�鶹Ů��

The White House on Friday announced the expansion of health care coverage for the nation’s veterans, creating a no-cost system for World War II veterans seeking care and accelerating enrollment for all veterans applying for benefits after exposure to toxins. Starting this month, all living World War II veterans can access health care services from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at no cost, including nursing home care, the White House said in a press release. (Dress, 11/10)

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it's committed to studying whether psychedelics like MDMA and psilocybin are effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder ahead of a House hearing expected to touch on the substances. It shows growing recognition that hallucinogenic drugs, when paired with psychotherapy, could potentially have mental health benefits. (Millman, 11/13)

A new product by ReflexAI called HomeTeam was just released this week, with the goal of preventing veteran suicide. Each day, 17 veterans die by suicide, according to the company, amid an ongoing mental health crisis across the country. ReflexAI found that 92% of veterans are open to supporting or being supported by another veteran when they're in crisis — yet only 25% are prepared to do so. (Stabile, 11/13)

Along a busy Atlanta residential road, a 68-year-old Vietnam War-era Army veteran has found what he calls a “match made in heaven. ”Harold Tilson Jr. found himself homeless earlier this year but for the past few months has been living in transitional housing run by the nonprofit Veterans Empowerment Organization, or VEO. It provides emergency and permanent housing for dozens of previously homeless military veterans. (Rico, 11/11)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday announced its approval of Ixchiq, the first chikungunya vaccine. The vaccine, which is made by Valneva, is approved for anyone age 18 and older who has a risk of being exposed to the virus. The chikungunya virus is transmitted to people through bites from infected mosquitoes. (Rudy, 11/11)

Chikungunya virus infects more than 300,000 people per year globally, the FDA said, mostly in the global south. The virus has recently become more prevalent in the north, however, leading to FDA approval of the new vaccine. “Infection with chikungunya virus can lead to severe disease and prolonged health problems, particularly for older adults and individuals with underlying medical conditions,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. (Robertson, 11/10)

Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in his capacity as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus joined with national civil rights and health equity organizations to call on states to stop disenrolling people from Medicaid for procedural reasons this week. Medicaid “unwinding” began in June in Nevada with the end of pandemic-era requirements that states continue coverage for people enrolled in Medicaid without requalification. In the six months since, Nevada had the nation’s highest procedural termination rate, according to the report that used data from health policy research organization �鶹Ů��. (Todd, 11/12)

Medicaid was expanded during the pandemic, but the coverage ended in March, with thousands of people losing it monthly. A study shows about 170,000 people will lose Medicaid in the next year. But with open enrollment happening now, leaders like Dr. Don Williamson with the Alabama Hospital Association say options are available. (Chatman, 11/12)

A national group of doctors gathered Sunday for a march in downtown Atlanta, pushing for the expansion of Medicaid, while also urging Wellstar Health System to donate the former Atlanta Medical Center site to the city. Some carried signs with tombstones of closed hospitals in Georgia, and others of the over 100 people in attendance chanted in support for a single-payer health system, while decrying the actions of Georgia state officials and Wellstar Health System as detrimental to the health of Georgians. (Thomas, 11/12)

The Rowan County Public Health Department is pleased to announce an upcoming milestone in healthcare accessibility for our community. On Dec. 1, North Carolina is set to expand Medicaid, offering a lifeline to thousands of residents who have struggled with limited or no access to essential healthcare services. This significant development aligns with our commitment to promoting health equity and well-being for all residents of Rowan County and will mark a transformative step toward better health outcomes and financial security for many. (11/12)

A decades-old federal program that offers doctors incentives to practice in disadvantaged communities has had little effect on physician density or patient mortality, a recent analysis concludes. Publishing in the journal Health Affairs, researchers looked at data from the Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) program, zeroing in on physician density and mortality. Introduced in 1965, the HPSA program designates areas in need of more physicians and offers bonuses, loan repayment, visa waivers, higher reimbursements and other benefits to doctors who choose to practice and serve Medicare patients in specific communities. (Blakemore, 11/12)

Sen. Bernie Sanders' push for sweeping legislation to address a growing shortage of primary care providers, the opioid crisis and other key health issues faces an unusual obstacle: escalating tensions among members of the health committee he chairs. If the progressive firebrand secures passage of the roughly $25 billion package, it will overshadow complaints about how it got done. (Sullivan, 11/13)

Doctors are staring down a cut to their Medicare pay next year, and while the news has united them in outrage, it’s also turned one specialty against another. (Trang, 11/10)

Without a little aid from the federal government, Whitley Hasty would have a tougher time buying the fresh broccoli her toddler son loves to eat with ranch dressing. Hasty receives WIC, the food assistance program for low-income women, infants and young children. It has helped her purchase milk, cheese, juice, eggs, fruits, vegetables and other staples for 3-year-old Leni – a benefit that has been even more vital in recent years as the price of groceries and other necessities has soared. (Luhby, 11/12)

