Kaiser Health News Original Stories

Watch: Going Beyond the Script of ‘The G Word’ and How Government Responds to Disease (Or Not)

KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal joins comedian Adam Conover to discuss his new Netflix series, “The G Word,” which examines the federal government's role in Americans' lives, and how it plays out in the covid era. ( 5/20 )

High-Tech’s Business Model Hasn’t Worked for the Cue Covid Test

Cue got attention with a Super Bowl ad for a stylish high-tech covid-testing machine to use at home. But the product is expensive, which has limited the San Diego company’s market. (Eric Taub, 5/20 )

Bison Pastrami, Anyone? Preschool Assistant Makes Sure Kids Get to Know Indigenous Foods

Fawn Youngbear-Tibbetts wants youngsters to connect with their Native American culture and eat more nutritious foods. (Ariel Gans and Katherine Huggins, 5/20 )

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Waking Up to Baby Formula Shortage

The nationwide shortage of baby formula, which has been simmering for months, finally burst into public consciousness as more parents become less able to find food for their babies, prompting a belated federal response. Meanwhile, covid-19 cases rise but prevention activities don’t, and abortion-rights backers ready their legal arsenal for a post-Roe world. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN, and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too. ( 5/20 )

Kaiser Health News provides a fresh take on health policy developments with "Political Cartoon: 'Side Effects?'" by Bob and Tom Thaves.

Here's today's health policy haiku:

Infant formula Defense Production Act fix — battle victory!

If you have a health policy haiku to share, please Contact Us and let us know if we can include your name. Haikus follow the format of 5-7-5 syllables. We give extra brownie points if you link back to a KHN original story.

Opinions expressed in haikus and cartoons are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions of KHN or KFF.

Oklahoma House Passes Anti-Abortion Bill Like Texas', Only Stricter

Under the new law, "fertilization" is defined as the moment egg and sperm meet, and it also prohibits medicine-induced abortions (beyond when Plan B pills work). The bill moved to the desk of Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is expected to sign it. For more longer-read stories about abortion and the current threat to reproductive health in the U.S., scroll down to our Weekend Reading section.

Tulsa World: Oklahoma House Sends Abortion Bill Modeled After Texas Law To Governor An abortion bill some are calling the most restrictive in the nation was sent to Gov. Kevin Stitt on Thursday morning by the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Stitt is expected to sign House Bill 4327, by Rep. Wendi Stearman, R-Collinsville, which both pro and con agree will effectively end legal abortions in the state by opening providers and anyone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise,” or even intends to do so, to civil liability. The bill favors plaintiffs over defendants by forbidding courts to award attorney fees and other costs to defendants, even if they prevail in court, and allows just about anyone to act as plaintiff. It specifies that a minimum of $10,000 be awarded to prevailing plaintiffs. (Krehbiel, 5/20)

The Washington Post: Oklahoma Lawmakers Pass Bill Banning Abortion After Fertilization  The bill defines “fertilization” as the moment a sperm meets the egg. It explicitly allows for the use of the Plan B pill, a widely used form of emergency contraception, but would prohibit medical abortions using pills. The bill exempts from its definition of abortion any procedure to “save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child,” to “remove a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion” or to remove an ectopic pregnancy, in which the fetus grows outside the uterus. (Wang, Sonmez and Kitchener, 5/19)

AP: Oklahoma Passes Strictest Abortion Ban; Services To Stop Two of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics already stopped providing abortions after the governor signed a six-week ban earlier this month, and an attorney for the two other independent clinics said Thursday they will no longer offer services once the bill is signed. The bill is likely to reach Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk early next week, and the first-term Republican running for reelection has already said he would sign any anti-abortion bill the Legislature sends to him. It would take effect immediately after he signs it. (Murphy, 5/19)

The Hill: White House Condemns Restrictive Oklahoma Abortion Law  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned a law passed by Oklahoma lawmakers on Thursday that would ban abortions with very limited exceptions. “Today’s action by the Oklahoma legislature is the most extreme effort to undo these fundamental rights we have seen to date. In addition, it adopts Texas’ absurd plan to allow private citizens to sue their neighbors for providing reproductive health care and helping women to exercise their constitutional rights,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. (Vakil, 5/19)

In abortion news from Kentucky —

Louisville Courier Journal: Judge Holds Abortion Law Block, Win For Planned Parenthood, EMW Center A federal judge issued an order Thursday that preliminarily blocks a new ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Kentucky from taking effect for now. In addition to putting the 15-week abortion ban on ice, the judge also blocked enforcement of major parts of the law that would restrict access to abortion medication and place new restrictions on abortion access for people under 18 years old. This ruling means abortion services remain available to Kentuckians without being impacted by these restrictions under the law, the ultimate legality of which is still unresolved in this court case. (Watkins and Sonka, 5/19)

AP: Federal Judge Again Extends Ban On Kentucky Abortion Law  U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings’ ruling means that Kentucky officials cannot enforce other disputed provisions until the state adopts and funds regulations under which abortion providers would have to comply. The judge had previously suspended enforcement of the measure passed by the Republican-dominated legislature last month over a veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. (Schreiner and Lovan, 5/19)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: St. Louis Abortion Provider Tells Vice President, 'A Post-Roe Reality Is Coming For All Of Us'  Vice President Kamala Harris met Thursday with abortion providers from some of the most restrictive states in the country, including Missouri, to learn how the Biden administration can help protect access to abortion amid a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision that could end the constitutional right to the procedure. Harris held the virtual meeting with providers from across the country, including Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Missouri. Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for the Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, was among those invited. “This experience in Missouri forced us to face the truth: a post-Roe reality is coming for all of us,” McNicholas said. (Munz, 5/19)

Fortune and Bloomberg: Mastercard To Help Pay For Workers Abortion Travel Costs Mastercard Inc. said it would help pay for workers to travel to access abortions if pregnancy terminations aren’t available in their home state. ... With the move, Mastercard is joining companies including Citigroup Inc., Apple Inc. and Match Group Inc. in promising to cover employees’ travel costs incurred to access abortion. ... Mastercard has long paid for workers to travel to access other health services, including organ transplants and other specialty surgeries, according to the memo. The new abortion travel policy goes into effect June 1, according to the memo. (Surane, 5/18)

Lawmakers Blame FDA, 'Corporate Greed' For Baby Formula Shortage

During a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, lawmakers said a lack of action by the Food and Drug Administration and corporate greed played a large role in the serious and ongoing national shortage of baby formula. Politico notes the FDA refused to explain its slow responses.

