Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1344229
43 HEALTHCARE NEWS Biden administration fills out HHS: 13 new leaders to know By Morgan Haefner P resident Joe Biden's HHS is filling its agencies with leaders from the Obama administration, policy experts and people tied to President Biden's campaign, according to a list shared with Politico Pulse. Here are 13 new leaders to know: 1. Perrie Briskin and Clare Pierce-Wrobel were named senior advisers to HHS Chief of Staff Sean McCluskie. 2. Shannon Myricks is HHS' new deputy White House liaison. 3. HHS' press office will include Kirsten Al- len, who will run the agency's COVID-19 response communications, according to Po- litico Pulse. 4. Sean Higgins and Luisana Pérez Fernández will be press secretaries within HHS. 5. Max Lesko is the chief of staff to the sur- geon general within the Office of the Assis- tant Secretary for Health, according to Polit- ico Pulse. 6. Jessica Scruggs was named a senior adviser and director of scheduling and advance for the surgeon general. 7. e deputy assistant secretary in HHS' Of- fice of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation is Kimberly Espinosa. 8. e Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's chief of staff is So- nia Chessen, Politico Pulse reports. 9. Arielle Woronoff will lead CMS' legislative office. 10. Larry Handerhan was named chief of staff and senior adviser at the Administration for Children and Families. 11. Lanikque Howard, PhD, was named di- rector of the Administration for Children and Families' office of community service and se- nior adviser on asset building. n Drugmakers struggle to get volunteers for COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials as more people opt for approved shots By Maia Anderson As more COVID-19 vaccines are authorized and made available to a broader population of people, drugmakers are struggling to conduct further studies of the vaccines, The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 16. Many people don't want to take a placebo, according to the newspaper, but drugmakers still need trials to answer such ques- tions as whether a half-dose of a vaccine is effective and whether vaccines work in different populations. Conducting more clinical trials on vaccines could also help determine if they are effective against new variants of the corona- virus, and if they work in people with compromised immune systems. Moderna plans to test whether a half-dose of its vaccine could offer sufficient protection against the virus, the Journal reported. But some clinical trial volunteers are opting to get an approved vaccine rather than continue in a trial. Gregory Glenn, head of research at Novavax, told the Journal that about 1.5 percent of clinical trial volunteers assigned to receive a placebo decided to get a vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer since those were already approved. In turn, drugmakers and researchers are looking for new ways to test vaccines. One option, according to the Journal, would be to use blood samples to figure out what level of immune response a vaccine needs to trigger to protect against the coronavirus, and using that information to conduct smaller, faster and cheaper clinical trials. Using blood samples to determine the level of immune response a vaccine needs to have to protect someone from the virus could help determine if reduced doses are effective, if they work in children and how long protection from a vaccine lasts, the Journal reported. Another potential solution could be to run larger clinical trials outside of the U.S. in places where transmission of the virus is high and vaccine availability is limited, according to the Journal. Arcturus Therapeutics is considering running a phase 3 trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine outside of the U.S. because it seems increasingly unlikely to be able to do so in the U.S., CEO Joseph Payne told the Journal. n