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Enrollment in Florida’s Medicaid program dropped by more than 105,000 people in August, continuing decreases after the end of a federal public health emergency stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment totaled 5,254,460 people in August, down from 5,360,069 in July, according to data posted on the state Agency for Health Care Administration website. (9/20)

San Francisco had one of its deadliest months for accidental overdoses in August since 2020, according to data released this week from the city's medical examiner. San Francisco is facing a grim reality, as it's on pace to have the deadliest year for accidental overdoses since January 2020, when the city began publicly reporting overdose deaths. (Dickey, 9/20)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: California Officials Seek ‘CARE’ Without Coercion As New Mental Health Courts Launch This Fall

The first time Heidi Sweeney began hallucinating, the voices in her head told her Orange County’s Huntington Beach was where she would be safe. There, behind the bikini-clad crowds playing volleyball and riding beach cruisers, she slept in homeless encampments, then beside a bush outside a liquor store, drinking vodka to drown out the din only she could hear. For years, she refused help, insisting to all who offered, “I’m not sick,” until police arrested her for petty theft and public drunkenness. A judge gave her an ultimatum: jail or treatment. She chose treatment. (Dembosky, 9/21)

Bay Area and Northern California residents woke up to air quality rated as “unhealthy for some” on Wednesday. Winds are bringing smoke from wildfires in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon to the Bay Area, according to the National Weather Service. Smoky air from the fires could linger across the Bay Area until Thursday, it said in a post on X. Wind directions are likely to shift late Thursday and Friday, it said, bringing relief from the smoke. (Carballo, 9/20)

Public health officials in Santa Clara County are casting doubt on a shocking story that gained national attention this week in which a San Jose woman claimed she had all four of her limbs amputated after eating grocery store fish. On Wednesday, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department said investigators had contacted the hospital and discovered the woman’s laboratory tests did not indicate a Vibrio bacterial infection. (Mishanec, 9/20)

Missourians who are arrested, deemed unfit to stand trial and ordered into mental health treatment are now detained in jail for an average of eight months before being transferred to a mental health facility. And that’s “some good news,” Nora Bock, director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Division of Behavioral Health, said during a monthly mental health commission meeting last week where she shared the new number. That’s because, Bock said, the mid-September wait time is down from July, when it stood at 11 months. (Bates, 9/20)

Colorado is in the midst of the worst season for West Nile virus in the country. As of Wednesday, when the state posted its most recent data, 435 people had been diagnosed with a West Nile infection, including 262 who had been hospitalized. That is more than double the number of infections reported from all of last year’s season — which itself was the worst per capita in the country. (Ingold, 9/21)

Like much of the country, adolescent mental health care needs are increasing in Minnesota. Todd Archbold, the CEO of PrairieCare, decided to expand his program to meet the demanding needs. (Crann, 9/20)

The government this month took the first step toward settling some of the nearly 100,000 claims by veterans and family members who say they were harmed by contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. (Magner, 9/20)

University Hospitals is closing a family medicine residency program, a move some local health experts say could affect sources of care for the urban poor and close a pipeline that produced leaders in Cleveland public health. (Washington, 9/21)

The University of Minnesota's School of Public Health is using curriculum that teaches that structural racism is a public health crisis and that physicians have an obligation to be antiracist. The University of Minnesota School of Public Health's Center For Antiracism Research For Health Equity [CAHRE], the Minnesota Department of Health, and an organization called Diversity Science collaborated on developing a curriculum to help medical professionals provide perinatal care for Black and Indigenous "birthing people." (Nelson, 9/20)

The number of babies born with syphilis in Mississippi has risen 10-fold over the last several years, according to a new report. Between 2016 and 2022, congenital syphilis cases rose from 10 to 110, marking a 1,000% increase, according to a report from the John D. Bower School of Population Health at University of Mississippi Medical Center. For the report, researchers looked at hospital discharge data from the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Mississippi Hospital Association. (Kekatos, 9/20)

A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling that found Mississippi relies too much on institutionalizing people with mental health conditions rather than providing care in their communities. The decision came Wednesday from three judges on the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They wrote that the federal government, which sued Mississippi, failed to prove that the state discriminated against people with mental health conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Wagster Pettus, 9/21)

The Seattle City Council on Tuesday adopted a controlled substance law after rejecting it earlier this summer, making the possession and public use of drugs such as fentanyl a gross misdemeanor. The council voted to approve the measure by a 6-3 vote on Tuesday, aligning the city’s code with a new state law. (9/20)

An Idaho man has contracted measles, and health officials are working to contact anyone who may have been exposed to the highly contagious disease. The man was unvaccinated, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said in a news release Wednesday afternoon, and he was exposed during international travel. He was hospitalized for a time but is now recovering at home. (Boone, 9/21)

The family of Irvo Otieno, a 28-year-old who died of asphyxia at a state mental hospital as sheriff’s deputies and orderlies piled on him, has reached a settlement with Virginia, Henrico County and the county sheriff’s office over his death. (Rizzo, 9/20)