CNBC: 'A Dereliction Of Duty:' U.S. Lawmakers Grill FDA Commissioner Over Baby Formula Shortage  U.S. lawmakers on Thursday grilled Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf about a nationwide baby formula shortage that’s left parents across America scrambling to feed their children, calling the agency’s response a “dereliction of duty.” “The shortage was caused in large part by the lack of action by the FDA and by corporate greed and consolidation,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.  (Constantino, 5/19)

Politico: FDA Refuses To Tell Congress Why Infant Formula Response Took Months  FDA Commissioner Robert Califf refused to answer questions from lawmakers Thursday about why it took the agency months to respond to reports of infant illnesses and a whistleblower complaint regarding the infant formula plant at the heart of the current formula shortage. “We have an ongoing investigation about the details of exactly what happened, from point A to point B along the way, and since it is ongoing, I can’t give extensively more details on that part of it,” Califf said during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. (Evich and Lee, 5/19)

NBC News: Chart: Baby Formula Supply Has Been Dwindling For Months The nationwide baby formula shortage that has sent parents scrambling for supplies has been building in earnest for more than two months, new data shows. Retailers that sell baby formula have been losing out on sales due to supply constraints since the first week of March, according to NielsenIQ’s on-shelf availability barometer, a metric that shows how a product’s revenue compared to retailer expectations. (Chiwaya and Wu, 5/19)

And the Senate approves a formula funding bill —

AP: Senate OKs Overhaul Of Baby Formula Rules In Aid Program  The Senate approved a bill Thursday aimed at easing the baby formula shortage for families participating in a government assistance program that accounts for about half of all formula purchased in the United States. The House passed the bill the day before, so it now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. Participants in a program known as WIC get vouchers that are redeemed for specific foods to supplement their diets. The vouchers usually can only be used to purchase one brand of infant formula, which encourages the manufacturer to offer big discounts to secure a state’s business. (Freking, 5/19)

The first flights for 'Operation Fly Formula' will happen soon —

Axios: 'Operation Fly Formula' To Import First Batch Of Baby Formula Amid Shortage The Department of Defense will be using its contracts with commercial air cargo to transport Nestlé S.A. formula from Switzerland to Indiana and to help speed up the import of infant formula amid a nationwide shortage, the White House said Thursday. The effort, dubbed Operation Fly Formula, is the latest in a series of steps taken by the Biden administration to address a shortage that is causing panic among millions of parents and caregivers in the U.S. (Martinez, 5/19)

More news on the formula shortage —

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Some Children Hospitalized In Georgia Due To Baby Formula Shortage A few Georgia children with complex medical issues were recently hospitalized at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta because their families could not find the specific baby formula needed during a crippling nationwide shortage. A spokesperson for Children’s said Thursday all the children hospitalized had specific dietary needs and any changes to their formula needed to be carefully monitored to make they could be well tolerated. It can be a long, complicated process to find a substitution that meets the children’s nutritional needs, and then make sure the new formula won’t trigger any negative and potentially dangerous reactions, such as dehydration or diarrhea. The hospital declined to provide a specific number of children hospitalized, but said some were hospitalized back in February when a formula plant was closed, and others were hospitalized more recently as the formula shortage has worsened. (Oliviero, 5/19)

Dallas Morning News: Experts Say Older Babies Can Have Cow’s Milk ‘In A Pinch’ During Formula Crisis The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) updated their recommendations this week on cow’s milk for babies ages 6 months and older due to the ongoing nationwide baby formula shortage. “If your child is older than 6 months of age and is usually on regular formula (not a specialty product for allergies or other special health needs), this may be an option,” the recommendations state. “In a pinch, you could feed them whole cow’s milk for a brief period of time until the shortage is better. This is not ideal and should not become routine.” The AAP states that this is a better option than diluting formula or making homemade formula in an emergency, adding that parents should follow the limits of no more than 24 ounces of cow’s milk a day for children over a year of age. (Booke, 5/19)

The Atlantic: Rich Parents Are Tapping Into A Baby-Formula Black Market Access to what is the primary form of nutrition for many babies has long been unequal. The parents of about 1.5 million infants have to wade through the aggravating bureaucracy of the welfare state simply to get a necessity. In contrast, a sizable number of parents evade the law to import European formula in order to access ingredients and nutrition standards that differ from what the FDA allows. American formula already is quite expensive, but smuggling in the European stuff is on another price tier altogether, running about four times more than the cheapest U.S. formula, and that’s before factoring in shipping costs. But now, as more wealthy parents opt for European-made formula in light of the crisis at home, the inequality is compounding. While some parents struggle to get formula at all, others are bypassing the American market to get what they view as superior formula delivered straight to their doorstep. (Szalinski, 5/19)

The 19th: Baby Formula Shortage Leaves Families In Rural Communities With Few Places To Turn On Monday afternoon, a friend who works at the local Walmart sent Breanna Dietrich the message she had been waiting three months to receive: The store was about to restock the exact baby formula she needed. Come quick, the friend told Dietrich. She wasn’t allowed to hold it for her. The stay-at-home mother of five threw together a diaper bag and grabbed her 10-month-old daughter. Her other four kids, who were walking home from school when she got the text, jumped in the van with her for the 15-minute drive to the store — one of only two where parents can get formula in Wheeling, a West Virginia town near the Ohio border. She was about a week and a half out from running out of formula entirely. (Carrazana, 5/19)

CBS News: Restaurant Owner Taps Baby Formula Stash — Gives It Away For Free  A Texas restaurant owner and father of three has come to the rescue of hundreds of parents struggling to find infant formula amid a national shortage of the product. Determined to make a difference, Benji Arslanovski, owner of "Our Place" in Mansfield, Texas, recently reached out to US Foods, his restaurant's supplier, which also provides formula to hospitals and health care providers.  ... Last week Arslanovski located 56 cases of Gerber baby formula in stock at US Foods. After checking with the company to ensure other retailers and health care centers weren't asking for the supply, he bought it all and started giving it away to parents in need. (Cerullo, 5/19)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Waking Up To Baby Formula Shortage  The federal government finally addressed the infant formula shortage, as a growing number of families found themselves without anything to feed their babies. But it will likely take weeks for any effects of the federal action to be felt, while infants must be fed daily. (5/19)

FDA Won't Totally Ban Phthalates Used In Fast-Food Packaging

The Hill reports the decision on the use of phthalates rebuffs advice of some scientists and environmental groups who say the chemicals, commonly used in fast-food packaging, are dangerous to health and can disrupt hormones. Meanwhile, a report covers how puberty is arriving earlier, baffling experts.

The Hill: FDA Sparks Anger With Decision On ‘Phthalates’ — A Chemical In Fast-Food Packaging The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Thursday that it will not impose a total ban on a set of dangerous chemicals commonly found in fast-food packaging, angering scientists and environmental groups who have long pressed for their removal. The decision came in response to three separate petitions requesting that the FDA limit the use of compounds called phthalates, which are known to disrupt hormone function and have been linked to birth defects, infertility, learning disabilities and neurological disorders. (Udasin, 5/19)

In related news about puberty —

The New York Times: Puberty Starts Earlier Than It Used To. No One Knows Why Marcia Herman-Giddens first realized something was changing in young girls in the late 1980s, while she was serving as the director for the child abuse team at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. During evaluations of girls who had been abused, Dr. Herman-Giddens noticed that many of them had started developing breasts at ages as young as 6 or 7.“ That did not seem right,” said Dr. Herman-Giddens, who is now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. She wondered whether girls with early breast development were more likely to be sexually abused, but she could not find any data keeping track of puberty onset in girls in the United States. So she decided to collect it herself. (Ghorayshi, 5/19)

In case you missed it —

The Hill: Colorado Legislature Passes Bill Banning ‘Forever Chemicals’ In Products  Coloradans would no longer be able to sell or distribute a long list of products that contain so-called forever chemicals under a bill approved by the state’s legislature this week. The bill, which would restrict some products as early as Jan. 1, 2024, passed both chambers with bipartisan support and is now headed to Gov. Jared Polis’s (D) desk. (Udasin, 5/12)

The Hill: Hormone-Disrupting ‘Forever Chemicals,’ Phthalates May Impair Bone Health In Teen Males: Study Exposure to two classes of endocrine-disrupting compounds — “forever chemicals” and phthalates — may be associated with poor bone health in male teens, a new study has found. Some of these disrupters, which interfere with the way the body’s hormones work, could be responsible for reducing bone mineral density in adolescent boys, according to the study in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. (Udasin, 5/3)

