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President Biden on Monday will sign an executive order aimed at expanding research and improving government initiatives on women’s health, a move that will coincide with a White House Women’s History Month reception. The president’s executive order will “ensure women’s health is integrated and prioritized across the federal research portfolio and budget,” the White House said, with a focus on the administration’s Initiative on Women’s Health Research.  (Samuels, 3/18)

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday said "nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed," as she met to discuss the topic with rapper Fat Joe and others pardoned for marijuana convictions. Harris added that "far too many people have been sent to jail for simple marijuana possession. "President Joe Biden, seeking a second four-year term in November's election, has sought to appeal to young voters, some of whom are dissatisfied with his sluggish policy reforms.. (Kelly, 3/15)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called for greater international cooperation to fight the booming trafficking of illicit synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in his country. He was speaking at an annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which reviews global drug regulation and each year adds new so-called precursor chemicals - ingredients used to make illicit drugs - to international lists known as schedules to place strict controls on their trade. (Pamuk and Murphy, 3/15)

A recent poll shows that about three-quarters of Americans worry about the cost and availability of health care. But other than talking about reducing the cost of some medications ‒ a favorite topic of President Joe Biden's ‒ and how much of Medicare spending can be considered "wasteful," the leading presidential candidates have been largely silent about health on the campaign trail. (Weintraub, 3/17)

Congress is scrambling to avert a partial government shutdown by Friday’s funding deadline, a threat that became more pronounced after leaders failed to unveil a deal over the weekend. Top lawmakers were aiming to release their plan to avoid a shutdown on Sunday but a last-minute snafu delayed the process — forcing Congress to begin the week without a plan to keep Washington’s lights on in tow. Congress must approve the six remaining appropriations bills that fund the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education and State, in addition to the Internal Revenue Services, general government and foreign operations. (Schnell, 3/18)

More than three weeks since a cyberattack that continues to disrupt U.S. healthcare operations, Congress is still groping for a response. But paths forward have begun to emerge as awareness of the damage slowly spreads on Capitol Hill. Many lawmakers still have no answers ... But a growing number of them are devising plans that range from holding hearings and putting pressure on federal agencies to enacting legislation. (McAuliff, 3/15)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Friday it was taking steps to allow states to speed Medicaid reimbursement payments to providers affected by the Change Healthcare cyberattack. The flexibilities allow states to submit Medicaid state plan amendments so they can make make interim payments to providers for services for which claims have not been submitted because of the outage. (DeSilva, 3/15)

Medical students filled a record number of residency positions this year as some states and individual health systems funded an increased number of graduate medical education slots amid federal caps. Hospitals and medical centers offered 41,503 residency positions in 2024, a 3% increase from last year, according to Match Day results released Friday by the National Resident Matching Program. (Devereaux, 3/15)

Pat Early, 66, has lived with the autoimmune disease Sjogren’s syndrome since her 30s. She must rely on a stable of specialists — a rheumatologist, gastroenterologist, endocrinologist, ophthalmologist and the like — to manage the fatigue, muscle pain and other complications of the disease, all helmed by her longtime primary-care doctor. When that doctor started cutting back his staff, she began searching for someone new and stumbled across a medical practice of geriatricians — doctors who specialize in patients over age 65. Early didn’t consider herself old, so “it never even crossed my mind that that’s something I should be looking at,” she said. But she’s grateful for the switch. (Stern, 3/17)

Santa Clara County Valley Healthcare is reopening a newly revamped health care center in the historically underserved South County after the site faced closure and years of reduced capacity. Valley Healthcare Center Morgan Hill, formally known as De Paul Health Center, will begin operating on Monday and is set to expand primary care and urgent care services for the region. (Melecio-Zambrano, 3/15)

