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The Biden administration on Thursday launched an effort under its new science agency ARPA-H to help surgeons better remove cancerous tumors without damaging nerves, blood vessels and other healthy tissue. It's the first cancer program for the multi-billion-dollar Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and is paired with the "cancer moonshot" as part of President Biden's "unity agenda" aimed at cutting the cancer death rate in half over 25 years. (Bettelheim, 7/27)

President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday announced the first cancer-focused initiative under its advanced health research agency, aiming to help doctors more easily distinguish between cancerous cells and healthy tissue during surgery and improve outcomes for patients. The administration’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, is launching a Precision Surgical Interventions program, seeking ideas from the public and private sectors to explore how to dramatically improve cancer outcomes in the coming decades by developing better surgical interventions to treat the disease. (Miller, 7/27)

Although data shows mortality rates for childhood cancers continue to fall, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found diagnoses have been steadily rising since 2003. As the population of kids who beat cancer grows, health experts are calling for more emphasis on survivorship care.  (Rodriguez, 7/28)

Within every cancer are molecules that spur deadly, uncontrollable growth. What if scientists could hook those molecules to others that make cells self-destruct? Could the very drivers of a cancer’s survival instead activate the program for its destruction? That idea came as an epiphany to Dr. Gerald Crabtree, a developmental biologist at Stanford, some years ago during a walk through the redwoods near his home in the Santa Cruz mountains. (Kolata, 7/26)

Could just a few minutes of vigorous activity each day reduce your risk of certain cancers? New research is pointing to a potential connection. Published Thursday in the journal JAMA Oncology, the observational study found that doing four to five minutes a day of "vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity," or VILPA for short — such as one- to two-minute bursts of fast walking or stair climbing — is associated with a "substantially lower cancer risk" compared to those who did no such activity. (Moniuszko, 7/27)

Researchers in the U.K. are training artificial intelligence models to "read" mammogram images by mimicking the gaze of human radiologists, according to Hantao Liu, an associate professor at Cardiff University who is leading the initiative. The goal is for the AI solution to improve the accuracy and efficiency of scans, thus leading to earlier detection of breast cancer and more informed decision-making. (Rudy, 7/28)

President Biden on Thursday said Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) hold on military nominations — as well the Senate Republicans who have refused to stop it — is causing “a growing cascade of damage and disruption.” ... “A growing cascade of damage and disruption all because one senator from Alabama—and 48 Republicans who refuse to stand up to him — to lift a blockade over a Pentagon policy offering servicemen and women, their families access to reproductive health care rights they deserve if they’re stationed in states that deny it,” the president said. (Gangitano, 7/27)

In the weeks to come, the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-controlled House must reconcile their sharpest differences — deciding, for example, whether the final bill will include hard-right provisions to roll back Pentagon policies on abortion access and gender-affirming care — or risk failing to pass a National Defense Authorization Act for the first time in more than six decades. (Hauslohner, 7/27)

Democrats’ efforts to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief are floundering in the face of GOP opposition. A bid by Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to amend the defense policy bill that’s on the Senate floor this week to reauthorize PEPFAR for five years failed when Republican members objected. (Ollstein, 7/27)

Colorado provided more abortions last year than any year in almost four decades, nearing the peak set in the mid-1980s before more effective forms of birth control became widely available. The 22% increase in the number of abortions that occurred in Colorado from 2021 to 2022 was due to the surge in patients from other states where terminating a pregnancy was severely restricted. Colorado saw a 500% increase in patients from Texas, which in 2021 banned abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. Abortions sought by people from Colorado increased slightly less than 2%. (Ingold and Brown, 7/27)

Illinois crisis pregnancy centers, which often pop up near abortion facilities to offer information about alternatives, could face penalties if they disseminate misleading or untruthful information. The move is another Democratic effort to insulate the state’s virtually unfettered access to abortion, even as neighboring states restrict it. (O'Connor, 7/27)

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, doctors providing obstetrics and gynecological care felt the decision’s effects immediately — especially in Missouri, the nation’s first state to implement a near-total ban on abortion. “When abortion restrictions are present, it compromises maternal health, and it results in higher rates of maternal mortality — and we see significantly higher rates for people of color,” said Dr. David Eisenberg, an obstetrics and gynecology physician at Washington University. “I feel lucky that we are right here across the river from Illinois … where abortion care is protected as a part of routine health care.” Another consequence of Missouri’s abortion ban is that fewer doctors are coming to Missouri to complete their OB-GYN residencies, Eisenberg and his colleague, Dr. Jeannie Kelly, told St. Louis on the Air. (Woodbury, 7/27)

