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Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) took issue with a new school lunch resolution offered by fellow Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) Tuesday. The resolution, initially introduced in July by a series of senators and placed on the calendar last week, disagrees with recent guidance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in relation to sex discrimination. “I can’t even believe that this resolution is even real. This makes it possible for some random lunch lady to deny lunch to a hungry child because she says her god tells her to. School lunch should be free, and certainly free of judgment,” Fetterman said in a statement. (Suter, 10/24)

On a hot, buggy morning in mid August, Derrick Hoffman poked around a densely packed row of bushy cherry tomato plants, looking for the ripest tomatoes. Hoffman and a handful of farm hands were looking for the ones already deepened to the just right shade of red. "Or light orange," Hoffman said. "Because once you put a red one with an orange one, they all turn red. "It's better if they don't all turn red too quickly, Hoffman said, because once these tomatoes leave his 100-acre farm on the outskirts of Greeley, Colo., they have to fit with the lunch service schedule at a local public school. (Solomon, 10/24)

It’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month and The Sheridan VA Medical Center is using that opportunity to highlight their extensive support programs for veterans. Through transitional work and supported employment programs, the Sheridan VA will give veterans the chance to dramatically improve their mental health and involve them within their communities. (Uplinger, 10/24)

In recent years, lawmakers in Raleigh have fretted about how to increase access to health care for North Carolina’s 3.5 million rural residents. They have traveled the state, holding hearings for residents and health care providers outside the urban and suburban regions. Providers from those areas have traveled to Raleigh, too, to testify at legislative hearings about staffing shortages and other critical issues plaguing their practices. (Baxley and Hoban, 10/25)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: California Expands Paid Sick Days And Boosts Health Worker Wages 

California continues to burnish its reputation as a progressive state for health policy as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills expanding paid sick leave, adding bereavement leave for miscarriages, and boosting wages for health workers. Newsom blessed a rare agreement between labor and the health industry to gradually phase in a nation-leading $25-an-hour statewide minimum wage for health workers. Estimates based on earlier versions of the bill found it would increase health care costs by billions of dollars each year and put pressure on the state’s Medicaid program to raise reimbursement rates for long-term care to maintain patients’ access to services. Other new laws aim to strengthen reproductive rights, as well as patient protections against errant doctors and pharmacists and surprise ambulance bills. (Thompson, 10/25)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Residents Of A Rural Arkansas County Grapple With Endemic Gun Violence 

On a recent September afternoon, Courtney Porter counted his losses: his mom from old age, his wife from diabetes complications, two of his brothers. While one died of an aneurysm, the shooting death last year of his younger brother, Patro, hit the hardest. “It tore me up, real bad,” said Porter, 50, from the Stop N Shop, a defunct gas station that is now a convenience shop. “I’ll never get over it.” (Rayasam, 10/25)