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The number of private equity firms has exploded in health care in recent years, spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy physician practices, hospitals, laboratories and nursing homes. It’s a trend that should have everyone’s attention, from politicians to patients, because it can significantly increase costs, reduce access and even threaten patient safety. (Ashish K. Jha, 1/10)

The Ohio House voted to override DeWine’s veto on Wednesday. The bill, which is broader than DeWine’s executive order on issues related to minors, would prevent transgender youth from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It’s likely to become law later this month, though it will certainly face legal challenges. (Nia-Malika Henderson, 1/10)

I tried Botox for the first time two years ago. I was rapidly approaching my 40th birthday, and like so many other people, I spent the early Covid years staring at my increasingly pallid and wrinkled visage through daily video calls. That I succumbed to the expensive allure of cosmetic injectables as a result of this scrutiny was both banal and mildly embarrassing. (Jessica Grose, 1/10)

My daughter Katie was born with severe disabilities. She went on to develop profound autism, attention deficit disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The hardest part for her is knowing that she’s different but not understanding how or why. My career as a health care manager and now a researcher has been derailed and fragmented because I have a profoundly disabled daughter who has undergone so many treatments and required special schools. (Lynne Moronski, 1/11)

Every week in 2022, the equivalent of a high-school classroom’s worth of students — an average of 22 adolescents — died of drug overdoses in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Joseph Friedman, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Scott E. Hadland, M.D., M.P.H., 1/11)

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the use of affirmative action in university admissions threatens decades of progress in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic medicine. Although women accounted for the majority of medical school enrollees in 2022, they represented only 28% of full professors, 23% of department chairs, and 27% of deans that same year, and gender-based disparities in compensation persist at the highest levels of academic medicine. (Christina Mangurian, M.D., Nancy D. Spector, M.D., and Ruth S. Shim, M.D., M.P.H., 1/11)

In the spring of 2020, Jamal Clay, a gifted young man who grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, died by suicide. He was 19 years old. Jamal’s loved ones describe him as creative and talented, a leader in different youth-focused organizations in his community who supported and cared for those he loved. He was just as brilliant as he was kind. (Janelle Goodwill, 1/11)