The Guardian: ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found In Nearly 60% Of Children’s ‘Waterproof’ Or ‘Stain-Resistant’ Textiles Nearly 60% of children’s textiles labeled “waterproof”, “stain-resistant”, or “environmentally friendly” that were tested as part of a new study contained toxic PFAS substances known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment. Among products checked were clothing, pillow protectors, bedding and furniture. (Perkins, 5/7)

Salon: "Forever Chemicals" In Non-Stick Pans Are In Your Body Right Now — And May Be Affecting Your Liver There are more than 4,700 types of chemicals in the world known as PFAS. Based solely on their tongue-twister of a name — the full spelling is "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances" — you might think that they are rare. Yet PFAS can be found absolutely everywhere: Your non-stick cookware, your fast food wrappers, your paper packages, your furniture and carpets and rugs. Teflon is perhaps the most famous of the PFAS chemicals, but if it was the only prevalent one out there, the chances are that we would not live in a world where 99 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood. (This is consistent with studies finding that other industrial chemicals, such as plastics, are also in our bodies.) (Rozsa, 5/8)

Media outlets report a possible case in New York, likely related to travel to Canada. Meanwhile in Montreal, 17 suspected cases were reported. Sweden, Italy, and Australia have also joined the list of nations with cases of the rare disease, which can be spread by close or intimate contact. The risk to the public remains low.

The New York Times: Officials Report A Possible Monkeypox Case In New York  Days after unusual clusters of the rare monkeypox virus emerged in Europe, New York City health authorities announced on Thursday that they were investigating a possible case of the rare disease. The authorities said little about the patient, who is currently in isolation at Bellevue Hospital, according to a statement from the city health department. The patient arrived to the hospital Thursday, according to one official. (Goldstein, 5/19)

CIDRAP: US Tracks Monkeypox Case Tied To Recent Canadian Travel But the current case and more than two dozen cases in Europe do not involve recent travel to endemic countries. Instead, community spread is suspected among men who have sex with men, suggesting close sexual and personal contact is behind the recent uptick in cases. "Many of these global reports of monkeypox cases are occurring within sexual networks. However, healthcare providers should be alert to any rash that has features typical of monkeypox," said Inger Damon, MD, PhD, a poxvirus expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a press release. "We're asking the public to contact their healthcare provider if they have a new rash and are concerned about monkeypox." (Soucheray, 5/19)

Stat: 17 Suspected Monkeypox Cases Are Reported In Montreal Health officials in Montreal on Thursday said they were investigating 17 suspected cases of monkeypox in the area, likely adding Canada to the list of countries in the Americas and Europe that are reporting recent infections. Most of the cases were in men in their 30s to 50s. The Montreal officials also said they had found links between some of their suspected cases and the first infection found in the United States, a Massachusetts man who had recently traveled to Canada by car. Separately, New York City health officials said later Thursday they were investigating a possible monkeypox case. No details were provided about the patient. (Joseph, 5/19)

The Straits Times: Sweden Confirms First Monkeypox Case, France Has Suspected Infection Sweden has reported its first monkeypox case, after the UK, Spain, Portugal, the United States and Canada reported infections. A first suspected case of the virus on French territory has been detected in the Paris/Ile-de-France region as well, the French Health Ministry said on Thursday (May 19), amid signs of the virus spreading around the world. (5/20)

Reuters: Italy Reports First Case Of Monkeypox Infection, Two More Suspected Italy has diagnosed its first case of the monkeypox infection at the Spallanzani hospital in Rome, the hospital said on Thursday, adding that the person, who arrived from a stay on the Canary Islands, was being kept in isolation. (5/19)

Reuters: Australia Reports First Monkeypox Case In Traveller From Britain Australia on Friday reported its first monkeypox case in a traveler who recently returned from Britain, while a probable case of infection was identified with testing being carried out to confirm it. A man in his 30s who arrived in Melbourne on Monday has the virus, Victoria state's health department said, while the probable case was identified in Sydney in a man in his 40s who had recently travelled to Europe. (5/20)

The Boston Globe: Monkeypox Is Not Highly Contagious, Scientists Say. So Why Is It Suddenly In Nine Countries? More than 100 confirmed and suspected cases across nine countries have been reported as of late Thursday by HealthMap, a team of researchers, epidemiologists, and software developers at Boston Children’s Hospital that provides real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. The first case was confirmed in England on May 6. There are now nine cases in the United Kingdom, at least 29 in Portugal, and 17 in Canada, as well as cases in Spain, France, Sweden, Italy, and Belgium. The Boston case is the first to be identified in the United States. On Thursday, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said it was investigating a second suspected case. Also on Thursday, Montreal officials said they had found links between some of their suspected cases and the Massachusetts case, who reported traveling to Canada before falling ill. (Lazar, 5/19)

ABC News: Monkeypox Cases Detected In US, Europe, But Experts Caution Against Comparing It To COVID-19 Health experts stress the risk to the public remains low and most people don't need to be immediately fearful of contracting the illness."​​It is a virus in a very different class from COVID-19," Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News. "It predominantly lives in animal reservoirs so it sort of by accident gets to humans and it may cause sporadic illness or relatively small outbreaks." (Kekatos, 5/19)

NBC News: The Symptoms And Causes Of Monkeypox Infections, Which CDC Calls An 'Emerging Issue' Although monkeypox does not spread easily between people, the CDC is preparing for additional cases in the U.S., said Dr. Agam Rao, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology. "We are telling people this is an emerging issue," she said. "Some emerging issues end up becoming benign in the end. Other ones escalate. As an emerging issue, we’re asking people to keep it top of mind at the moment." (Bendix, 5/19)

Stat: A CDC Expert Answers Questions On Monkeypox Monkeypox, a disease that rarely shows up outside a belt of countries across Central and West Africa, has exploded into the news recently, with cases reported in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, the United States, Sweden, Italy, and likely Canada. At this point, the cases are mainly being detected by clinics that treat sexually transmitted diseases and are being seen in men who have sex with men. But the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have cautioned that to assume the virus is only circulating in a single subset of the population risks missing cases that may be occurring among other people. (Branswell, 5/19)

CDC Advises Covid Boosters For 5- To 11-Year-Olds

A key advisory panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has thrown its weight behind a third covid vaccine shot for children between 5 and 11. CDC director Rochelle Walensky approved the recommendation and also encouraged parents whose children have yet to get first shots to do so.

The Washington Post: CDC Advisors Recommend Booster Shot For Children Ages 5 To 11  CDC director Rochelle Walensky greenlit the recommendation Thursday evening, and she also encouraged parents of children in that age group who have not yet been vaccinated to get their first shot soon. “Vaccination with a primary series among this age group has lagged behind other age groups leaving them vulnerable to serious illness,” Walensky said. “With over 18 million doses administered in this age group, we know that these vaccines are safe, and we must continue to increase the number of children who are protected.” (Shepherd, 5/19)

The Wall Street Journal: CDC Recommends Covid-19 Boosters For 5- To 11-Year-Olds  Also Thursday, the CDC said it was strengthening its recommendation that people 12 years and older who are immunocompromised, or who are 50 and older, should receive a second booster dose at least four months after their first. Pfizer expects there will be plenty of doses available for boosting the children. Many families may choose not to get the shots, however. Less than a third of children in the age group have been fully vaccinated. (Whyte and Hopkins, 5/19)

In related news about the CDC —

Bloomberg: Insiders Bemoan Culture, Data Gaps That Limit CDC In Crises  An internal review by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has uncovered deep concerns among current and former employees and other federal health officials about its urgency, responsiveness and culture, according to interviews with more than half a dozen people involved in the process. Findings from the review announced last month, some of which could be released in coming weeks, may give CDC Director Rochelle Walensky momentum to usher in change at an agency that’s been criticized by members of Congress, prominent health experts and local public officials for not having the tools and culture needed to respond effectively to a pandemic that’s resulted in one million deaths. (Armstrong and Griffin, 5/18)

