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Vice President Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” required to serve as president, her doctor said in a letter released Saturday that summarizes her medical history and status. Dr. Joshua Simmons, an Army colonel and physician to the vice president, wrote that Harris, 59, maintains a healthy, active lifestyle and that her most recent physical last April was “unremarkable.” (Superville, 10/12)

More than 230 doctors, nurses and health care professionals, most of whom are backing Vice President Kamala Harris, are calling on former President Donald Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health "given his advancing age." "Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity," the 238 signatories wrote in a letter dated Oct. 13 and first obtained by CBS News. "In the limited opportunities we can examine his behavior, he's providing a deeply concerning snapshot." (Navarro, 10/14)

Donald Trump’s running mate has hit on a new strategy to defend the GOP’s oft-criticized health-care record: talk about his own family’s experience. “Members of my family actually got private health insurance, at least, for the first time … under Donald Trump’s leadership,” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said at this month’s vice-presidential debate, repeating a line he has used on the stump. ... Vance was referring to his mother, who purchased private health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace run by Ohio after she overcame substance-abuse challenges, became financially stable and subsequently made too much money to remain on Medicaid, a campaign spokesman told The Washington Post. (Diamond and Stanley-Becker, 10/12)

Vice President Kamala Harris, now on the presidential campaign trail, is making inroads with a key voting bloc: Black women, who are rallying behind her because of her work on issues such as preserving abortion access, curbing gun violence and reducing maternal deaths. (Armour and Beard, 10/14)

Both parties are ramping up their efforts to court Native American voters in the final stretch to Election Day. This demographic could swing the election results in several closely divided states like Arizona. Native Health, an urban Indian health center, has held several voter registration events across the Grand Canyon state in the run-up to the election. ... President Biden only won Arizona in 2020 by about 10,000 votes — less than a 1% margin — in a state where Native Americans make up 5% of the population. (Bustillo, 10/14)

Both Harris and Trump have called for sweeping changes to the costly, complicated and entrenched U.S. health-care system of doctors, insurers, drug manufacturers and middlemen, which costs the nation more than $4 trillion a year. Despite spending more on health care than any other wealthy country, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases and the highest maternal and infant death rates, according to the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group. (Son and Constantino, 10/14)

The disabled voting bloc is growing as the U.S. population ages, but voters and advocates say the hurdles that make people feel excluded from the electoral process aren’t being addressed. That ranges from inaccessible campaign materials to former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris seldomly mentioning how issues like COVID-19 impact the disability community, as well as Trump making a statement at a rally last month that advocacy groups considered discriminatory. (Hunter and Alexander, 10/14)