During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people unexpectedly needed critical care such as ventilators but were unable to communicate their end-of-life wishes to their loved ones.

Researchers like me, who study death and dying[1], hoped that such scenes would spur more Americans to embrace end-of-life planning by discussing their wishes with family members and by completing an advance directive[2], which formalizes those wishes into a...

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Federal datasets[1] began disappearing from public view[2] on Jan. 31, 2025, in response to executive orders from President Donald Trump. Among those were the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey[3], which asks respondents about their gender identity and sexual orientation and tracks behaviors like smoking and drug use; CDC’s HIV dataset[4]; and CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease...

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