Ken Sutha, MD, PhD

Photo of Dr. Harman at the front of a conference room. She wears a red dress and a red blazer. The slide behind her says, “Having a conversation when it's someone you love... In thinking about the future, what's most important to you? What is keeping you up at night? What gives you strength in tough times? What else would you want me to know?”

An insightful & moving talk from @stephharmanmd.bsky.social at the Big Ideas conference, culminating in her important point that palliative care physicians don’t have a monopoly on helping people decide what matters most to them. Here are some questions to consider for anyone facing serious illness.

Hey it’s me!

Members of the Stanford kidney transplant team pose with their heads sticking out around large block letters spelling “WTC 2025”

Stanford pediatric nephrology faculty members dressed up in warm clothes posing on the beach in front of large rocks

Come join our awesome team!

Stanford Division of Pediatric Nephrology is hiring! Find out more about our job:
facultypositions.stanford.edu/cw/en-us/job...
#Careers #Hiring #PediatricNephrology #Dialysis #KidneyTransplant

NAMI Statement on Executive Order Targeting Homelessness and Criminalizing Mental Illness NAMI urges investment in proven mental health solutions over involuntary treatment in response to a new federal Executive Order.

This EO criminalizing homelessness & mental illness ignores decades of research & lived experience. This EO has many devastating aspects, especially its targeting of Housing First policies.

Housing First reduces homelessness, emergency room visits, and contact with the criminal punishment system.

More bad news (sorry). ⁠
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Many folks may have never heard of the USPSTF before, but it's an important group of experts that reviews research and gives guidance to healthcare providers. Playing politics with this panel will have implications for healthcare delivery in the U.S.

The answer is: Hell yes, trans kids should be able to participate in sports according to how they identify.

The emotional damage done by rejecting a kid’s identity is the real concern here. Not the bigotry of a busybody parent trying to bully that one kid.

I’m not sitting back while this administrations destroys my career and the careers of my colleagues and mentees. #LGBTQI+

It's not just Northwestern and Harvard, I have gotten credible (confidential) reports from several other schools (including state schools) that the NIH is defaulting on federal commitments there too.

Seems like there may be a big story here for an investigative reporter willing to take it on

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees

Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday

📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful

Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

Ken stands in front of an RV with Stanford Medicine logo and AIDS lifecycle Stanford team logo.

Members of the Stanford team pose together

Team members hold up a Rainbow Stanford medicine flag

A collection of stickers: “I bike California” with trans pride flag colors, “Stanford medicine, Ken Sutha” with a rainbow across the top, and “aids/lifecycle the final 545”

Just over a week until I’ll be biking 545+ miles from SF to LA! Got to check out our team’s support vehicle for AIDS/Lifecycle and meet some more of our team members I hadn’t met yet! I guess I’m the de facto team physician? There’s still time to donate: bit.ly/ALC-Ken

Outstanding mentoring session by former ASN president Dr. @drdeidracrews.bsky.social at the ASN AKI B2B conference.
@4kidney.bsky.social

Protecting Africa's children from extreme risk: a runway of sustainability for PEPFAR programmes PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), a landmark US foreign health policy, is recognised for saving 26 million lives from HIV. PEPFAR investments have also had life-saving impacts for c...

🧒🌍 Ending AIDS for Africa's children?

PEPFAR has already saved 26 million lives – and could end childhood AIDS by 2030.

But without continued support, 1M children may be infected by HIV in the next 5 years.

🔗 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#SciComm #HIV 🧪 #PEPFAR

Exclusive: Trump White House directs NIH to study ‘regret’ after transgender people transition After cancelling nearly all NIH projects studying transgender health, Trump’s team instructs the US biomedical agency to study negative consequences of transitioning.

NEW: After cancelling nearly all projects on trans health, the Trump admin has now directed the NIH to study the negative consequences of transitioning.

This will create “a distorted research ecosystem where only politically favorable findings are permitted to exist”, researcher Harry Barbee says.

Federal health department slashes CDC, NIH staff In what is being described as a “bloodbath,” the Department of Health and Human Services has dramatically reduced personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal health a...

In what's being described as a “bloodbath,” DHHS has dramatically reduced personnel at CDC, NIH, FDA & other health agencies. The cuts are expected to affect 10,000 people; some learned of them only when their badges no longer allowed access to their offices.

www.ebar.com/story/153865/

US Senator Cassidy calls on Kennedy to appear before Senate panel over health agency cuts The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will on April 10 hold a hearing on the reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services, its chairman Senator Bill Cassidy said in a statement.

