Health

(NEW YORK) — Angelina Jolie paid tribute to her late mother this week, 15 years after her death from cancer, and encouraged other women to “go for mammograms and blood tests or ultrasounds.”

Mammograms are the recommended tests to screen for breast cancer in average risk women. Though there are currently no known effective screenings for ovarian cancer, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommends ultrasounds and blood tests for patients with BRCCA1 or BRCA2 gene variants.

In an Instagram post she shared on Monday, the actress and humanitarian brought awareness to breast and ovarian cancer by reminding women to “look after themselves.”

“Tomorrow would have been my mother’s 73rd birthday,” Jolie began. “She passed away 15 years ago, after a long struggle with breast and ovarian cancer. In June, I will be a month away from the age when she was diagnosed. I have had preventive surgeries to try to lessen chances but I continue to have check ups.”

“Sending my love to those who have also lost loved ones and strength to those who are fighting at this very moment for their lives and the lives of those they love,” she continued. “And to other women, please take the time to look after yourself and go for your mammograms and blood tests or ultrasounds, particularly if you have a family history of cancer.”

Jolie shared the post on World Ovarian Cancer Day, which aims to bring awareness about the disease.

In a 2015 op-ed for the New York Times, Jolie announced that she underwent surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes as a preventative measure to lower her risk of cancer. For women like Jolie, who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic variants, surgery is one method to prevent cancer, though it is not recommended for women with average risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 55-72% of women with the BRCA1 variant, like Jolie, develop breast cancer by age 70-80, and 39-44% develop ovarian cancer by age 70-80.

“I lost my mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer,” she said at the time. “I wanted other women at risk to know about the options.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer is markedly increased if she inherits a harmful variant in BRCA1 or BRCA2.

The institute encourages those who are concerned about the possibility of having the harmful variant in either gene to discuss those concerns with their health care provider or a genetic counselor.

Two years prior to opening up about her surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, Jolie wrote in another op-ed that she had a preventive double mastectomy.

In her op-ed, she echoed what she shared in her recent Instagram post and said that she hoped other women could “benefit from my experience.”

“Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness,” she wrote in the op-ed. “But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer and take action.”

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(ATLANTA) — As the U.S. moves into a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the public health emergency ending May 11, it also signals the end of some COVID data sharing.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it would be transitioning certain COVID metrics to other sources or discontinue them entirely once the emergency expires.

Additionally, earlier this year, several data trackers — including the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Survives dashboard — shut down.

Public health experts say that rich data collection has been essential for public health officials and lawmakers to develop and adjust COVID measures, and not having as much data available may limit the ability to track the virus in the future.

“I think the interest in the data has definitely gone down so, in some ways, the CDC is sort of focused on meeting people where they are,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “But the concern is always that we should be erring on the side of providing more information and making more data available because, of course, there’s absolutely always the potential for us to be caught flat-footed again, when it comes to COVID.”

He continued, “There’s always that concern that we have not actually improved our ability to monitor these viruses as opposed to sort of going back to where we were pre-pandemic.”

CDC changing COVID-19 surveillance methods

The CDC announced Friday it was changing some of the ways it surveils COVID-19 with the expiration of the emergency.

One of the biggest changes is that the agency will stop sharing data about COVID-19 transmission levels and community levels and is switching to COVID-related hospital admissions as the primary metric to measure virus spread.

During a media call with reporters Thursday, Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said since Feb. 2022, the community levels and the hospital admissions have matched up the majority of the time.

Shah said the hospital data will be an early indicator of whether COVID-19 is rising in certain areas and will give public health officials notice of a potential spike.

“We have to recognize the amount of resources that are required to capture some of this data are significant, and so it makes sense that the CDC is going to try to aim to focus on data sources that are a little bit more automated, like hospitalization data,” Brownstein said.

However, he noted that COVID-19-related hospitalizations is a lagging indicator, because people infected with the virus are often not hospitalized for several days — and in some case weeks.

“So, if there’s a new variant, we may not have as much early insight into what’s happening at the community level, based on just focusing on hospital data,” Brownstein said. “The hope is that the results of the pandemic should allow us to improve our ability to monitor, whether it’s COVID or other viruses, in ways that are much more real time.