In other updates on the spread of covid —

Axios: America's COVID Apathy Stress Test America's in the midst of yet another coronavirus surge, setting up a high-stakes test of whether the country really is ready to live with the virus. A third of Americans say the pandemic is over, and the spike in cases hasn't prompted much noticeable policy or behavioral change. But vaccines and therapeutics are now widely available, making the virus much less dangerous — at least for people who have access to and choose to use them. (Owens, 5/19)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: In Georgia, More Of The Vaccinated And Boosted Landing In Hospital With COVID-19 As summer once again brings signs of a coming COVID-19 wave, an unusual trend has emerged: The Georgians who are fully vaccinated and boosted are increasingly winding up in the hospital with serious COVID-19 symptoms. The phenomenon points to two changes in the unpredictable pandemic battleground more than two years in. The circulating omicron variant has become better at evading the vaccine, which was designed on the first version of coronavirus to appear in China. And the people most likely to get boosted are those who were most vulnerable to begin with: the elderly, or patients with pre-existing conditions. Despite the extra vaccine protection, those people remain the most vulnerable. Even in light of the unexpected hospitalizations of those vaccinated and boosted, doctors say it’s still true that boosted groups are the least likely to die. (Hart and Hansen, 5/19)

The Boston Globe: With COVID-19 Cases On The Rise, Boston Health Officials Urge Residents To Take Precautions “We have noted a significant increase in both COVID-19 cases and in hospitalizations,” Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said in a statement. “We need to decrease onward transmission to others. Please test prior to gatherings, wear a well-fitted mask in indoor settings, including public transportation and get boosted if you have not been already. ”The state’s largest city has seen a weekslong rise in cases and hospitalizations, the statement from the commission said. The city is now averaging 61 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents per day and community test positivity is now at 11.5 percent. (Finucane, 5/19)

Salt Lake Tribune: Another COVID-19 Surge? Utah Cases, Positivity Rates And Deaths Are All Up, State Reports There was little but bad news in the Utah Department of Health’s weekly COVID-19 report on Thursday: More cases, a high positivity rate and more deaths than the week before. “We’re in a surge phase again,” Dr. Brandon Webb, chair of Intermountain Healthcare’s COVID-19 therapeutics team, said in a news conference Thursday afternoon. There were 4,504 new coronavirus cases and four more deaths in Utah in the past seven days, the health department reported. The number of new cases this week was more than a thousand more than the 3,385 reported last Thursday. The state’s seven-day average of new cases rose from 486.3 to about 645. (Pierce and Miller, 5/19)

KHN: High-Tech’s Business Model Hasn’t Worked For The Cue Covid Test “I’ve got this,” coos Gal Gadot in Cue Health’s Super Bowl TV commercial. Cue hired the “Wonder Woman” actress to be the voice of the company’s new high-tech covid-19 testing device. The ad pushes the notion that the at-home covid test produces results equal in accuracy to a lab-based PCR test and surpasses it in convenience. What it doesn’t mention is the price: $249 for the reusable device and $195 for a pack of three tests. (Taub, 5/20)

Court: Patient Doesn't Have To Pay Gigantic Surprise Bill

The Colorado Supreme Court ruling said internal hospital chargemaster rates “have become increasingly arbitrary and, over time, have lost any direct connection to hospitals’ actual costs, reflecting, instead, inflated rates set to produce a targeted amount of profit for the hospitals."

Newsweek: Woman Charged $303,709 For $1,337 Surgery Wins Court Battle Against Bill A woman who was billed $303,709 for surgery that she was expecting to pay $1,337 for back in 2014 has taken a significant step towards having that debt wiped after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor. According to the Denver Post, St. Anthony North Health Campus hospital had represented to French that a pair of back surgeries she needed would cost her $1,337 out of pocket, with her health insurer picking up the remainder of the bill. (Beresford, 5/19)

The Washington Post: Lisa French, Billed More Than $300,000 By Colorado Hospital For Back Surgery, Wins State Supreme Court Case As part of the forms she filled out at the nonprofit hospital in Westminster, Colo., operated by Centura Health, [Lisa] French unknowingly had signed up to pay all charges related to the hospital’s then-secretive “chargemaster” price rates — a master list of prices that determined the sticker prices for everything the hospital did. Years after French argued she was never informed of the chargemaster and engaged in a years-long legal battle with the hospital, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor this week, saying she is not liable to pay the rest of the massive bill because she did not agree to the hospital’s secret pricing schema. (Bella, 5/19)

AP: Court Tosses $300,000 Hospital Bill For Promised $1,300 Tab Justice Richard Gabriel, writing for the court, further asserted that internal hospital chargemaster rates “have become increasingly arbitrary and, over time, have lost any direct connection to hospitals’ actual costs, reflecting, instead, inflated rates set to produce a targeted amount of profit for the hospitals after factoring in discounts negotiated with private and governmental insurers.” The drawn-out case first went to a civil trial, which found French owed Centura Health only an extra $767. An appeals court later ruled for Centura, finding that hospitals can’t predict exact care costs in advance and that the term “all the charges” included in the contract obligated French to pay to full amount charged her. (5/19)

Colorado Sun: Colorado Hospitals Near Top For Prices For Privately Insured: Study Colorado hospitals in 2020 on average charged privately insured patients nearly three times what Medicare paid for the same services, according to a new report released this week. The report, from researchers at Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think tank, ranked Colorado 12th in the nation for the gap between Medicare and the privately insured. Nationwide, hospitals charged privately insured patients an average of 224% of what Medicare pays for the same services. (Ingold, 5/19)

AMA-Led Program Will Try To Boost Equity, Quality In Health Care

The new mentorship initiative, Advancing Equity through Quality and Safety Peer Network, is designed to boost health outcomes for marginalized patients and tackle racism. Other news includes worries over hospital inspection results in Detroit and a reinsurance program in Virginia.

Modern Healthcare: AMA-Led Collaboration Launches Care Equity And Quality Mentorship Program The American Medical Association, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Joint Commission are joining forces on a pilot program to help health systems integrate equity into care delivery, the groups said Thursday. The year-long mentorship and networking initiative, called Advancing Equity through Quality and Safety Peer Network, is meant to improve health outcomes for marginalized patient populations and work toward racial justice for staff and surrounding communities. Experts will work with health systems to remove social and structural barriers to patient-centered care. (Devereaux, 5/19)

More industry news from Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Tennessee —

Crain's Detroit Business: Inspection Results Endanger DMC's Medicare, Medicaid Eligibility Detroit Medical Center's Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center are in danger of losing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement after regulators determined its nurses did not provide adequate care. A May inspection by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs found that the hospital was not in compliance with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rules around nursing after a 52-year-old patient developed bedsores during an emergency room visit in January. The Detroit News first reported the situation. Representatives from DMC did not immediately respond to queries on the matter. (Walsh, 5/19)

Modern Healthcare: Virginia's Reinsurance Program Earns Federal Approval Virginia is the latest state to earn approval for a reinsurance program, which will reimburse certain insurers for high-cost claims. With the decision on Virginia by federal regulators Wednesday, 16 states have been approved for reinsurance programs. Virginia expects the program to decrease premiums by an average of 15.6% across the state in 2023. Individual market enrollment is projected to be 2.9% higher next year as well. (Goldman, 5/19)

The Washington Post: Audit: Maryland Medical Examiner Backlog Resolved  The backlog of cases in the understaffed Maryland medical examiner’s office has been resolved, according to a state audit released last week. The office had amassed a backlog of 217 autopsies as of February, because of staffing shortages, which forced state officials to seek help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Within a month, the backlog was resolved, auditors found. (Portnoy, 5/19)