Allegheny Health Network is boosting its minimum hourly starting wage to $18, the company announced on Friday. AHN says the increase will start at the end of March, affecting about 1,700 employees who are already at or near the current minimum hourly wage of $16 an hour. The company says the increase will have the greatest impact on those working in entry-level positions that are essential to the patient experience like environmental services, dietary services and patient care technicians. (Bartos, 3/15)

Asheville’s Mission Hospital has violated the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told the hospital’s CEO on Thursday, again threatening to withdraw the system’s federal funding, according to a letter obtained by Asheville Watchdog. EMTALA ensures public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. It requires Medicare-participating hospitals to provide a medical screening when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency condition, according to CMS. (Jones, 3/16)

Going to see the doctor soon? Prepare to be hounded with appointment reminders by phone. By text. By robocall. By email. And in your online “patient portal.” Doctors and dentist offices for years left a courtesy voicemail on patients’ home answering machines giving them a heads-up about their appointment. But now, medical practices are flooding patients with reminders of upcoming appointments — and warnings of cancellation penalties. (Meyersohn, 3/16)

A panel of expert advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted in favor of expanding the use of CAR-T therapy in blood cancer, despite concerns about the powerful treatment’s side effects. (Garde, 3/15)

Justin Klee and Josh Cohen had pulled off an improbable success, turning an idea they hashed out as undergraduates into a drug that aimed to slow one of the world’s most implacable and deadly neurological diseases. On the strength of a single clinical trial, they’d won U.S. regulatory approval for their drug to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. They expected that a larger trial would cement the effectiveness of their treatment. Instead, the trial showed that their drug, Relyvrio, doesn’t work. (Gilbert, 3/16)

An Illinois jury has ordered Reckitt Benckiser unit Mead Johnson to pay $60 million to the mother of a premature baby who died of an intestinal disease after being fed the company's Enfamil baby formula. The jury in an Illinois state court in St. Clair County on Wednesday found that Mead Johnson was negligent and that it failed to warn of the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). The disease, which causes the death of bowel tissue, mostly affects premature newborns and has a fatality rate of about 15% to 40%. (Pierson, 3/15)

The biggest enticement that large pharmacy benefit managers offer to the employers that hire them is drug rebates — a steady stream of money sent back to their clients, a tangible symbol of the discounts that PBMs are able to wrangle out of pharmaceutical companies. (Herman, 3/18)

Eli Lilly’s powerful weight-loss drug Zepbound hit 77,590 new prescriptions in the U.S. for the week ending March 8, surpassing Novo Nordisk’s rival obesity medicine Wegovy for the first time since it was launched, according to data from IQVIA. Some 6,000 fewer Wegovy prescriptions were filled in the United States that week, but Novo maintained its lead for total weekly prescriptions over Zepbound by 25,307, according to the data published by JPMorgan in a weekly note.

Oprah Winfrey has revealed why she left her nearly 10-year post as a WeightWatchers board member last month. Her resignation was motivated by her work on an upcoming TV special on the rise of prescription weight-loss drugs, she said during a Thursday appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (Mendez, 3/15)

When Hank Aaron died in 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested in a tweet that the baseball legend’s death was caused by a Covid vaccine. The next day, a White House employee asked Twitter, now known as X, to take down Kennedy’s post. “Wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” the White House’s Covid-19 digital director wrote to two Twitter employees. The social-media platform did so. Meta Platforms went further, later suspending Kennedy, a nephew of John F. Kennedy and now a long-shot presidential candidate, from Instagram and Facebook. ... The Supreme Court this week will consider whether the administration’s zeal crossed a constitutional line. (Wolfe and Gershman, 3/17)

Jesse Ehrenfeld, an anesthesiologist at a Wisconsin hospital, asked a patient about to have heart surgery if she would consent to a blood transfusion should it become necessary. It's a standard question. But the patient refused. It was 2021, and the COVID-19 vaccine had become publicly available only a few months earlier. This patient, though, made it clear she did not want it – or blood from anyone who already had it. "It was at that moment I knew we were in for it," Ehrenfeld said. (Mueller, 3/15)