Connecticut mothers will soon have more choices as to where they have their baby delivered in the state. Gov. Ned Lamont has signed legislation allowing free-standing birth centers to operate in Connecticut, starting in 2024. These will serve as an alternative to traditional hospital maternity wards, which in some rural areas of the state are being closed down. (Scott-Smith, 7/27)

It’s not every day that a marketing team is tasked with designing the branding and packaging of the first over-the-counter birth control pill to be sold in the U.S. This was the challenge, and the opportunity, faced by the team behind Opill, the landmark pill from drugmaker Perrigo that received approval from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month. Their brief: Create a design that would stand out in America’s notoriously sprawling pharmacy aisles; inspire trust and confidence; be easy to remember and recognize; appeal to women — including teenagers — as well as trans men and nonbinary people; clearly communicate its purpose; be simple to carry and use; contain straightforward but accurate user information; and clear FDA requirements. (Merelli, 7/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: In Wisconsin, Women’s Health Care Is Constricted By An 1849 Law. These Doctors Are Aghast

The three women sitting around a table at a busy lunch spot share a grim camaraderie. It’s been more than a year since an 1849 law came back into force to criminalize abortion in Wisconsin. Now these two OB-GYNs and a certified midwife find their medical training, skill, and acumen constrained by state politics. “We didn’t even know germs caused disease back then,” said Kristin Lyerly, an obstetrician-gynecologist who lives in Green Bay. (Varney, 7/28)

As fertility rates drop and more women postpone childbirth into their 30s and 40s, more states are considering mandating that private insurers cover fertility treatments to help people start a family without the crushing out-of-pocket expenses. Such laws would help people such as Miraya and Andy Gran of Bloomington, Minnesota, who ended up spending $102,000 to have their now 2-year-old daughter, Isla, through in vitro fertilization after trying other expensive options. Miraya Gran has since become an advocate for state laws requiring insurance coverage for fertility treatments. (Henderson, 7/28)

A lesser-known fertility option is gaining traction: using donor embryos. As the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) has gone up, there's been an increase in the amount of unused embryos, and in embryo donor rates. "Embryo adoption" is the term a number of embryo donor services primarily in Christian circles use to describe transferring the extra frozen embryo cells of an IVF patient to an individual or couple. (Mallenbaum, 7/27)

At a House oversight hearing Thursday, the Biden administration’s top drug policy official emphasized the need to address both mental illness and drug addiction simultaneously to reduce fentanyl deaths. According to a 2021 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, over nine million adults in the U.S. have this co-occuring disorder. (Bajaj, 7/27)

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to address the staggering number of opioid overdoses nationwide, as two-thirds of drug overdose deaths last year were caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Tsirkin, 7/27)

Texans in Congress are pushing bipartisan legislation to increase access to fentanyl testing strips after a similar effort fizzled in the Texas Legislature earlier this year. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, led several senators from both parties in introducing the Fentanyl Safe Testing and Overdose Prevention Act on Thursday to clarify, in federal law, that fentanyl testing strips are not considered to be drug paraphernalia. (Choi, 7/27)

In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a decision to allow the sale of over-the-counter Narcan at pharmacies across the country. That decision will take effect later this month. The move comes as federal and state governments battle opioid overdose, an epidemic that took over 100,000 lives in 2021, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. (Uplinger, 7/26)

The state has revoked the licenses of a troubled northern Indiana addiction treatment center and two sister facilities, its parent company acknowledged Thursday. The Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction revoked the license for Praxis Landmark Recovery in Mishawaka and sister facilities in Bluffton and Carmel, the company said. (7/27)

When opioids first started killing Americans in very large numbers, it was disproportionately white people, often in rural areas, who were the victims. Cities and ethnic minorities generally suffered lightly. Yet a far worse wave of death is under way now, caused almost entirely by fentanyl, an incredibly powerful synthetic opioid that can be used legally as a painkiller, but is mostly produced by Mexican cartels and smuggled into America. (7/27)