He added, “So there is a concern that we’re now focusing back on types of data that are less real time and provide us less of an early step in what’s actually happening as far as transmission.

Patchwork of data collection

The CDC said it is ending the community levels and transmission levels because they are reliant on aggregate case data, which is not required to be reported by jurisdictions once the emergency ends.

Experts agree that case data is no longer an accurate metric for COVID-19 due to the lack of people getting tested and, those being tested at-home not always sharing results with health officials.

However, they say it still means another source of data won’t be table to be tracked.

“The idea of having better, more voluminous data that’s more comprehensive on cases, hospitalizations, even infection and deaths in a timely manner for diseases is something that, we’ve really talked about and advocated for a long time,” Dr. Jeff Shaman, a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, told ABC News.

“We have typically suffered from a lack of that kind of information at the level of granularity and with a level of temporal frequency that really allows us to better understand the diseases, track them, monitor them, forecast and come to a greater understanding of how and why they’re getting around and how we might better control them.”

Shaman said with the various data trackers, it provided a wealth of information that was able to accelerate our understanding of how the pandemic was progressing.

He worries that with jurisdictions not being required to report data to the CDC, there will be a patchwork approach to what data we have from various parts of the country.

“That being peeled away, we’re going to go back to something that’s more piecemeal, that’s more reliant on local fundings and abilities to actually provide the information,” Shaman said. “But we’re going to be moving back to an environment that isn’t as data rich. It’s hard to anticipate exactly what the consequences of that are, but it will make things more difficult.”

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(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday it is changing the way it does surveillance of COVID-19 in the United States as the emergencies related to the virus come to an end.

In January, the Biden administration told Congress that it would let the COVID-19 national emergency and the public health emergency expire on May 11.

Accordingly, the CDC said it plans to either transition certain categories of COVID-19 national reporting to other sources or discontinue them entirely.

“Although next week marks the end of the public health emergency, it is not the end of COVID-19,” Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a call with reporters Thursday. “COVID-19 remains a risk and CDC remains committed to preventing severe illness and death associated with COVID-19, particularly for those who are at higher risk.”

He continued, “We will continue to keep our eye on the COVID-19 ball, and we will do so through a multitude of metrics.”

In one of the biggest moves, the federal health agency will stop sharing data about COVID-19 transmission levels and community levels and use COVID-related hospital admissions as the primary metric to measure virus spread.

Shah said this is because community levels rely on aggregate case rates, which are ending when the public health emergency expires, and those case rates may not be reported to CDC by jurisdictions after May 11.”

The CDC has noted that as the pandemic has progressed, case data has become less reliable because of increases in home testing, with results often not reported to public health officials.

“Since February of 2022, there has been a 99% accordance with the CCL, the community levels — which are being retired — and the new hospital admission-driven metrics,” Shah said. “In short, we will still be able to tell that it’s snowing, even though we’re no longer counting every snowflake.”

Hospitalizations will move from being reported daily to weekly, while keeping track of demographic data, such as age and race/ethnicity, as well as data on the treatment being received by patients.

Dr. Brendan Jackson, lead of the CDC’s COVID-19 Response, said there are other metrics the CDC will continue to monitor that can give notice before a potential spike.

“Hospitalizations provide the best national level view of COVID trends,” Jackson said during the media call. “There are also metrics that provide earlier signals of change in COVID activity.”

For example, “CDC reports emergency department visits for COVID-19 on our COVID data tracker website down to the state level. This is a key early indicator of evolving trends,” he added.

Additionally, the CDC is switching its test positivity data to a surveillance system, which is based on voluntary reporting from over 450 laboratories nationwide.

Also seeing changes is V-safe, a smartphone tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide check-ins after people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Starting May 19, people who participated in v-safe will not be able to add new COVID-19 vaccine doses to their account. People who received doses that were added before May 19 will have health check-ins until June 30.