Keep an eye out for instances where claims online jump to conclusions without evidence, or appeal to your emotions, advised Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. When you see a piece of medical content online, ask yourself: Does any aspect of the message seem designed to hook you? Does the message seem engineered to make you upset or concerned? Does the source correct itself when it makes a mistake? (Blum, 3/16)

Dr. Mandy Cohen spoke with Orlando health leaders as part of her tour of the country's local health facilities. Her message: "We all need to keep working as a team." (Pedersen, 3/14)

A new report has sharply criticized the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing that lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates were "catastrophic errors" resulting in many Americans losing faith in public health institutions. The report, published this week by the non-profit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), paints a damning indictment of the government’s role in the crisis and offers ten lessons that must be learned, to avoid the same mistakes from being repeated. (Dorgan, 3/16)

A Pentagon watchdog review of the military's COVID-19 vaccine exemption process found that each of the branches largely complied with policies and, in some cases, even went beyond what was required to consider service members' requests for religious accommodation. While rejecting a number of accusations that the services hadn't properly reviewed waiver requests, the Pentagon's inspector general did fault the Army and Air Force for taking too long to process the requests and wrote in a report released Thursday that discharges were inconsistent, leaving some service members with full benefits while others were left with partial benefits. (Toropin, 3/15)

More of America's sewage systems are tracking viral risks beyond the coronavirus, but unpredictable funding threatens the future of what's become an important surveillance tool for cash-strapped public health departments. Wastewater testing — supercharged by the creation of a national surveillance system in 2020 — has been one of the more reliable metrics for tracking COVID-19 spread since other data, like daily case counts and testing, became much more scarce last year. (Moreno, 3/16)

The nation's flu activity remained elevated last week, with an increase in test positivity, as levels of two other respiratory viruses—COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—continued their steady declines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in updates today. In its respiratory virus snapshot of all three diseases, the CDC said illness levels remain elevated in many parts of the country. Sixteen jurisdictions are reporting high or very high activity, down from 22 the previous week. (Schnirring, 3/15)

Spring is nearly here, but the 2023-24 respiratory virus season isn’t over yet. Viral activity from flu, COVID-19 and RSV has fallen from the peak, but levels remain elevated. (Forster, 3/15)

Researchers are getting closer to understanding the underlying causes of long COVID and potential ways to definitively test for it. That would be a massive step toward unlocking a complex condition that's debilitated millions of Americans, mystified scientists and frustrated patient advocates who feel their struggles have been ignored. (Reed, 3/16)

An international draft treaty aimed at bolstering readiness for the next pandemic enters a final round of scheduled negotiations Monday, with key disagreements remaining about how much knowledge and product drugmakers must share with the world. (Snyder, 3/18)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Covid And Medicare Payments Spark Remote Patient Monitoring Boom

Billy Abbott, a retired Army medic, wakes at 6 every morning, steps on the bathroom scale, and uses a cuff to take his blood pressure. The devices send those measurements electronically to his doctor in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and a health technology company based in New York, to help him control his high blood pressure. Nurses with the company, Cadence, remotely monitor his readings along with the vital signs of about 17,000 other patients around the nation. (Galewitz and Hacker, 3/18)

The U.S. has now tallied at least 60 confirmed or suspected measles cases investigated so far this year by authorities in 17 states — more than the 58 cases reported nationwide in all of 2023. It comes as health officials are grappling with multiple major outbreaks of the highly contagious virus around the world. Friday's tally of measles cases is up from 45 counted by the CDC last week. Additional infections have since been announced in Arizona, California, Illinois and Ohio. (Tin, 3/15)

Amid a small but steady rise in infections nationally, Chicago has now reported 12 measles cases, 10 of them linked to people who recently arrived at a local migrant shelter. In a weekly update, the Chicago Department of Public Health said 6 of the cases involve children and 6 are in adults. A local media report said 2 of the patients had attended separate Chicago public schools, 1 of them reportedly a child who is staying at the migrant shelter. (Schnirring, 3/15)

