of health policy, translating complex and often sensitive issues into communications that the public could understand. It was demanding, important work and she was exceptionally good at it.

Most recently Rachel, who has died of renal failure aged 60, was head of public relations at the Office of the Patient Safety Commissioner. It was a role that felt, in many ways, made for her, as the Office exists to amplify the voices of patients who have been harmed, to hold systems to account and to drive change where it is most needed.

People across the Black diaspora are increasingly turning to weight-loss drugs. How might this reshape our health, wellbeing and body image?

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These days, I barely make it through the week without seeing news about what weight-loss medications, such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, can now supposedly achieve. Beyond the health benefits of shedding fat, “GLP-1” medications are also touted to treat addiction, and, as reported recently, even lowering the risk of breast cancer. But the extreme weight loss fuelled by these drugs is also reshaping beauty standards.

In this week’s edition, I’m digging into whether Black beauty ideals across the diaspora are under threat from the spread of weight-loss medication. It’s a delicate conversation that I’ve been eager to have for a while.

My sister Liz Martin, who has died aged 73, was a nurse at the Northern General hospital in Sheffield for 46 years, rising to be a ward sister there before her retirement.

She trained at the Northern General as a state enrolled nurse, later moving up to state registered status there and died in the hospital’s palliative care unit after a long struggle with cancer.

Shasta county has one of the state’s highest rates of suicide and gun ownership. Here’s how locals are trying to combat it

Like many men in the mountainous California county of Shasta, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, Bill Rocha loved to hunt and fish, spending the infernal summers out on the lake in his boat. For decades he made his living as a contractor, working hard with his hands every day. And like many men in rural parts of the state, Bill was a gun owner. He had several hunting rifles, some of which he kept locked in a safe, and another firearm that he kept unlocked in his car.

Kelly Rocha, his daughter, described him as extremely sociable, but in private things were starting to fray. She didn’t know the extent of what her father was struggling with until she got a call one night in 2019. She had slept through two voicemails from her father’s wife, but finally picked up when her own mother called. “It was after midnight,” recalled Kelly, who was then 43. “She told me that my dad went out to his truck and killed himself.”

Price of dairy product has risen fivefold after users of GLP-1 medications advised to increase protein consumption

The growing popularity of weight-loss drugs has fuelled global demand for whey protein, sparking concerns among industry experts over a potential shortage.

The price of whey has risen fivefold to record levels as companies race to secure supplies amid a boom driven by growing use of GLP-1 drugs, such as Mounjaro, which often require higher protein intake to preserve muscle mass.

Sharp rise in hospital visits will in turn drive up annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to over $1bn

People in the US are poised to endure another summer of unusually ferocious heat and there will be little respite in the years ahead, with a new study finding that the coming 15 years could see a doubling in hospitalizations due to heat-related illnesses.

The number of annual heat-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations across the US are set to rise from about 109,000 cases a year to as many as 237,000 cases by 2040, the new research has estimated.

Medical Protection Society calls for law to be overhauled to help medics avoid liability for errors made by technology

Doctors and the NHS could be sued for medical negligence over mistakes made by artificial intelligence tools used in diagnosing patients and suggesting their treatment, ministers are being warned.

Under the law as it stands, medics and the health service can be held liable for patients being harmed or dying even if it was AI that made the errors that resulted in their suffering.

Backed by a mix of private and public finance, Huddersfield and Manchester are among many in the academic sector helping to create jobs and growth

Huddersfield might appear an unlikely setting for a thriving health research complex. The West Yorkshire town is best known for its manufacturing heritage, but has quickly become a honey pot for private sector businesses keen to collaborate with the town’s university in a push for the latest medical breakthroughs.

Next month, the driving force behind the University of Huddersfield’s national health innovation campus, Prof Liz Towns-Andrews, expects to get the go-ahead for the third of seven planned eco-buildings for research and tech development clustered near the town centre.