Houston Chronicle: Tilman Fertitta Donating $50 Million To UH Medical School, Which Will Be Renamed After Him Billionaire businessman Tilman Fertitta said he has always been a strong believer in the University of Houston medical school’s mission to improve health care equity in Texas. Now he’s donating $50 million to help make that vision a reality. Fertitta and his family on Thursday announced what UH leaders say is a “transformational” donation for the fledgling medical school, which welcomed its first group of students just two years ago. In recognition, the school has been named the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, as it prepares to open a state-of-the-art, $80 million building this summer. (MacDonald, 5/19)

AP: Vanderbilt University To Offer Master Of Nursing Degree Vanderbilt University School of Nursing is accepting applications for a new master of nursing program to launch in January. The new degree was announced by the school on Thursday. (5/20)

AP: 20 Years After Spate Of Hospital Deaths, Ex-Worker Accused In the five months that Jennifer Anne Hall was a respiratory therapist at Hedrick Medical Center, the rural Missouri hospital experienced 18 “code blue” incidents — an alarming increase in sudden cardiac arrest events for a hospital that historically averaged one of them a year, according to a police investigator. Nine of those patients died, and nine recovered. Twenty years later, Hall was charged this month with first-degree murder in one of the deaths — that of 75-year-old Fern Franco. (Salter, 5/19)

KHN: Watch: Going Beyond The Script Of ‘The G Word’ And How Government Responds To Disease (Or Not)  KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal joined comedian Adam Conover to discuss his new Netflix series, “The G Word With Adam Conover,” created in partnership with Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. In the hybrid docu-comedy series, Conover pulls back the curtain on the surprising ways the federal government affects our everyday lives, from the mundane to the life-changing. In a roughly 25-minute conversation, Rosenthal and Conover take a deep dive into Episode 5, “Disease,” which examines the government’s approach to illness and other health threats. (5/20)

Cancer Rates Among Black People Drop, But Gap Remains

In 2019, the highest cancer death rates were in Black men — 294 deaths per 100,000 — almost double the lowest rate in Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The rate for white men was 249 deaths per 100,000. For Hispanic men, it was 177 deaths per 100,000 and 255 deaths per 100,000 among Native American men.

AP: Cancer Deaths In Black People Drop; Still Higher Than Others  Cancer death rates have steadily declined among Black people but remain higher than in other racial and ethnic groups, a U.S. government study released Thursday shows. Cancer deaths have been dropping for all Americans for the past two decades because of lower smoking rates and advances in early detection and treatment. The rates among Black people fell 2% each year from 1999 to 2019, from 359 cancer deaths per 100,000 to 239 deaths per 100,000, according to the report published online in JAMA Oncology. (Tanner, 5/19)

USA Today: Black Cancer Death Rates Are Falling But Remain Higher Than Others Epidemiologist and lead author Wayne Lawrence and his colleagues studied national death certificate data for Black people 20 and older between 1999 and 2019. The cancer death rate for Black Americans decreased about 2% a year. The decrease was larger among men – 2.6% – than among women, who saw a 1.5% decrease. The greatest decreases were found in deaths from lung cancer among men and stomach cancer among women. Among both, lung cancer deaths saw the largest decline per 100,000 people, which experts attribute to a decrease in smoking – from 24% in 1999 to roughly 15% in 2019. (Hassanein, 5/19)

On Black maternal mortality rates —

Iowa Public Radio: Black Iowans Face A Startlingly High Maternal Mortality Rate, And It's A Systemic Problem  Sofia DeMartino almost died due to complications from childbirth. Twice. DeMartino was a 15-year-old living in Iowa City when she had her first child. The day she had her son, she’d gone to school to turn in her entry for an essay contest (which she won). She went into labor during her first period class, then went to the hospital. “I had a really hard time with people taking me seriously, with people listening to me, with people understanding some of the challenges that I was going through.” At the hospital, she was given Oxytocin, a hormone that is used to induce labor. “And my son actually ended up arriving into the world so fast that I burst two blood vessels, and I had two hematomas, one the size of a grapefruit and one the size of an apple.” (Troutman, Nebbe and Alvarez, 5/19)

Politico: Why Louisiana’s Maternal Mortality Rates Are So High   Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate — one of the worst in the nation — does not tell the whole story of maternal health in the state because of its large Black population and the uncommonly broad definition Louisiana uses. “About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said in an interview with POLITICO for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health series Public Health on the Brink. “Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.” (Owermohle, 5/19)

Nevada Reveals Which 19 Health Facilities Had Superbug Candida Outbreaks

In revealing which hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities reported Candida auris fungus this year, the state's health department did not say which was still suffering an outbreak. Also: a violent murder in an Indianapolis nursing home, a health worker mental health program in Ohio, and more.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Nevada Hospitals With ‘Superbug’ Outbreaks Identified The state health department late Thursday identified the 19 hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities in Southern Nevada that have reported cases this year of a drug-resistant “superbug” that can result in serious illness and even death. The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services did not specify which facilities had ongoing outbreaks of the Candida auris fungus, saying the state and federal investigators were still making this determination, nor did it specify how many cases had been identified at each facility. (Hynes, 5/19)

In other health news from across the U.S. —

Indianapolis Star: Threats Of Sexual Assault, Violence Preceded Indy Nursing Home Murder The man accused of raping and smothering an Indianapolis nursing home resident threatened at least two other women with sexual assault or violence in the days before the murder, according to a state health inspection report. The report reveals new details about how staff and administrators at Homestead Healthcare Center failed to protect its vulnerable residents, including 80-year-old Patricia Newnum who was killed at the facility in February. Homestead resident, Dwayne Freeman, 60, is charged with her murder and rape. Police say a nursing assistant found Freeman on top of Newnum in her bed with a pillow over her face and a bottle of liquor nearby. (Cook, 5/20)

Columbus Dispatch: New Service Connects Medical Professionals To Mental Health Resources The Ohio State Medical Association has announced it is launching a free, anonymous service to help health care workers statewide screen for mental and emotional health issues. Brian Santin, a vascular surgeon and the association's president, said Wednesday that the emotional toll laid on health care professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a heavy strain on the profession. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Santin said the medical association's new Well-Being CARE Service aims to help health care professionals normalize the conversation about mental and emotional health issues, empowering them to take action to get the support they need. (Behrens, 5/19)

WLRN 91.3 FM: DeSantis Signs Bill On Student Mental Health And Approves $100 Million For Cancer Research  Gov. Ron DeSantis signed several bills into law this week, including a measure that will require school districts to inform parents of additional mental-health resources if students are receiving services. DeSantis also announced that he will approve $100 million in the upcoming year’s state budget for cancer research, $37 million more than in the current year. DeSantis has not formally received the proposed $112.1 billion budget from the Legislature for the fiscal year that will start July 1. But in election year appearances across the state, he has dribbled out news on about $2 billion worth of projects and programs that he will approve. (5/19)

CNBC: Atlantic City Smoking Ban Fight: Worker Health Vs Profits Legislation pending in New Jersey’s statehouse would end the exemption Atlantic City casinos have long enjoyed from a statewide ban on indoor smoking in public places. About 2,500 casino workers have united to push for the ban. And the state’s governor supports it, as well. “If a bill came to my desk, I would sign it,” Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in December. The casino industry is fighting the effort, saying it’s worried about a ban’s potential impact on jobs and profits. (Brewer and Golden, 5/19)