Lawmakers leave town at the end of this week with a lengthy to-do list, several health programs expiring Sept. 30 and very few work days left. ... Looming expirations include laws to fund the government and community health centers, reauthorize emergency response and pandemic preparedness programs and renew substance use and mental health aid. The bills are also lawmakers’ best chances of attaching other related policy riders, but the partisan divide on some could further threaten the bills’ odds of passing. (Clason, Cohen, Hellmann and Raman, 7/27)

The first health-related spending bill to go through the House this year was pulled from the floor schedule on Thursday amid disputes over spending levels and a contentious abortion pill policy rider. Lawmakers are heading home for the August recess, meaning work on the Agriculture-FDA appropriations package will be put off until after they return in September. (Knight, 7/28)

Four neurologists interviewed by The Washington Post who reviewed footage of the incident said it could be explained by a range of reasons: dehydration exacerbated by heat, a near-fainting episode, or a partial seizure or stroke. One said it also could suggest an underlying neurological disorder that has not been publicly disclosed. The specialists stressed that they cannot offer firm conclusions or diagnoses without examining McConnell and reviewing his medical history. They said it was premature to question the longtime Senate GOP leader’s fitness to serve, although they said Wednesday’s episode merited medical attention. (Nirappil, Kane, Alfaro and Wang, 7/27)

The handling of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s abrupt medical issue this week is raising concerns among medical experts that the event sent a potentially dangerous public-health message — that when someone experiences an episode with symptoms like McConnell’s, they can simply return to work as though nothing had happened. (Merelli, 7/27)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been in frail health after a shingles diagnosis this year, appeared to get confused during a committee vote Thursday, adding to concerns about whether the 90-year-old lawmaker can perform her duties despite her physical decline. (Jeong, 7/28)

Republicans on Thursday sought to turn around transgender advocates’ arguments that gender-affirming care is a personal health care decision. The LGBTQ+ community has long pressed Democrats to frame their defense of transgender rights, and particularly gender-affirming care for minors, as a basic right for a person to pursue with their medical providers — and that conservative bans on access represent hypocrisy from traditionally small-government Republicans. (Owermohle, 7/27)

The Food and Drug Administration says it needs Congress to give it more power to regulate CBD. Two powerful congressional Republicans made clear Thursday that they aren’t willing to do that. (Florko, 7/27)

Mastercard has told U.S. banks to stop allowing marijuana purchases with its debit cards, highlighting the legal and financial gray area the industry exists within even as more states legalize the drug. Large banks and credit card companies have generally restricted cannabis purchases because marijuana is illegal under federal law, leaving few payment options for buyers in places where it is legal. Thirty-eight states, two territories and D.C. allow medical use for some conditions, and 23 states, two territories and the D.C. have legalized recreational use. (Vinall, 7/27)

A bipartisan group of senators aims to strengthen the pharmaceutical supply chain with a bill that focuses on boosting stockpiles through increased drug manufacturing in the U.S. and allied countries. The legislation, introduced Thursday and first shared with NBC News, was drafted in response to a report published in March that found more than 295 medications, including lifesaving treatments, are in short supply nationwide. (Tsirkin, 7/27)

More than two dozen prominent health policy experts are urging the Biden administration to ensure that patient data collected about a new Alzheimer’s treatment is accessible to the public, which they say is critical to understanding the risks and benefits of the medicine. (Silverman and Cohrs, 7/27)

US regulators are monitoring international probes into patient reports of suicidal thoughts that may be associated with a new class of drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly Co. used for diabetes treatment and weight loss. Earlier this month, the UK Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency received several reports of suspected adverse drug reactions associated with semaglutide — the active ingredient in Novo’s diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. The agency, known as MHRA, also received reports linked to liraglutide — the active ingredient in Saxenda. (Rutherford, 7/27)

The Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement Thursday with health information technology company Surescripts over a lawsuit accusing the company of using anticompetitive practices to illegally maintain a monopoly over two e-prescription drug markets. The settlement woud bar Surescripts from engaging in exclusionary conduct and enforcing non-compete agreements with its current and former employees. The FTC said the settlement would open up competition and benefit consumers. (Eastabrook, 7/27)

Conflicting rules governing patient data exchanges during prior authorization reviews need to be reconciled to avoid confusion and higher costs, a coalition of healthcare industry groups wrote the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday. The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, the health insurance association AHIP and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association urge CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure to clear up a mismatch between two proposed rules published in December that mandate different data exchange standards. (Tepper, 7/27)