“At this point in the program, very little new data are being reported to the v-safe system,” the CDC said in a press released. “V-safe was developed specifically for COVID-19 vaccines and has been an essential component of the pandemic vaccine safety monitoring systems that have successfully and comprehensively characterized the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States.”

The CDC said it is developing a new version of v-safe, expected to launch later in 2023, which will allow users to share post-vaccination experiences with new vaccines.

However, there are certain activities that will be unaffected by the CDC’s change in reporting and the end of the emergencies.

These include case data broken down by demographics as well as CDC’s work on long COVID, vaccine effectiveness and wastewater surveillance.

Shah said there is still a need within the agency to modernize the way they collect and monitor disease, so it does not take as long to do so as it did with COVID-19.

“In the next pandemic, we shouldn’t wait six months to have complete hospitalization data,” Shah said. “We shouldn’t need dozens of data use agreements to understand the demographics of who’s getting vaccinated.”

He continued, “We should have access to robust data before a pandemic. We should be ready, so we don’t have to get ready. That is the work ahead of us and the work we are committed to doing.”

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(GENEVA) — The World Health Organization on Friday said it was downgrading COVID-19 and no longer characterizing it as a global health emergency.

The U.N. health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on Jan. 30, 2020.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the change during a media briefing held with reporters at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

But he clarified that this does not mean the pandemic is over.

“It is with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” he said. “However, that does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat. Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes — and that’s just the deaths we know about.”

The downgrade comes with the pandemic on a “downward trend” for more than a year due to growing immunity among the global population — both from vaccination and infection — as well as a decreasing number of deaths, according to Tedros. This has also led to health systems no longer feeling as a much of a burden as they once did.

“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before,” he said.

Tedros recounted the early days of the pandemic, noting that when it first declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency, China reported fewer than 100 cases and no deaths.

He said that seven million COVID-19 deaths have been reported to WHO, but officials believe the true toll to be at least 20 million. In the U.S., more than 1.1 million deaths have been recorded, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“But COVID-19 has been so much more than a health crisis,” Tedros said. “It has caused severe economic upheaval, erasing trillions from GDP, disrupting travel and trade, shuttering businesses and plunging millions into poverty.”

He continued, “It has caused severe social upheaval, with borders closed, movement restricted, schools shut and millions of people experiencing loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression.”

And despite the downgrade, there are still thousands of people dying every day as well as being hospitalized due to complications from the virus.

Tedros warned against countries letting their guard down and said they must remain vigilant in case a new highly infectious variant emerges.

“I emphasize that this is not a snap decision. It is a decision that has been considered carefully for some time, planned for, and made on the basis of a careful analysis of the data,” he said. “If need be, I will not hesitate to convene another Emergency Committee should COVID-19 once again put our world in peril.”

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(NEW YORK) — Christina Applegate is opening up about how multiple sclerosis has taken a toll on her life.

The actress, who is known for her roles in Dead To Me, The Sweetest Thing and Anchorman, said having MS “f—ing sucks.”

“With the disease of MS, it’s never a good day,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “You just have little s—– days.”

Applegate said that the simplest tasks can be “frightening” like getting in the shower.

“You can fall, you can slip, your legs can buckle,” she said. “Especially because I have a glass shower. It’s frightening to me to get in there. There are just certain things that people take for granted in their lives that I took for granted. Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore.”

“Gravity can just pull you down and take everything down with you,” she added.

Applegate revealed on social media in 2021 that she was diagnosed with MS.

The disease affects the brain and spinal cord (or central nervous system), according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke .

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society says that women are more likely to have MS, but men can get it too.

Since MS makes patients susceptible to infections, according to the National Library of Medicine , Applegate says she doesn’t “want to be around a lot of people.” She said she also doesn’t want a lot of stimulation of the nervous system so she likes to “keep it as quiet and mellow as possible.”

“It’s exhausting,” she said. “Imagine just being in a crowd of people and how loud that is. It’s like 5,000 times louder for anyone who has lesions on their brains.”

Applegate said she found out while filming the final season of Dead To Me. She told Vanity Fair that the show may be her last time acting on camera.