Bangor Daily News: Rising Costs Have Old Town-Area Communities Considering A Regional Ambulance Service A spike in the cost of ambulance services for about a half dozen communities around Old Town has them starting to discuss whether to create a regional ambulance service to minimize future cost hikes. The town of Bradley, for example, is bracing for a more than 100 percent increase in what it pays to Old Town for ambulance services for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The town of nearly 1,500 residents will have to pay $88,125 in the coming year, up from $40,207 this year. The cost increase is the result of Old Town having to add staff for another shift and its inability to recoup enough costs from patients’ insurers and past debts from those they’ve taken to the hospital. (Loftus, 5/19)

New Hampshire Bulletin: Program Could Help Low-Income N.H. Residents Shop At Farmers Markets  A food assistance program to help low-income mothers and children access fresh food at farmers markets is one step closer to becoming law after a panel of lawmakers from the House and Senate agreed to fund it Tuesday. The provision was added into House Bill 1099 by Sen. Becky Whitley, a Hopkinton Democrat, who had originally introduced the legislation. Whitley’s original version, Senate Bill 403, would have provided $300,000 to the program, but lawmakers Tuesday agreed to spend only $30,000. SB 403 passed the Senate but languished in the House. (Gokee, 5/19)

KHN: Bison Pastrami, Anyone? Preschool Assistant Makes Sure Kids Get To Know Indigenous Foods Bison pastrami is not typical school lunch fare, but it’s a crowd favorite at a preschool in Minneapolis. Fawn Youngbear-Tibbetts — the seemingly always on-the-go coordinator of Indigenous foods at the Wicoie Nandagikendan Early Childhood Urban Immersion Project — is frequently found tweaking recipes in the kitchen or offering homemade goodies like flourless black-bean brownies. (Gans and Huggins, 5/20)

In news about LGBTQ+ health —

Houston Chronicle: Texas CPS To Resume Child Abuse Investigations Of Medical Care For Trans Kids After the Texas Supreme Court last week gave the state's child welfare services agency clearance to continue investigations into parents of transgender children who seek gender-affirming care, it appears the agency is moving forward with the probes. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees Child Protective Services, said in a statement Thursday that it “treats all reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation seriously and will continue to investigate each to the full extent of the law.” (Goldenstein, 5/19)

Dallas Morning News: Doctor At Heart Of Fight Over Trans Youth Care Says She Is Racing Against Time In the first 24 hours after a court order allowed Dr. Ximena Lopez to temporarily resume gender-affirming medical care at Children’s Medical Center Dallas, her office received 50 phone calls from new patients scrambling to get an appointment. Lopez said the resumption, although it may be brief, has helped her feel optimistic for the first time in months. In her first interview since the dismantling of Genecis, the program for transgender youth jointly operated by Children’s and UT Southwestern until November, Lopez said she’s noticed a positive shift in her team and the families she sees. “We have hope. Maybe the tide is turning. Maybe we can preserve this care,” Lopez, who once headed up Genecis as its lead endocrinologist, told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday. (Wolf and McGaughy, 5/19)

Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

Each week, KHN finds longer stories for you to enjoy. This week's selections include stories on covid, kidney disease, antipsychotics, "poppers," the war in Ukraine, and more.

The Washington Post: One Million Covid Deaths: Visualizing 114 Lives, Cut Short.  One million Americans have died of covid-19, an incomprehensible weight. So we’re remembering one person for each week of the pandemic: what brought them joy and what they wanted to do next. And how that was cut short. Each of their stories stands for all who died the same week, those numbers marked by the exact point where the sentence cuts off. (5/18)

Politico: ‘Where Was The Strategy For Getting People Ready To Start Taking The Vaccine?’  Gus Perna is a national hero, and no one talks about it. The now-retired Army four-star general served as chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s massive public-private effort to develop, approve and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine in the record time of less than a year. (The prior record, for the mumps vaccine, was more than four years.) At a time when U.S. generals are mostly famous for losing wars, Perna helped lead a mission that has saved easily a million American lives. Can any other recent endeavor involving the U.S. military say that? (Gilsinan, 5/12)

The Washington Post: Why The Pandemic Has Made It So Hard And Exhausting To Make Decisions You want to sit down for an indoor dinner with friends. A couple of years ago, this was a simple enough activity that required minimal planning. That is not the case in today’s world. Many people face a stream of further considerations about benefits and risks. Will I enjoy the experience? What are the potential downsides? Am I comfortable with the restaurant’s pandemic-related policies? What’s the ventilation like? Is it very busy there at this time of day? Am I planning to see lots of people, or people with compromised immune systems, in the near future? This is exhausting. As scientists at the Learning & Decision-Making Lab at Rutgers University-Newark, we’ve noticed how many decision-making processes are affected by the pandemic. The accumulation of choices people are making throughout the day leads to what psychologists call decision fatigue — you can end up feeling overwhelmed and make bad decisions. (Tricomi and Ameden, 5/14)

Bloomberg: This Is How China Rounds Up Thousands Of People For Covid Quarantine Thousands of people in a village near the Chinese port city of Tianjin were ordered into government quarantine, with videos circulated on social media showing residents being marched through streets and onto buses as officials continue to deploy the country’s strict Covid Zero playbook on new outbreaks. Residents of Liuanzhuang village in northern Tianjin were ordered on Monday to pack their belongings and prepare to be transported into isolation centers, a voice can be heard saying over a loudspeaker in one of the videos, after dozens of Covid-19 cases were detected in their district. Footage shared on social media networks like Weibo and Twitter showed crowds of people, luggage in tow, walking toward or waiting in line for buses. (Lew, 5/18)

The New York Times: Targeting The Uneven Burden Of Kidney Disease On Black Americans  Kidney specialists have long known that Black Americans are disproportionately affected by kidney disease. While Black people make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they comprise 35 percent of Americans with kidney failure. Black patients tend to contract kidney disease at younger ages, and damage to their organs often progresses faster. ... But there is hope now that much of this suffering can be alleviated. As many as 10 companies are working on drugs to target the APOL1 variants. And Dr. Opeyemi Olabisi, a kidney specialist at Duke University, has a federal grant to test whether baricitinib, a drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis, can help kidney patients with the variants. Yet the promise of treatments comes with difficult questions. (Kolata, 5/17)

The New York Times: Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided To Live With Her Voices.  Caroline Mazel-Carlton began hearing voices when she was in day care. Mornings, by the time she was in middle school, a bowl of oatmeal awaited her for breakfast next to a white saucer of colorful pills. Her voices remained vibrant. They weren’t within her head; they spoke and screamed from outside her skull. They belonged to beings she could not see. The voice who had been with her longest warned of catastrophes coming for her family in Zionsville, a town north of Indianapolis, calamities tied in some unspecified way to TV images from the gulf war: fighter planes, flashes in the sky, explosions on the ground, luminous and all-consuming. A woman’s voice castigated her at school, telling her that her clothes smelled and that she had better keep her hand down, no matter that she knew the answers to the teacher’s questions. Another voice tracked her every move, its tone faintly mocking. “She’s getting out of bed now; oh, she’s walking down the hall now.” (Bergner, 5/17)

The Washington Post: What Is Topical Steroid Withdrawal?  A recent social media trend is raising awareness — and perhaps stoking fears — about a relatively rare and potentially debilitating condition known as topical steroid withdrawal (TSW). As of mid-March, there had been more than 168 million views of TikTok videos with the hashtag #topicalsteroidwithdrawal, which show dramatic footage of people — many of them young — with red, cracked, scaling skin on their faces, torsos and feet describing the challenges of dealing with this often painful condition. We spoke with a dermatologist and a family medicine practitioner for a better understanding of TSW and to put the condition into perspective. (Russell, 5/16)