Health officials have confirmed a probable measles exposure in Merced County and are working with exposed individuals and health care providers in the area. Last week, officials said hundreds of people may have been exposed at a Sacramento hospital after an El Dorado County child was confirmed to have contracted it. That child appeared to have contacted it after a trip out of the country. Earlier this week, an unvaccinated Central Valley child was confirmed to have a case of measles. (Downs, 3/15)

U.S. marriages have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels with nearly 2.1 million in 2022. That’s a 4% increase from the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data Friday, but has not released marriage data for last year. In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray, with communities ordering people to stay at home and banning large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19. (Stobbe, 3/15)

To many other researchers, creating a map of the 86 billion neurons, or nerve cells, that make up the brain would be considered a nearly insurmountable project. However, researchers at the Allen Institute are pursuing that very task, saying it will lay the foundation for helping to better understand how the brain functions the way it does. The Allen Institute, founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen in 2003, was originally created to map gene activity in the mouse brain, but researchers quickly began including studies of the human brain in their work. (Kekatos, 3/16)

Five years ago, in a wheelchair, Julia Hum was admitted to a state mental hospital in Massachusetts. After treatment with targeted deep brain stimulation, she hopes to walk out soon and, for the first time in her adult life, live independently, in her own apartment. (Goodman, 3/15)

Law enforcement officers had probable cause to confiscate the firearms from Robert Card and take him into protective custody before he went on a shooting rampage in northern Maine, but failed to invoke a state law that could have been used to disarm him, according to an independent report into the mass shooting made public Friday. The interim report, released by an independent commission to investigate the October 25, 2023, mass shooting in Lewiston, determined the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office had sufficient evidence to believe the US Army Reservist posed a likelihood of serious harm and stressed the department could have utilized the state’s so-called “yellow flag” law. The report detailed how those who knew Card alerted authorities on several occasions to his deteriorating mental state and serious concerns he would become violent. (Tucker, 3/15)

Walter Smith used to drive fast in his Ford Crown Victoria. Four years ago, the 60-year-old stayed busy working, playing sandlot baseball and spending time with his three granddaughters. Smith’s life now moves at a slower pace after he was paralyzed in a 2020 shooting in Annapolis. His ability to leave the house in his power chair is weather-dependent — he spends most days sitting by a stop sign in Owings Mills, listening to music and watching as cars zoom down the road. (Price, 3/18)

An influx of patients from the criminal justice system is overwhelming a Massachusetts psychiatric hospital, contributing to overcrowding and dangerous conditions at a facility ill-equipped to properly care for them. At Tewksbury Hospital ... staff complain of groping, threats, and assaults; and local police have responded to violent incidents and patients wandering off the property, according to town records, state data, and interviews with current and former workers. (Laughlin, 3/16)

First responders in Denver will soon undergo training designed specifically to bolster psychedelic crisis response and intervention. The training, developed by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies (MAPS), aims to “enhance the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of first responders to quickly recognize and effectively respond to emotional and behavioral crisis incidents involving psilocybin and other psychedelics,” according to an announcement this week. (Ricciardi, 3/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: As More States Target Disavowed ‘Excited Delirium’ Diagnosis, Police Groups Push Back

Following a pivotal year in the movement to discard the term “excited delirium,” momentum is building in several states to ban the discredited medical diagnosis from death certificates, law enforcement training, police incident reports, and civil court testimony. In January, California became the first state to prohibit the medical term from many official proceedings. Now, lawmakers in Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, and New York are considering bills that also would rein in how the excited delirium concept is used. (Rayasam, 3/18)