Inpatient rehabilitation facilities and inpatient psychiatric facilities will see a bump in Medicare payments next fiscal year. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued two final rules Wednesday updating payment rates and quality reporting programs for the two provider types. The changes are effective for discharges beginning Oct. 1, 2023, and lasting through Sept. 30, 2024. (Berryman, 7/27)

To narrow the nation’s deeply entrenched health disparities, a permanent entity with regulatory powers should be created by the president to oversee health equity efforts across the entire federal government, says a report issued Thursday by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. (McFarling, 7/27)

The insurer released additional information on its website about its procedure-to-diagnosis, or PxDx, system after two members hit the company with a proposed class-action lawsuit in California federal court on Monday alleging they had been wrongly denied coverage. The lawsuit, filed by Suzanne Kisting-Leung and Ayesha Smiley, came in response to a March report from the ProPublica news outlet that said Cigna’s medical staff rely on an algorithm called PxDx to deny large batches of patient claims without reviewing the individual medical necessity of each case. (Tepper, 7/27)

Sanford Health and Fairview Health Services have dropped their plans to merge, marking the second failed combination attempt between the nonprofit health systems over the last decade. Health system executives said Thursday in news releases that they couldn’t continue the merger process without the support from certain stakeholders. (Kacik, 7/27)

Marshfield Clinic Health System and Essentia Health have signed an integration agreement, putting them one step closer to merging, the nonprofit health systems announced Thursday. The combined company would comprise 25 hospitals in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, a health plan and roughly $6 billion in annual revenue. Marshfield of Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota-based Essentia signed a memorandum of understanding in October and expect the deal to close by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval. (Kacik, 7/27)

The chief executive of the country’s biggest hospital chain said Thursday that labor costs are now lower as a percent of revenue than they were before the pandemic. (Bannow, 7/27)

Virtual mental health company Talkspace on Thursday added to its run of promising earnings reports, with the once-embattled company continuing to project it would break even by early 2024. (Aguilar, 7/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: His Anesthesia Provider Billed Medicare Late. He Got Sent To Collections For The $3,000 Tab. 

Thomas Greene had been experiencing pain in his right leg, a complication from diabetes, when doctors recommended a procedure to increase blood flow to the limb. Retired from a career as an electrician and HVAC technician, he had an outpatient procedure in April 2021 to alleviate his pain by dilating the clogged artery using a balloon snaked into his blood vessel. (Galewitz, 7/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Bankrupt California Hospital Receives Lifeline From Adventist, Report Says 

Bankrupt Madera Community Hospital has received a last-minute lifeline from the hospital chain Adventist Health, which reached a preliminary agreement to take over the shuttered hospital and save it from liquidation, The Fresno Bee reported today. The deal comes as a federal bankruptcy court in Fresno weighs whether to force Madera to sell off its assets to satisfy creditors. The biggest creditor is Fresno’s St. Agnes Medical Center, which walked away from a deal to take over Madera and effectively forced it into bankruptcy. The hospital closed in January. (Weber, 7/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What the Health?': Another Try For Mental Health ‘Parity’ 

The Biden administration continued a bipartisan, decades-long effort to ensure that health insurance treats mental illnesses the same as other ailments, with a new set of regulations aimed at ensuring that services are actually available without years-long waits or excessive out-of-pocket costs. (7/27)

President Biden on Thursday announced new actions aimed at protecting communities from extreme heat, and meeting with mayors from two cities grappling with high temperatures. Biden directed the Department of Labor to issue a hazard alert for dangerous conditions in industries like agriculture and construction, where workers face a greater risk of injury and death from extreme heat — and the department plans to boost inspections in those sectors, he said. (Sprunt, 7/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Texan Activists Thirst For A National Heat Standard To Protect Outdoor Workers

Construction workers, airport baggage handlers, letter carriers, and other outdoor workers — many of whom traveled to Washington, D.C., from Texas — gathered at the steps of the Capitol on Tuesday. They were joined by labor organizers and lawmakers for what was billed as “a vigil and thirst strike” to protest a law Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed, which, as a downstream consequence, eliminates mandated water breaks for construction workers. The Republican governor signed House Bill 2127 — known as the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act but dubbed the “Death Star” by critics — the same month the state saw at least 13 heat-related deaths amid a scorching heat wave that’s on track to break records. (DeGuzman, 7/28)