The New York Times: Poppers, Once A Fixture At Gay Clubs, Now A ‘Party Girl’ Favorite  The party blogger and aspiring “It” girl known as Meg Superstar Princess was at Rash, a club with a tiny dance floor in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in March, when someone spilled a bottle of alkyl nitrites — better known as “poppers” — on the dance floor. “The whole place fumed up, it was amazing” said Meg, 24, whose real name is Meg Yates. “I feel like at any party I go to, eventually someone’s going to pull out the poppers.” ... For those unfamiliar with the inhalant, poppers were popularized by gay men during the 1970s for sex and partying. Sold in little brown bottles, the alkyl nitrite is inhaled by the user. It typically causes a head rush and can be a muscle relaxant. (O'Neill, 5/18)

The Washington Post: Recipe For Healthy Students: Add Garden And Cooking Class To School The seven young chefs, all between 10 and 12 years old, mesmerized the audience. They sliced and diced onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic. They sauteed spinach, boiled noodles and toasted tortillas. They worked with hot skillets and sharp knives, preparing tasty meals using their own recipes. They were finalists in the Future Chefs Challenge, a healthy cooking contest sponsored by SodexoMagic, a partnership between former National Basketball Association star Earvin “Magic” Johnson and the Sodexo food services company. The event was held last week at Kimball Elementary School in Southeast Washington — a nutrition education powerhouse that produced all of this year’s finalists from a field of 50 contestants citywide. (Milloy, 5/17)

CBS News: Chef José Andrés On Serving Meals In A War Zone In the sea of despair that is Ukraine, Chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen are a lifeline. They have been on the ground there for months, feeding thousands of Ukrainians whose lives have been upended by the war. Since Russia's invasion began in February, Andrés has traveled back and forth, spending more than 40 days in Ukraine. And for him, that's not all that unusual. For the past 12 years, Andrés has brought his not-for-profit kitchen to the front lines of catastrophe. They have served more than 60 million meals, from earthquake-ravaged Haiti to hurricane-battered Houston. (5/15)

The New York Times: In Ukraine, Gruesome Injuries And Not Enough Doctors To Treat Them Days after Russian forces invaded, Yaroslav Bohak, a young cardiovascular surgeon, was at home with his family in the relative safety of western Ukraine, when a colleague placed a desperate call from the east, pleading with him to come help. Many doctors had fled the fighting, his friend said, and conditions at the hospital resembled a bygone era of warfare, with the surgeons who remained amputating limbs, instead of trying to repair them, to save grievously wounded soldiers. “He called me and said he could no longer cut off the arms of young people,” Dr. Bohak said, as he stood in an operating room of a hospital in Kramatorsk. “When I came here, I had surgery on the first day.” (Schwirtz and Addario, 5/18)

More Longer Looks: Abortion and Reproductive Health

News outlets tackle the potential end of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide.

USA Today: Jane Roe's Daughter On Her Mom's Views On Abortion, Religion, Sex Throughout the last half century, no other controversial issue has touched, united and divided more families in the United States than abortion. But perhaps never as intimately as for McCorvey's eldest daughter, who grew up in the shadow of Jane Roe. Mills, the only child McCorvey would have a lifelong relationship with, described her mother as a tumultuous figure, first as an abortion rights activist and later a born-again Christian and anti-abortion crusader until her death in 2017. (Ruiz-Goiriena, 5/16)

Health News Florida: A Doctor Who Trained Before Roe V. Wade Recalls Treating Abortion Complications  Women who suffered from septic infections after risky attempts at abortions using sharp objects like knitting needles and coat hangers were common sights for doctors who learned medicine in the days before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case was decided in 1973, establishing the right to abortion in the United States. Sarasota OB-GYN Dr. Washington Hill remembers treating women who sought abortion through illegal or dangerous means in those days. He spoke with Health News Florida's Kerry Sheridan about learning medicine at that time, and what a new generation of doctors may need to expect if abortion is outlawed in some states. (Sheridan, 5/19)

Appleton Post-Crescent: In Pre-Roe Wisconsin, Death Certificates Hid Illegal Abortion Deaths Anna Boddy first met Edward Werner when she went to his Jackson Street apartment in Milwaukee. It was Jan. 29, 1931. She was seeking an abortion. Werner, who was performing between 50 and 60 abortions in Milwaukee per week, had already lost his license for performing an "illegal operation" on a woman in Oshkosh, according to newspaper clippings from 1931. Boddy came back to Werner days later, this time "feeling desperately ill," the article says, and "Werner is said to have told her to remain at his apartment that she might be under his constant observation." Boddy died the next morning. She was 23 years old. (Mueller, 5/19)

Stat: Vague ‘Medical Emergency’ Exceptions In Abortion Laws Leave Pregnant People In Danger, Doctors Say Kaitlyn was near the beginning of her second trimester last October when she boarded a plane from Texas to Kansas. On her return home a few days later, she was no longer pregnant, and the 34-year-old wanted to do little more than cry in her own bed. Being in public was a struggle, let alone standing in line and going through airport security. She had flown to Kansas for an abortion that was outlawed in her home state, though she and her doctor considered it medically appropriate. (Goldhill, 5/20)

CNN: 24 Hours In An America Where Roe V. Wade Barely Hangs On Dr. Sarah Traxler's "Sioux Falls day" starts early. On this day, as it has been twice a month for the last seven years, Traxler is the only abortion doctor in South Dakota. By 6:30 a.m., she's at the airport in Minneapolis, headed to Sioux Falls. And by the day's end, she'll return. She makes this trek because no doctor in the state is willing or able to perform the procedure. (Jones and Lah, 5/19)

The Washington Post: The Potential End Of Roe Won't Stop This Abortion Provider-In-Training My formal education from medical school about abortions was the basic information needed to pass the national board exams. Things like medications used, their side effects and up to what gestational age they are effective. We also were taught basic knowledge of the procedures — primarily first-trimester abortions. This was all theoretical. There was no hands-on training or education on advocacy. (Sturdivant Sani, 5/11)

The Washington Post: Glimpsing A Potential Post-Roe Future Through Texas Women's Stories Kathaleen Pittman, director of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., is relishing what feels like a moment of quiet, despite the drilling outside her office. On this Friday afternoon in mid-March, workers are replacing some of the abortion clinic’s phones, leaving hers briefly disconnected. Since Texas implemented a near-total ban on abortions last fall, the lines have been flooded with calls. “Our phones are literally worn out,” Pittman says. (Novack, 5/15)

CNN: 'Pushed To The Margins': Why Some Activists And Lawmakers Say Abortion Bans Are A Form Of White Supremacy The first time Kenya Martin got an abortion, she was a 19-year-old college student who felt she wasn't old enough or mature enough to raise a child. The second time, Martin was a 26-year-old single mom making $12 an hour as a bank teller, could barely afford childcare or health insurance and was in a custody battle with her daughter's father. Martin would later have four more abortions, each time knowing she did not want another child. Now Martin, who is Black, worries that other women, particularly women of color, won't have that choice if the Supreme Court affirms a leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — the landmark ruling that legalized abortion in 1973. (Ellis, 5/18)

FiveThirtyEight: Better Birth Control Hasn’t Made Abortion Obsolete  There’s a reason why vasectomies are touted as one of the most reliable forms of birth control: They have a failure rate of less than 1 percent, as opposed to something like condoms, which has a failure rate closer to 13 percent. But because a 1 percent chance isn’t zero, some vasectomies fail every year, just like every other form of birth control. As a result, thousands of Americans who took steps to avoid getting pregnant will seek an abortion anyway. (Koerth and Thomson-DeVeaux, 5/19)