Teenage boys are drowning in just as much of the depression and anxiety that’s been well documented in girls. Experts warn that many young men struggling with their mental health are left undetected and without the help they need. “We are right to be concerned about girls,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But I don’t ever want us to lose sight of the fact that boys aren’t doing well, either.” (Edwards, 3/17)

Idaho lawmakers are expected to vote this week on a bill that would ban the use of any public funds for gender-affirming care, including for state employees using work health insurance and for adults covered by Medicaid. The legislation already passed the House and only needs to clear the majority Republican Senate before it is sent to Gov. Brad Little’s desk, where it would likely be signed into law. The Republican governor has said repeatedly he does not believe public funds should be used for gender-affirming care. (Boone, 3/18)

A decades-old policy incentivizes Colorado health providers to prematurely discharge patients with serious mental illness from psychiatric hospitals, crisis stabilization units, residential treatment centers and nursing homes, state leaders said. Now, legislators are working to address the issue by recommending that $7.2 million is allocated to the Colorado Medicaid department to reimburse providers that work with patients who need care for up to 30 days. (Flowers, 3/18)

Christian King watched her sister lie sick in a hospital bed for days after suffering a placental abruption while giving birth. Finally, after their mother pleaded with hospital staff to run more tests, they learned her blood count was dangerously low. Two blood transfusions later, she was back on her feet. The power of having an advocate during birth stayed with King. Not long after, she became a doula. (Spoerre, 3/16)

States are boosting pay to health insurance companies that administer Medicaid benefits to address rising medical spending even as some eye benefit cuts to close budget shortfalls. States such as Arizona, California, Missouri and Washington plan to increase Medicaid managed care capitation rates for fiscal 2025 to companies such as Centene and Molina Healthcare. Insurers have cited negative effects on risk pools resulting from the ongoing eligibility redeterminations process to unwind the continuous coverage provisions enacted as part of federal COVID-19 relief efforts. (Tepper, 3/15)

The letter came from the state department of human services in July 2021. It expressed condolences for the loss of the recipient’s mother, who had died a few weeks earlier at 88. Then it explained that the deceased had incurred a Medicaid debt of more than $77,000 and provided instructions on how to repay the money. “I was stunned,” said the woman’s 62-year-old daughter. At first, she thought the letter might be some sort of scam. It wasn’t. (Span, 3/16)

Public health institutions are facing the challenge of a lifetime as social media breeds misinformation and disinformation about everything from Covid vaccines to climate change. (Lisa Jarvis, 3/15)

When the Alabama Supreme Court found on February 16 that frozen embryos are protected by the state’s wrongful-death law in the same way that embryos inside a mother’s womb are, it set off one of those depressing and familiar 21st-century political firestorms. (Yuval Levin and O. Carter Snead, 3/15)

For decades, the U.S. healthcare system has been weighed down by frontline worker shortages, waste and inefficiencies. Organizations have struggled to tap into the massive volume of unstructured data that lives in silos and engage effectively with their most important stakeholders – patients. (Keith Figlioli, 3/15)

It’s hard to explain how it feels to be behind an artillery piece when it fires. First is the roaring sound that no movie can ever match. Then comes the sight: the gun jerking violently, smoke billowing from its tube as the crew scrambles to load the next round. Finally, there’s the physical feeling of the explosion that threw a hundred-pound shell for miles, knocking the breath out of you and causing your bones to shudder. Each firing left me with a dull pain in my head, like I had just gotten hit in the face. But then it would fire again. And again. And again. So imagine experiencing this feeling 1,000 to 5,000 times in the span of less than a year, as some service members on gun crews in Iraq and Syria did. (Daniel S. Johnson, 3/17)

Few workers draw more sympathy and appreciation than the caregivers who tend to the daily needs of elderly people unable to cope by themselves. Working in homes or institutions, they help them eat, dress and bathe. The job is physically strenuous, emotionally demanding and essential to an aging population. But the pay is low — a median hourly $17.19 for nursing assistants. (Virginia Postrel, 3/17)