July is on track to become the world’s hottest month on record — with some scientists saying the planet may be experiencing its warmest period in about 120,000 years.  The finding, announced by the World Meteorological Organization and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday, comes as G20 climate ministers travel to India for talks on how to curb planet-warming emissions. (Weise, 7/27)

Exposure to extreme temperatures combined with suffocating air pollution can double the risk of dying from a heart attack, according to Chinese researchers who analyzed more than 200,000 cardiac deaths in China between 2015 and 2020. Experts, who already believe that prolonged heat waves, cold snaps and polluted air are bad for the heart, said the study, published Monday in the journal Circulation, further strengthens the relationship by connecting it to the risk of cardiac death. (Cimons, 7/27)

New York City’s power company asked customers to cut back on electricity use Thursday afternoon, and Philadelphia declared a health emergency as the dangerous heat that has scorched other parts of the country for more than a month spread to the nation’s most populous region. Soaring temperatures and a blanket of oppressive humidity prompted widespread warnings in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. The heat will probably peak in the region on Friday, forecasters said, before easing over the weekend — a respite not seen in other, longer-suffering parts of the country. (Russell, Nolan and Jones, 7/27)

For nearly a month, millions of people across the American Southwest have sizzled, sweated and sweltered under a heat wave that refuses to let up. Day after day, residents from Fresno to Phoenix have endured triple-digit temperatures and hot, restless nights that have offered little relief. Forecasters say the heat wave is being driven by a ridge of high pressure that has parked itself over the region, creating a pressure cooker of slowly sinking warm air. (Smith, 7/27)

Whether the “heat index” reaches 104 or hits 105 in Philly on a given day represents more than a degree of difference to the National Weather Service. But would your body know the difference between a “feels like” temperature of 104 vs. 105? And would your mind care? (Wood, 7/27)

The Midwest is experiencing rising temperatures this week, as heat waves become more frequent and deadly across the U.S. Experts studying the connection between climate change and health say that extreme heat is not just an inconvenience. “The biggest challenge in this country is making sure that people are aware that extreme heat is a life-or-death issue,” said Vijay Limaye, an epidemiologist at Natural Resources Defense Council. (Li, 7/27)

In the years since the discovery, New York has become an epicenter for C. auris infections. Now, as the illness spreads across the U.S., a prominent theory for its sudden explosion has emerged: climate change. As temperatures rise, fungi can develop tolerance for warmer environments — including the bodies of humans and other mammals, whose naturally high temperatures typically keep most fungal pathogens at bay. Over time, humans may lose resistance to these climate-adapting fungi and become more vulnerable to infections. Some researchers think this is what is happening with C. auris.  (Fassett, 7/27)

While organizations like the World Health Organization have cautioned that climate change could lead to more global cases and deaths from malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, experts say it's too soon to tell if the local transmission the past two months in Sarasota County has any connection to extreme heat or flooding. "We don't have any reason to think that climate change has contributed to these particular cases," said Ben Beard, deputy director of the CDC's division of vector-borne diseases and deputy incident manager for this year's local malaria response. (Colombini, 7/27)

Up to 450,000 people in the United States may have developed a rare and potentially life-threatening tick-associated allergic condition that is triggered when eating red meat, according to federal health data released Thursday. Alpha-gal syndrome, sometimes known as red-meat allergy, is caused when a tick bites a person and injects a sugar molecule found in its saliva. (Sun, 7/27)

Despite growing incidence, in a survey of 1,500 US healthcare providers (HCPs), 42% said they had never heard of the condition. Among those who had heard of the condition, 35% said they were not confident in their ability to diagnose the allergy, and only 55 clinicians (6%) said they had treated 5 or more alpha-gal patients. (Soucheray, 7/27)

In 2022, doctors recorded the first confirmed case of tick-borne encephalitis virus acquired in the United Kingdom. It began with a bike ride. A 50-year-old man was mountain biking in the North Yorkshire Moors, a national park in England known for its vast expanses of woodland and purple heather. At some point on his ride, at least one black-legged tick burrowed into his skin. Five days later, the mountain biker developed symptoms commonly associated with a viral infection — fatigue, muscle pain, fever. (Teirstein, 7/27)

