Nearly 1 in 4 NFL players had CTE at death; first U.S. measles deaths of 2026 reported in Pennsylvania; Dolly Parton's health care legacy — Morning Medical Update Weekly Recap

Editor's note: This episode was recorded before Pennsylvania confirmed that one of the two measles-associated deaths was a newborn. Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni, M.D., says the infant died shortly after birth from a ruptured spleen and that measles was not the cause, though measles was detected in postmortem testing. State Health Secretary Debra Bogen, M.D., says she reviewed the case investigation and stands by the finding of two measles-associated deaths. Pennsylvania applies that term when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, even where a coroner has not determined measles to be the immediate cause of death. No details have been released about the second death.

Nearly 1 in 4 former NFL players who died had CTE

Even if every brain researchers could not examine was free of disease, one in four of those players still had it.

Researchers at Mass General Brigham, Boston University and the Concussion & CTE Foundation published a study Aug. 25 that takes a different approach to a question the field has argued over for years. Most chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) research counts donated brains. This study built a population denominator instead, identifying every man who appeared in at least one NFL game after 1949 and died between 2008 and 2021, then narrowing to the six-year window when brain donation was most frequent.

Between 2016 and 2021, 878 former players died. Of those, 235 donated their brains and 215 were found to have CTE. That produces a minimum prevalence of 24.5%, the figure that holds even if all 643 unexamined brains were free of disease. The theoretical maximum, if every unexamined brain had it, is 97.7%. In the general population, CTE appears in fewer than 1% of brains at death.

Daniel Daneshvar, M.D., Ph.D., chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham and the study's lead author, called the range a wake-up call for the NFL and scientific communities. The authors are direct about the limits of the work. Brain donation is not random, families often donate after watching a decline, and most of these careers predate the 2011 collective bargaining agreement that eliminated two-a-day full-contact practices and capped padded practices during the regular season.

Among the brain donors, about 60% had dementia diagnosed by a study clinician, and donors with the most advanced disease were more likely to carry that diagnosis. The NFL said it continues working to make the game safer. The NFL Players Association emailed the study to players and agents and urged anyone with memory or mood symptoms to seek evaluation. CTE still cannot be diagnosed in a living person, and no validated biomarker exists, which leaves clinicians treating symptoms without a way to confirm the underlying pathology.

Pennsylvania reports the first U.S. measles deaths of 2026

Two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents, and a public disagreement between the state and the county coroner over what killed one of them.

Pennsylvania health officials announced Aug. 25 that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents died from measles-associated complications, the first measles deaths in the United States this year and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years. Health Secretary Debra Bogen, M.D., and Gov. Josh Shapiro announced the deaths at a news conference at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health's Women & Babies Hospital. Officials declined to release ages or other identifying details, citing privacy.

Pennsylvania had confirmed 393 cases with 70 hospitalizations at the time of the announcement, and 86 of those cases were diagnosed in the preceding week. The state count has since risen above 420 across 30 counties. Nationally, the CDC counted 2,777 confirmed cases as of Aug. 20, the highest single-year total since 1991.

The coverage data landed eight days earlier. CDC reported that kindergarten vaccine exemptions reached a record 4.2% in the 2025-26 school year, up from 3.6%, with 24 states now above 5%. Two-dose MMR coverage among kindergartners is 92.4%, below the roughly 95% threshold associated with herd immunity, and about 280,000 kindergartners started the year without documentation of completing the series. In Lancaster County, kindergarten MMR coverage was 87.6%.

The state has since confirmed that one of the two was a newborn, and the Lancaster County coroner has publicly disputed the classification. That disagreement turns on a distinction physicians will recognize: a measles-associated death is an epidemiological classification made by the health department, while the official cause of death is determined by the coroner or medical examiner. The two determinations use different standards and can diverge.

Related content: Vaccine schedules, stocking costs and the back-to-school visit, with AAFP President Sarah Nosal, M.D. and What primary care physicians need to know about Trump's vaccine order

Dolly Parton's health care legacy

Two decades of giving, from early COVID-19 research money at Vanderbilt to the Knoxville children's hospital that now carries her name.

Dolly Parton died Aug. 25 in Nashville at 80. Her publicist said the cause was a brief battle with cancer and that she died at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, part of the medical center she had funded for years. She will be remembered for a catalog that includes "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" and more than 3,000 songs she wrote herself. The health care giving drew less attention.

Parton gave Vanderbilt University Medical Center $1 million in April 2020, creating the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund. The fund is credited in the New England Journal of Medicine paper on the safety and immunogenicity of the mRNA-1273 vaccine in older adults, alongside grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Mark Denison, M.D., director of Vanderbilt's Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, told The New York Times in November 2020 that the gift paid for the critical early stages of the work. Parton called it that little seed money.

She gave Vanderbilt another $1 million in June 2022 for pediatric infectious disease research, and contributed $1 million toward the LeConte Medical Center project in Sevier County, where she grew up, which opened in 2010 with a 30,000-square-foot center for women's services. In February, East Tennessee Children's Hospital in Knoxville was renamed Dolly Parton Children's Hospital. The 152-bed independent hospital, where about 60% of patients rely on Medicaid, said the gift is intended to fund a pediatric residency program it hopes to launch this year, telehealth for rural communities, level one children's surgical verification, level four NICU accreditation and subspecialty recruitment.

Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995 in honor of her father, who could not read or write. The program mails free books to children from birth to age 5 and has gifted more than 325 million as of June. Pediatricians have paired it with Reach Out and Read, the literacy intervention delivered at well-child visits. Her family asked that donations go to the Imagination Library in lieu of flowers.