While she remembers how taxing it was to film during that time and feels relieved that she “no longer has to push so hard to get through my day,” she said she misses her co-stars the most, including Linda Cardellini , who plays Judy Hale in the series.

“Linda and I, from day one, were in love with each other and trusted each other and supported each other,” Applegate said. “I’m probably not going to work on-camera again, but I’m so glad that I went out with someone who is by far the greatest actress I’ve ever worked with in my entire life, if not the greatest human I’ve ever known.”

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(NEW YORK) — While COVID-19 ebbs — and many of the pandemic-era policies on surveillance data and funding wind down with it — the nation’s public health leaders warned senators on Thursday that a return to “normal” should not mean forgetting the hard lessons learned over the last three years.

When the federal government’s public health emergency expires next week, COVID-19 data collection tools will also end. Those tools have been described as vital to staying vigilant and preparing for emerging health threats.

“Infectious disease threats have been emerging at an increased pace and are increasingly complex,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. “These diseases don’t respect national or state borders, and the increased frequency of outbreaks means that we should not be asking if we will face another serious public health threat — but when.”

Though “for many life has turned to normal after three years of COVID-19,” Walensky said it’s the mission of public health to “remain response-ready to protect Americans from any resolving or emerging health threat,” which can only be done by “actively supporting the core capabilities of public health.”

Thursday’s hearing was part of the process to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which was first signed into law in 2006 and has been regularly reauthorized since then.

“The approaching end of the public health emergency once again reminds us that policy changes and funding are essential to the readiness of future bio-threats. The CDC will continue to closely monitor COVID-19 and provide the information to which we have access,” Walensky said.

She and other panelists emphasized that caveat: The limited access to data that comes along with a return to “normal” threatens to kneecap future surveillance efforts.

“We will adapt to limitations and utilize tried-and-true systems to monitor other respiratory diseases, to keep our eye on COVID-19,” Walensky said, “but there are data we will no longer have available because they will no longer be submitted to us. For example, certain data for a national picture of health disparities both for race and ethnicity and along urban and rural lines.”

“We will make do,” the CDC director said. “However this should worry us all, primarily because of what it says about the visibility we will have into the next outbreak. We will be back to square one — having to build and negotiate surveillance capacity while we fight a pathogen.”

Dawn O’Connell, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said that the U.S. actually was more prepared for COVID-19 than it would’ve been for other types of pandemics because of two prior respiratory outbreaks.

Neglecting to further that work would put the country at a big risk, O’Connell said.

“This is one of my biggest worries, is that we are losing time in preparing for the next pandemic,” she said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but the one place we were lucky when it came to the coronavirus is we had already done a lot of the early work on that because of SARS and MERS. We need to get the same head start.”

That’s something some senators looked to explicate in their line of questioning, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., interjecting: “Are you telling us that we have not done the kind of work you would like to see done in preparation for what might be coming?”

“Correct,” O’Connell said.

Another tragedy briefly cast a shadow over Thursday’s hearing, as Walensky opened her remarks by noting that one of the CDC’s employees was killed Wednesday in a mass shooting in Atlanta.

Amy St. Pierre “was a valued member of our team at the Division of Reproductive Health where she worked every day to save the lives of mothers and infants,” Walensky said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Angela Maske was a college freshman in Washington, D.C., when she first had trouble getting a prescription for birth control pills.

Her Catholic-affiliated university wouldn’t prescribe the medication to students as a sexual contraceptive, so Maske spent three months looking for another doctor’s appointment.

More recently, her telehealth provider stopped servicing her area, sending Maske scrambling to find another provider and a new prescription on short notice while juggling a full-time job.

Maske now works with Free the Pill, a coalition of advocates that’s spent years dedicated entirely to increasing public access to contraception — a goal they say is critical to people already struggling to access health care, find time off work or arrange for child care to make a doctor’s appointment.

“It’s just frustrating because (getting a prescription) feels like yet another barrier that people have to go through to access essential care to control their reproductive and sexual autonomy,” said Maske.

The Food and Drug Administration is on the cusp of deciding whether at least one type of hormonal birth control — a progestin-only drug called “Opill” by French drugmaker HRA Pharma — is safe enough to be sold over the counter without a prescription and without age restrictions.