A team of scientists working within the Connecticut state government has found a new application for something ivermectin was always good at: killing parasites that live in or on animals. In a small study, they found that feeding deer corn dosed with an ivermectin derivative builds up enough drug in their blood that ticks biting them will (probably) die. ... Before we go any further: This is not an argument for eating ivermectin to protect yourself against the 16 different diseases that ticks carry. (McKenna, 7/25)

Across the country, doctors who jeopardized patients’ lives by pushing medical misinformation during the pandemic and its aftermath have faced few repercussions, according to a Washington Post analysis of disciplinary records from medical boards in all 50 states. (Sun, Weber and Godfrey, 7/26)

Facebook removed content related to Covid-19 in response to pressure from the Biden administration, including posts claiming the virus was man-made, according to internal company communications viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The emails show Facebook executives discussing how they managed users’ posts about the origins of a pandemic that the administration was seeking to control. “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made,” asked Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, in a July 2021 email to colleagues. (Tracy, 7/28)

According to the state’s health department, as of Thursday, California reported an average of 858 COVID-related hospitalizations per day over 14 days, up by 7.4% since the beginning of the month, with an average of nine deaths per day over seven days, compared to five on July 1. (Vaziri, 7/27)

Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials. The Fresno County Public Health Department has been "evaluating and assessing the activities of an unlicensed laboratory" in Reedley, the health department's assistant director, Joe Prado, said in a statement Thursday. All of the biological agents were destroyed by July 7 following a legal abatement process by the agency. (Madani, 7/28)

South Dakota’s attorney general called on a state lawmaker Thursday to repay more than $600,000 in federal COVID-19 relief funding she received for her preschool business. Attorney General Marty Jackley gave fellow Republican state Sen. Jessica Castleberry, of Rapid City, 10 days to return the money she accepted for Little Nest Preschool, which she owns. (Ballentine, 7/27)

A doctor who led the successful COVID-19 response in the Navajo Nation in Arizona is returning to Maine to serve as director of the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention, officials said Thursday. Dr. Puthiery Va earned her medical degree at the University of New England in Maine. She has extensive experience in primary clinical care, epidemiology and public health emergency response, making her well-equipped to deal with Maine’s public health challenges, said Jeanne Lambrew, commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. (7/27)

Alexis Misko’s health has improved enough that, once a month, she can leave her house for a few hours. First, she needs to build up her energy by lying in a dark room for the better part of two days, doing little more than listening to audiobooks. Then she needs a driver, a quiet destination where she can lie down, and days of rest to recover afterward. The brief outdoor joy “never quite feels like enough,” she told me, but it’s so much more than what she managed in her first year of long COVID, when she couldn’t sit upright for more than an hour or stand for more than 10 minutes. Now, at least, she can watch TV on the same day she takes a shower. (Yong, 7/27)

A team of researchers based in Britain analyzed 270 previous studies that examined the link between exercise and blood pressure. ... But the most effective type of workout they looked at, especially for those who already had some form of hypertension, was isometric exercise, which involves contracting a set of muscles without moving — think planks. This new research adds to a growing body of evidence that quick bursts of exercise — like speeding up your walk during a commute or carrying groceries with a bit more vigor — can have significant benefits for people’s overall health. (Blum, 7/27)

Including olive oil in your regular diet offers several benefits — such as protecting heart health or cognitive function. The Mediterranean staple might also reduce your risk of dying from dementia by 28% if you eat just a spoonful every day. This new finding is according to research presented Monday in Boston at Nutrition 2023, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition. (Rogers, 7/27)

A team of scientists has extended the lives of old mice by connecting their blood vessels to young mice. The infusions of youthful blood led the older animals to live 6 to 9 percent longer, the study found, roughly equivalent to six extra years for an average human. While the study does not point to an anti-aging treatment for people, it does hint that the blood of young mice contains compounds that promote longevity, the researchers said. (Zimmer, 7/27)

A year after launching a pilot program testing a four-day workweek at companies in the US and Canada, employees’ average hours continued to fall as companies found new ways to save time. New research from 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit organization that coordinated the study, tracked the health, well-being and business outcomes of 41 firms as they adopted shorter hours last year. The report found that a year after launching the trials, conducted over six months, employees’ average workweek dropped to less than 33 hours from 38 hours, a big step closer to the target of the 32 hours that make up a workweek consisting of four eight-hour days. (Constantz, 7/27)