Stateline: Some States Already Are Targeting Birth Control  Last year, conservative Republicans in the Missouri legislature took a run at blocking Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, a frequent and prominent target of anti-abortion activists and politicians. But in the fine print of their measure, those Republicans revealed that their ambition wasn’t only to target a familiar abortion foe. They were going after specific forms of birth control as well, notably, emergency contraceptives, often sold under the brand name Plan B, and intrauterine devices, known as IUDs. (Ollove, 5/19)

Vox: 5 Ways Abortion Bans Could Hurt Women In The Workforce Roe vs. Wade is all but certain to be overturned. ... That decision affects a woman’s likelihood to work at all, what type of job she takes, how much education she receives, how much money she makes, and even the hopes and dreams she has for herself. In turn, her career affects nearly all other aspects of her life, from her likelihood to live in poverty to her view of herself. (Molla, 5/19)

The Washington Post: Photos From The 1990s On Abortion Show How The Present Is Like The Past Protests by abortion rights and antiabortion activists alike have sprouted up, including last weekend’s countrywide abortion rights demonstrations. The protests are reminiscent of those decades ago, when the abortion conversation was in full swing. (Handler and Dickerman, 5/17)

The Washington Post: Abortion In The Founders’ Era: Violent, Chaotic And Unregulated Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. calls himself an originalist, someone who thinks the Constitution should be interpreted only by how it would have been understood by the Founders when they wrote it. So it’s no surprise that his draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is full of history. At least seven times, Alito cited Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who didn’t think marital rape was possible because wives were the property of their husbands, and who sentenced at least two women to die for witchcraft. Alito also cited a legal text from 1250 by Henry de Bracton that, in another section, says women are inferior to men, and that they sometimes give birth to literal monsters. (Brockell, 5/15)

The Conversation: What Ireland’s History With Abortion Might Teach Us About A Post-Roe America If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the U.S., the nation may find itself on a path similar to that trod by the Irish people from 1983 to 2018. ... Abortion was first prohibited in Ireland through what was called the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861. That law became part of Irish law when Ireland gained independence from the U.K. in 1922. In the early 1980s, some anti-abortion Catholic activists noticed the liberalization of abortion laws in other Western democracies and worried the same might happen in Ireland. (Ely, 5/18)

Viewpoints: US Mental Health System Is Failing Struggling Youth; Congress Must Act Now On Covid Funding

Opinion writers tackle covid, abortion, and mental health.

Stat: Hopelessness Around Youth Mental Health: A 'Nihilistic Contagion'  I have been a child psychiatrist for more than 20 years. I’ve worked in the city, in the suburbs, and in rural settings. I’ve seen patients in teaching hospitals and I’ve run a busy private practice. In all that time, I have never seen psychiatric suffering as pervasive and intractable as I have over the last 18 months. The lack of real change in our nation’s child and adolescent mental health infrastructure has fostered a pernicious and pervasive defeatism among patients and clinicians alike. (Steven C. Schlozman, 5/20)

The Washington Post: Congress Has Time For UFOs — But Not For Pandemic Funding  The pandemic has reached a gauzy twilight zone for many Americans. The available statistics, and conversations with friends and family, suggest that infections are everywhere. There are reports of breakouts and rebounds. Clearly a surge is underway, but not one of the same ferocity as omicron or delta. This is a good moment to appreciate the central lesson of this public health catastrophe: It will surprise, and surprise again. We must keep our eyes open for unexpected change. (5/19)

The Washington Post: How Covid Complacency And Ideology Killed 1 Million Americans When Johns Hopkins University announced that the United States had surpassed 1 million deaths from covid-19, I was recovering from my first (and hopefully last) bout of the disease. I had prepared as much as I could — shout-out to Pfizer — so the infection passed like a nasty flu. Earlier in the crisis, an immunocompromised man in his late 50s, as I am, might have ended up in the hospital, on a ventilator, a coin flip away from eternity. (Michael Gerson, 5/19)

Hudson Valley One: One Man’s Abortion, 1963  On the day of the abortion, we drove to the specified street corner in New Jersey at 8 a.m., where we were told we would be met by a driver in a station wagon, and to be sure to have the $1500. We arrived early, terrified to say the least, and were surprised to see three other young women also waiting. I was told Em, my girlfriend and the other three would return at 4 p.m., and not to panic or “do anything stupid.” At 4:10 p.m. the station wagon arrived and returned the other three women but not Em. No Em! The driver said there were some complications, but she’d be back here within the hour. By 5 p.m., I was nearly hysterical. Visions of her lying in a pool of blood, dying in some New Jersey back alley, flooded my brain. I was the most disturbed I’d ever been in my life. (Eric Glass, 5/19)

Different Takes: Study May Have Found Cause Of SIDS; How Concerned Should We Be About Monkeypox?

Editorial writers delve into these public health issues.

Bloomberg: SIDS Remains A Heartbreaking, Under-Investigated Mystery  A visceral memory from my first months as a parent is the sensation of waking in a panic. I’d slept too soundly; the baby monitor was too quiet. I’d rush to the crib to listen for my daughter’s soft breath and feel the gentle rise of her belly, then stumble back to bed. Those moments were brought on, of course, by anxiety over sudden infant death syndrome, which in 2019 caused nearly 1,250 deaths in the US. (Lisa Jarvis, 5/19)

Bloomberg: What Is Monkeypox, Why Is It Spreading And Should We Worry? While we no longer worry as much about the severity of Covid, there are questions about whether the pandemic has left us more exposed to other serious illnesses. Massachusetts officials reported a rare case of a virus related to smallpox, called monkeypox, on Wednesday. A small number of cases has also been reported in the UK, Canada, Spain and Portugal. Bloomberg Intelligence senior pharmaceutical analyst Sam Fazeli spoke to Therese Raphael about what we know so far. (Sam Fazeli, 5/19)

The Boston Globe: Can We Prevent Childhood Cancer?  On Sept. 24, 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack that required him to be hospitalized for months. This was the first time in US history when a health threat to a sitting president was publicly reported. It was also a pivotal turning point in medicine. President Eisenhower recruited Dr. Paul Dudley White from Massachusetts General Hospital to guide his care as he recovered, and White used the resulting publicity to advocate for the importance of preventive measures to avoid heart attacks. In the ensuing decades, cardiology shifted from a largely reactive discipline to one primarily focused on prevention. We think something similar can happen with childhood cancer. (Vijay G. Sankaran and Melissa A. Burns, 5/20)

USA Today: Doctors And Patients Are Being Hurt By A Broken System Social media and news sites are filled with headlines expressing discontent about the health care system, particularly a sense that doctors don't listen and don't care. Reading these articles hurts my heart because, as a physician, I know doctors do care deeply. But a broken health care system has turned us into assembly-line "providers" and data-entry clerks without time to show the empathy that we feel and that our patients need. (Dr. Rebekah Bernard, 5/20)

Stat: To Improve Safety, Hospitals Should Make 'Radical Transparency' Real  Covid-19 may be receding, but it’s leaving a quiet menace lurking in hospitals in its wake. In a Perspective essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, four senior physicians with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a “severe” post-Covid decline in patient safety. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology reached a similar conclusion, warning of a rise in “common, often-deadly” infections. To help reverse this troubling trend, the federal physician leaders called for “promoting radical transparency.” Though they didn’t detail what that should entail, our years working in safety and quality strongly suggest that “radical transparency” must be radically different from current efforts in both form and content in order to successfully catalyze genuine change. (Michael L. Millenson and J. Matthew Austin, 5/20)

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