"US Senator Cassidy calls on Kennedy to appear before Senate panel over health agency cuts"

But you are literally the reason he was confirmed...what changed?

www.reuters.com/business/hea...

The latest NIH grant chaos:

NIH apparently sent stop-work orders to all *97* MARC and U-RISE programs in the country.

These programs support underrepresented undergrads interested in health research careers.

MARC dates to 1977. Over 48 years, the programs have supported thousands of students.

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New this evening (3/28): Major update in NIH grant termination numbers.

❌ 695 NIH grants now terminated (up from 429)
❌ 232 on HIV/AIDS
❌ 44 on cancer
❌ 28 on Alzheimer's
❌ 123 on Covid*

*And this doesn't count cancelled non-NIH Covid grants.

HUGE THANKS to @noamross.net for pushing the updates!

Graphic of clock old fashioned alarm clock with text: Still waiting for your pediatric nephrology appointment? There is a shortage of pediatric nephrologists in the US. Your donation to the ASPN Foundation helps to support the recruitment and training of pediatric nephrologists.

Your gift to the ASPN Foundation helps to support travel grants for trainees to help recruit and retain pediatric nephrologists! Your gift will be matched by ASPN Foundation Board Member Sharon Lagas up to a total of $2500 during National Kidney Month. aspneph.app.neoncrm.com/forms/alport...

Also defunded: a longstanding grant supporting the training and development of pediatric researchers. As if research and careers focusing on childhood disease weren’t underfunded and disincentivized enough already. . .

American Association of Kidney Patients post on X, the everything app: WATCH! HHS Sec. RFK Jr announces a long-overdue restructure of HHS operations to consolidate agency internal functions & to better align HHS capacities to the needs of both patients & taxpayers in the fight against chronic diseases, including CKD and ESRD: https://bit.ly/4j5YyYK

This ain't it

RFK Jr. to gut vaccine promotion and HIV prevention office, sources say Much of the federal government's efforts to buoy lagging childhood vaccination rates have been run through the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy.

The entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off. www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-...

I’ve long supported the great advocacy and education work by AAKP, but RJK Jr. and his leadership of HHS will absolutely have serious negative consequences for kidney and transplant patients.

As a longtime fan of AAKP, I can't help but feel disappointed that they’re putting a positive spin on what is an unmitigated disaster for transplant recipients.

This is a really disappointing decision by the NIH to cancel the longstanding Pediatric Scientist Development Program (PSDP-K12) grant that has funded the early career development of numerous pediatric physician-scientists who have become the pediatric leaders in the US and the world.

The NIH grant that has supported 38 years of training the best pediatrician-scientists in the country (I’m a proud former recipient) was cancelled. It was just approved for a 5 year renewal. The PSDP has supported the careers of many NIH-funded pediatrician-scientists and thought leaders

NIH cuts halt 24-year program to prevent HIV/AIDS in adolescents and young adults NIH terminated grants for a program studying how to diagnose, treat, and prevent HIV and AIDS in adolescents and young adults.

NIH cuts halt 24-year program to prevent HIV/AIDS in adolescents and young adults www.statnews.com/2025/03/25/n... via @statnews.com @aniloza.bsky.social

What It Really Means to ‘Give Infectious Disease a Break’ The Trump administration isn’t just dismantling protections against illnesses. It’s inviting them right in.

I know there's a lot happening but this week several grenades were thrown to decimate domestic HIV treatment and prevention research. I know more colleagues with canceled grants than not.
Our patients will die or get worse care as a direct result.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Mother and daughter smiling while holding a book titled "Sam is my Sister"

🚨 ALL my remaining NIH grants were just terminated

Without philanthropic gifts, this is the end of
1️⃣ my career (as I know it)
2️⃣ @lgbtqhealthexce.bsky.social
3️⃣ our LGBTQ health equity work

Yet, reading about LGBTQ families in my kid's class reminded me: love knows no bounds 🌈

You with us?

It’s been a devastating 24 hours with 3 NIH grants terminated…all focused on the health and wellbeing of trans or intersex youth. If folks have any ideas of foundations that may be interested in supporting the completion of these projects so years of work aren’t wasted, please let me know. 🙏

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women.

More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications.

I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.