A troubling trend is brewing underneath America's strong employment market: more children are working in dangerous jobs, violating the nation's labor laws and putting their lives at risk. In the last 10 months, federal regulators have found almost 4,500 children working in violation of federal child labor laws, an increase of 44% from a year earlier, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Some of the children were operating dangerous machinery, such as deep fryers and meat-processing equipment, the agency noted. (Picchi, 7/27)

Bronny James, the 18-year-old son of NBA star LeBron James, was discharged from a Los Angeles hospital Thursday after he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a basketball practice at the University of Southern California on Monday. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said in a statement that Bronny James was home resting with his family following the incident, which occurred at USC’s Galen Center. ... Merije Chukumerije, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai, said in Thursday’s statement that James was “fully conscious, neurologically intact and stable” when he arrived at the hospital and had received “swift and effective” treatment from USC’s medical personnel. (Golliver, 7/27)

A high-profile lawsuit by a California woman who claimed that Subway's tuna products contain ingredients other than tuna has been dismissed. The chain, with nearly 37,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries, and the plaintiff Nilima Amin have "come to agreement regarding dismissing the case with prejudice," meaning it cannot be brought again, court records show. (Stempel, 7/27)

Food manufacturers who deliberately add sesame to products and include the ingredient on labels are not violating a new federal food allergy law, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group, had petitioned the FDA to halt an unintended consequence of the January law — more companies adding sesame to foods that didn’t have it before. But the agency denied the advocacy group’s request. (Aleccia, 7/26)

The soup comes in a 20-ounce container and is supplied by Winter Gardens Quality Foods in New Oxford, Penn., and distributed as a Trader Joe’s brand in California, among other states. “No known adverse health effects have been reported to date, and all potentially affected product has been removed from sale and destroyed,” Trader Joe’s said in a statement. (Whiting, 7/27)

Three more patients have tested positive for tuberculosis linked to bone graft materials from Aziyo Biologics, the CDC said Wednesday, adding to the two cases previously identified by health officials, one of whom has died. There are also at least 36 patients who underwent a surgical or dental procedure using the suspected contaminated materials, CDC said, and they are all being treated as if they have tuberculosis because of the risk to their health of waiting for confirmatory testing. (Ollstein and Garner, 7/26)

A Lapeer County child who was an exhibitor at the Oakland County Fair is believed to have Michigan's first human case of swine flu this year, state health officials said Wednesday. (Jordan Shamus, 7/26)

More than 15,000 Floridians die from a stroke each year. Some strokes last for a few minutes while others continue for hours or even days. How quickly someone having a stroke receives care can mean the difference between full brain function and a lifelong disability — or death. That was on the minds of UF Health emergency staff as the new mobile stroke treatment unit hit the road Tuesday in Gainesville. It is the only mobile stroke treatment unit in Florida and one of 20 mobile stroke programs in the nation. (Shanes, 7/27)

A former Florida Department of Corrections officer has gone to the state Supreme Court in a dispute about his firing for using medical marijuana. An attorney for former officer Samuel Velez Ortiz filed a notice last week that is a first step in challenging a June 21 decision by a panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal that upheld the firing. Velez Ortiz, who was approved by a doctor to use medical marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder related to previous military service, failed a random drug test in 2021, ultimately leading to his firing under the department’s “zero tolerance” policy. (7/27)

The days of Ohio girls skipping class or hunting for a friend with spare feminine hygiene products are about to be over. The Buckeye State will start providing free pads and tampons to students this fall. The $5 million appropriation for dispensers and free products was passed as part of the state's two-year budget and will start being doled out in October. (Staver, 7/26)

A Nye County youth psychiatric facility that faced allegations of child abuse is no longer fighting the revocation of its state license. The Department of Health and Human Services announced in April, weeks after the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an investigation into the facility’s conditions, that it was revoking the license for the Never Give Up Youth Healing Center in Amargosa Valley. (Newberg, 7/26)

Twenty-nine people believed to be homeless have died outside in Anchorage so far in 2023, far surpassing last year’s grim record — with five months left to go in the year. More than half died in the months since the city closed the Sullivan Arena mass shelter to most residents on May 1, according to incident data from the Anchorage Police Department. Six people died in just a four-day period in July. (Theriault Boots, 7/27)