First approved by the FDA in 1973, Opill is type of hormonal birth control pill known as the “minipill,” which poses fewer risks than combination pills that rely on estrogen. Still, buyers would have to screen themselves for any health risk factors, much as they would other over-the-counter medications.

FDA’s panel of scientific advisers are expected to meet next week to discuss the application, and if the agency signs off the drug in coming weeks, the product could be on shelves this summer.

“It is just super exciting that we’ve gotten here at this moment. It’s really historic,” said Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, an advocacy organization that has long called for over-the-counter birth control pills.

Blanchard said she hopes other types of birth control pills will follow suit and that states embrace laws requiring insurance companies to cover the costs. Currently, federal law requires free contraception “as prescribed” by a health care provider, although some states have pushed their own mandates for insurance to cover over-the-counter options as well.

The question over increased access to birth control comes amid a heated national debate on women’s reproductive rights with the overruling of Roe vs. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. At least 15 states have barred nearly all abortions so far.

This week, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law that authorizes pharmacists to dispense hormonal birth control. Patients there can now rely on a single long-standing order from a doctor, rather than having to return for an updated prescription; if the person does not have a health care provider, the pharmacist could dispense the drug anyway with instructions to consult a doctor.

The vast majority of Americans back widespread access to birth control. Two-thirds of adult women under 50 say they are using some form of contraception, with a third of those relying on birth control pills, according to a 2022 KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) survey.

Most patients also believe they can screen themselves for risk factors when it comes to hormonal birth control. According to KFF, an estimated 77% of women under 50 say they want birth control pills available without a doctor’s prescription if research shows it’s safe and effective.

One concern is that patients will forgo routine examinations if doctors can be cut out of the process. Still, HRA Pharma’s federal application for Opill solicited significant support from the medical community, anti-poverty organizations and reproductive-rights advocates that say increasing access to family planning will benefit millions of people, particularly those in rural areas and people of color who struggle to access any health care.

The American Medical Association, for example, told the FDA that decades of data shows the benefits of “widespread, nonprescription availability far outweigh the limited risk associated with their use.”

In a separate filing, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said a patient doesn’t need to be examined or tested before taking the drug and that the birth control pill was overwhelmingly safe for most people to take on their own. And while routine exams are critical to a person’s overall health, the group says that shouldn’t be a reason to make birth control harder to access.

Opponents of the move cited medical risk and teen access as a reason to limit access.

“Even if they read the package insert, evidence documents that teenagers take risks disproportionate to their own safety needs. When this is compounded by the lack of parental notification or health provider supervision, the results could be catastrophic,” wrote an objection signed by several Catholic groups, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Maia Lopez, a 17-year-old high school junior living outside Dallas, Texas, who now works with Free the Pill as a youth advocate, said teens will have sex anyway.

Easier access to contraception and quality education about reproductive health would go farther to protect young people, she said.

“I think they underestimate teens,” Lopez said.

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(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against omicron infection fell to less than 20% after six months, according to a new analysis published Wednesday.

Researchers from Italy and the United States looked at some of the most common vaccines used around the world, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac.

The researchers, however, did not look at the updated bivalent vaccines that target the original strain of the virus as well as BA.4 and BA.5, which are subvariants of omicron.

For the analysis, published in JAMA Network Open, the team examined 40 studies — a combination of articles and reviews published in peer-reviewed journals and preprints.

After receiving a primary series, protection against symptomatic disease decreased from 52.8% at one month after the last dose to 14.3% at six months to 8.9% at nine months.

When it came to vaccine effectiveness against overall infection, protection fell from 44.4% at one month to 20.7% at six months to 13.4% at nine months.

There were some differences in vaccine products from Pfizer and Moderna; they had higher effectiveness than the AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines.

Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital who was not involved in the study, said the results are not surprising because researchers have known about waning effectiveness for quite some time.

“However this study provides important insights into the specific effectiveness of the original monovalent vaccines against omicron and highlights the importance of the updated bivalent booster in providing additional protection,” said Brownstein, an ABC News contributor.

Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Protection show that the updated bivalent boosters enhance levels of protection.

One study found the bivalent booster slashed the risk of visiting an emergency department, urgent care facility or hospital due to COVID-19 by at least half for U.S. adults.

Another showed the bivalent booster provided additional protection against symptomatic infection with the two variants of omicron currently circulating, XBB and XBB.1.5, for at least three months in those who received two to four doses of the original vaccine.

“While effectiveness against infection is an important metric, effectiveness against severe disease, hospitalization and death are crucial metrics when evaluating the overall effectiveness of COVID vaccines, as these outcomes have the most significant impact on public health,” Brownstein said.

The analysis also looked at protection when receiving the original booster dose. Levels of protectiveness increased but eventually waned as well.

Against infection, booster effectiveness fell from 55.4% at one month to 28.9% at nine months. Against symptomatic disease, effectiveness declined from 60.4% at one month to 13.3% at nine months.

Brownstein said it’s important to reiterate that vaccination is still very important — to protect both ourselves and those who are at risk of severe disease — and to not interpret the study to mean vaccines aren’t effective.

As of March 19, the latest date for which CDC data is available, COVID-19 cases were 81.11 per 100,000 among unvaccinated people compared to 26.66 per 100,000 for those vaccinated without the updated booster and 25.81 per 100,000 for those vaccinated with the updated booster.

Death rates as of Feb. 26, similarly, had a large gap with 1.07 per 100,000 deaths for those unvaccinated, 0.21 per 100,000 for those vaccinated without the updated booster and 0.19 per 100,000 for those vaccinated with the updated booster.

“The findings from this study shouldn’t detract from the importance of vaccination,” Brownstien said. “While the effectiveness of vaccines against omicron infection may wane over time, vaccines still provide significant protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death.”

He added, “Additionally, booster doses can help maintain protection against the virus especially when they are more closely matched to circulating variants.

ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — TV personality Maria Menounos is opening up about a recent health scare, revealing details of a private battle with pancreatic cancer.

Menounos, 44, told People magazine she began experiencing symptoms including “excruciating abdominal pain” late last year.

When the pain continued after test results came back inconclusive, Menounos said she underwent a whole-body MRI that found a mass on her pancreas.

“I’m like ‘How in the freaking world can I have a brain tumor and pancreatic cancer?'” Menounos told People. “All I could think was that I have a baby coming.”

Menounos announced in February that she and her husband Keven Undergaro are expecting their first child via surrogate. Previously, the couple’s decade-long plans to have a child were put on hold in 2017 when Menounos underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor.

Menounos said that after doctors found the mass on her pancreas, a biopsy determined it to be a Stage 2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, a type of pancreatic cancer where the tumor forms in the islet cells of the pancreas, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In February, Menounos said she underwent surgery to remove the mass on her pancreas, as well as her spleen, a fibroid and 17 lymph nodes.

“It was super painful,” she said of her recovery from the surgery. “I couldn’t move or lift myself up.”

Because the cancer was caught early, Menounos did not require any chemotherapy and will not need additional treatment, according to People. Her doctor, Dr. Ryan Aronin, and surgeon, Dr. Timothy Donahue, told the outlet Menounos will need annual scans for the next five years.

“I’m so grateful and so lucky,” Menounos said, adding of her daughter, who is due this summer, “God granted me a miracle. I’m going to appreciate having her in my life so much more than I would have before this journey.”

What to know about pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer represents around 3% of new cases of cancer in the United States, but around 8% of cancer deaths, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Most recently, the disease has been in the headlines with the deaths of Alex Trebek, Patrick Swayze and Sex and the City star Willie Garson. All three died of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is a type of cancer that develops from two types of cells in the pancreas, a six-inch-long gland that lays between the stomach and spine, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, the type of cancer Menounos said she faced, are less common but have a better prognosis. Cancer in the exocrine cells is usually found at a later stage and therefore typically has a worse prognosis, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Overall, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just over 12%, according to National Cancer Institute data.