When Lynn’s 15-year-old daughter started acting erratically earlier this month, the Methuen mother turned to a new source of help: the state’s Behavioral Health Help Line. She was skeptical; in the four years since her daughter started showing signs of bipolar disorder, Lynn had found little help when crises occurred. But still, she gave it a try. (Freyer, 7/27)

Jodi Whites glanced through tears in the rearview mirror at her 3-year-old daughter, Amelia, who was slumped in her car seat, pale-faced, lethargic and unresponsive. The 37-year-old mom of five repeated the same words loudly to her daughter as she tried to keep her awake. They were going to the hospital. They would figure it out. Everything would be fine. That day in April, emergency room doctors explained that an absence seizure, in which the patient is unresponsive, had caused Amelia to lose consciousness and start choking at school. They sent her home with medicine to prevent another. (Bohra, 7/28)

Ten years ago, he was involved in a fiery crash in Los Angeles that left him severely burned. Now, he's an advocate for people with disabilities. (Arredondo, 7/27)

High-tech athletic clothes made with anti-odor fabrics are popular. But they also come with a little-known health hazard: The apparel may be infused with metal fibers that can cause burns in an MRI. “It’s like putting your skin up against a hot plate,” said Dr. Hollis Potter, chairman of the radiology and imaging department at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. (Camero, 7/26)

At 15, Alex Parra received a diagnosis that would upend his life. After doctors detected bone cancer in his left leg, he made the decision to amputate the leg above the knee. Parra was told that he could get back to exercise with the right equipment. But a prosthesis that would allow him to run would cost $35,000.“I genuinely thought, like, ‘I’m never going to be able to run again,’” said Parra, now 22. “My family can’t afford that.” (Wu, 7/25)

Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic and untold millions of people dead, that question about the Covid-19 coronavirus remains controversial and fraught, with facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of thought holds that the virus, known to science as SARS-CoV-2, spilled into humans from a nonhuman animal, probably in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a messy emporium in Wuhan, China, brimming with fish, meats and wildlife on sale as food. (Quammen, 7/25)

“The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,” said Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

The Intas Pharmaceuticals plant churned out medicine in a sprawling industrial park in western India, far from the minds of American cancer patients until its problems became theirs. The factory accounted for about 50 percent of the U.S. supply of a widely used generic chemotherapy drug called cisplatin, a reality that few understood until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected the site in November. (Gilbert, 7/27)

For now, abortion remains accessible even in states where it’s banned — at least for those who know where to look. It’s still legal in two-thirds of the country, and numerous websites explain how to order medications from international pharmacies to end early pregnancies at home. But not all patients have equal access to reliable information. (Michelle Oberman, Katie Watson and Lisa Lehmann, 7/28)

In the U.S., about 16% of Black birthing people are immigrants. But even as the federal government and states take steps to improve national maternal health, particularly among Black birthing parents, many immigrant parents are left out of new policy initiatives to provide access to postpartum care. (Maria W. Steenland, Rachel E. Fabi and Laura R. Wherry, 7/28)

Despite the United Nations' recent proclamation that AIDS could end by 2030, the constant urge to put a happy face on a deadly pandemic is a grave disservice to the 1.5 million people who will become infected with HIV this year and the one person who dies from AIDS each minute. (Michael Weinstein, 7/27)

Every few years since the start of the current millennium, another study appears to alarm women and physicians about the alleged risks of hormone therapy during menopause. The latest is a Danish report, recently published in the British Medical Journal, which immediately generated unnecessary anxiety about a possible connection between menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and cognitive decline. (Avrum Z. Bluming and Carol Tarvis, 7/27)

When President James Garfield was shot in 1881, his doctors probed the wounds with unsterilized fingers and instruments. Most U.S. medical professionals had not yet adopted antiseptic procedures. Historians suspect that the lack of antiseptic procedure caused Garfield’s death, and that belief is supported by the massive internal infections found after he died 79 days later. (Ken Blaker, 7/28)

As researchers who study older adults’ health and climate change, we have found that two societal trends point to a potentially dire future: The population is getting older, and temperatures are rising. (Deborah Carr, Giacomo Falchetta and Ian Sue Wing, 7/25)

With the horror of some 100,000 annual overdose deaths in the 2020s, and the deadly nature of illegal synthetic drugs, it’s easy to think that imposing longer, tougher sentences might save lives by deterring sales. Some bereaved parents describe their children’s deaths as “poisonings” and want the government to treat fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.” (Maia Szalavitz, 7/28)