While some pancreatic tumors may not produce any symptoms, others may cause symptoms like diarrhea, pain in the abdomen or back, a lump in the abdomen or yellowing of the skin and eyes, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In many cases, symptoms of pancreatic cancer may not appear until the cancer has spread.

“Part of the reason it tends to be so deadly has to do with anatomy,” ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said in 2020, following Trebek’s death due to pancreatic cancer. “If you look at where the pancreas is located, it sits high up in the abdominal cavity. You can’t palpate it or feel it on a physical exam.”

She continued, “By the time it’s producing symptoms, like yellowness of the skin and eyes or weight loss, it’s generally metastasized or spread to an advanced stage.”

Making pancreatic cancer even more difficult to diagnose is that there is no screening test for it, according to Ashton.

Treatment for pancreatic cancer can include everything from surgery to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, as well as new targeted therapies.

Currently, the cause of pancreatic cancer is not known. Risk factors include family history, tobacco use, being overweight, diabetes and more, according to the American Cancer Society.

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(NEW YORK) — Children are often exposed to diet culture from a young age and its negative impacts can be long-lasting, according to author Virginia Sole-Smith.

Sole-Smith is the author of a new book titled Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, which takes a closer look at how kids are exposed to body shaming, diet culture, fatphobia and more.

Young people are listening and the pressure to look a certain way starts early, Sole-Smith told ABC News’ Good Morning America.

“Kids start to learn that fat is the wrong way to have a body between the ages of 3 and 5. This is pressure that starts really early,” Sole-Smith said. “One of the top predictors of future eating disorder risk is kids being shamed for their weight and childhood dieting experiences.”

The pressure continues into adolescence as well. According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013 to 2019, between 2013 and 2016, nearly 37.6% of adolescents aged 16 to 19 reported trying to lose weight within the previous year.

Early exposure to diet culture may be linked to increased social media use. Child psychologist Andrea Vazzana told ABC News in March that she has noticed an increase in younger children with eating disorders, including tweens as young as 9 and 10.

“This may be correlational data, but we’re seeing people joining social media platforms at an earlier age as well,” Vazzana said at the time.

Recovery advocate Sam Dylan Finch told ABC News that although social media can play a positive role in eating disorder recovery, it can also have a negative impact.

“It can be a vehicle for fad diets, health misinformation, harsh criticism, especially for those of us that don’t conform to society’s ideals of beauty and achievement,” Dylan Finch said in March, “and perpetuates standards of perfection that are impossible to achieve.”

Tips to minimize negative diet culture impact

Reclaim the “fat” label

In Fat Talk, Sole-Smith argues that one way parents can fight back against anti-fat bias and diet culture is to reclaim the word “fat.”

“If we can understand fat as just a neutral body descriptor, just like saying tall or short or brown hair, blonde hair … if your child comes to you and they are in a bigger body, and they say, ‘Am I fat?’ you should be honest with them and say, ‘You’re fat.’ And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We love your body just the way it is,” Sole-Smith said.

Define what “fat” means for your family

At the same time, reclaiming the term might not be the right move for every family, according to parenting expert and author Rachel Simmons.

“I think the word ‘fat’ is something everyone needs to make their own choices about,” Simmons said. “I think that the language that we use has to be something that we agree on as a family.”

Change the conversation at home

Another suggestion from Sole-Smith is for parents to shift the conversations with and in front of children at home.

“We can say I’m not going to shame my body in front of my kids and I’m going to celebrate bodies in all shapes and sizes,” the author recommended.

Simmons added separately, “As parents, we need to spend time reminding our children what matters about them on the inside, talk about the strength that your body has no matter what size it is.”

“So if you have a child who is in a bigger body, who’s strong, talk about their strength,” Simmons continued. “Helping our children celebrate how our bodies function, how they allow us to accomplish our goals … these are things we can remind our kids about every single day.”

Oftentimes, diet talk and conversations about size can be unavoidable for children, but Simmons said parents can act as a shield between children and some of the most toxic messages behind diet culture.

As children grow older, Simmons encourages parents to be honest with kids about their own struggles and not pretend they know everything and kids know nothing about diet culture.

If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or NationalEatingDisorders.org.

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