Former Chicago Department of Public Health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady has taken a new job with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Arwady, who led the city's efforts to fight COVID-19 during the pandemic under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, confirmed she has taken a position with the CDC in Atlanta, leading the National Center for Injury Prevention & Control, starting Jan. 16, 2024. She will lead the agency's efforts to prevent injuries from drug overdoses, violence, suicide, and other causes, according to a press release. (Feurer, 11/9)

Four Ohio Republican state lawmakers are seeking to strip judges of their power to interpret an abortion rights amendment after voters opted to enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution this week. Republican state Reps. Jennifer Gross, Bill Dean, Melanie Miller and Beth Lear said in a news release Thursday that they’ll push to have the Legislature, not the courts, make any decisions about the amendment passed Tuesday. (Hendrickson, 11/11)

“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” the lawmakers said. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.” (Weixel, 11/10)

The number of abortions provided in North Carolina has dropped significantly after the implementation of increased restrictions in the state on July 1, according to data estimates from a national organization that tracks trends in reproductive health. During the first month operating under North Carolina’s new law that limits most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy and requires two in-person appointments for anyone seeking an abortion, the Guttmacher Institute reported that medication and procedural abortions provided in the state in July dropped by 31 percent from the previous month. A new round of data released this week demonstrates how the state’s restrictions hinder access to abortion care. (Crumpler, 11/10)

Virginia Republicans bet their fate on a strategy that they hoped would neutralize abortion rights and warnings from Democrats: Embrace a 15-week abortion ban with some exceptions and convince voters such a measure is a “common sense,” consensus limit. But by Wednesday morning, their enthusiasm had been dampened. Republicans’ stunning flop in Virginia suggests that even a 15-week ban may turn off a broad coalition of voters who are wary of government restrictions on the procedure. (Barclay and Luthra, 11/9)

House Republicans who waged fierce political battles over Obamacare and abortion after that have found a new focus as the lead-up to the 2024 elections: gender-affirming care for transgender Americans. They’ve added riders on seven of the 12 House fiscal 2024 appropriations bills that would put restrictions on gender-affirming care, which can be anything from hormone therapy to surgical care to insurance coverage of either. (Cohen, 11/10)

AstraZeneca on Friday said it was prioritizing the U.S. market for additional doses of its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) drug Beyfortus, which was approved in July to prevent the disease in infants and toddlers, as a surge of cases is outpacing supply. AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot in an interview at the Reuters office in New York said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been asking for more of the antibody therapy that was co-developed with French drugmaker Sanofi. (Wingrove and Fick, 11/10)

AstraZeneca Plc Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot envisions his company bringing more affordable drugs to people who need to lose a modest amount of weight for health reasons but don’t necessarily have obesity. One day after the UK drugmaker announced a deal to develop an obesity pill with a Chinese biotech, Eccogene, Soriot said the company is aiming for a once-daily pill that’s less costly to produce than injectable obesity medicines. (Langreth and Cattan, 11/10)

Amazon Prime members have a new offer in addition to the usual delivery and streaming services: Access to One Medical, the Amazon-owned primary care company. Members have the option, announced Wednesday, to pay an additional $9 per month, or $99 per year, for One Medical’s telehealth services and in-office appointments at a discount of about half its typical $199 yearly cost. (Merelli, 11/10)

Instacart launched Instacart Health in September 2022 to expand the work it had been doing with food assistance programs, nutrition education and prescribed meal plans. While it continues to offer grocery delivery and other services to consumers, Instacart is increasingly partnering with healthcare organizations to offer food-as-medicine programs, said Sarah Mastrorocco, Instacart Health’s general manager. (Perna, 11/10)

Let’s say you’re a doctor and you’re trying to monitor a patient for sepsis — a dangerous blood infection that kills hundreds of people each year in Colorado. If you wait until it’s obvious that your patient is septic, your chances of saving that patient are only 50-50. But the other problem is that the early signs of sepsis — fever, shortness of breath, elevated heart rate — look like a ton of other things, too. If you jump too early, you could be treating something that doesn’t exist. (Ingold, 11/10)

The personal information of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients at Sutter Health was exposed during a ransomware attack on one of its vendors earlier this year, Sutter Health announced on its website. ... Virgin Pulse estimated about 845,000 Sutter Health patients could be affected by the attack, according to Sutter Health. They did say social security numbers and financial information were not impacted. (Downs, 11/10)

HCA Healthcare has bold growth plans to take market share. The for-profit system is investing billions of dollars to expand its physical footprint across service lines. As of Aug. 31, the company had $5.3 billion in approved capital projects set to be completed in the next two years, ranging from renovations of existing facilities to new hospitals and outpatient locations, Chief Operating Officer Jon Foster said Thursday during HCA's investor day conference. (Hudson, 11/10)

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo said Friday it closed its $1.8 billion acquisition of electronic health records vendor NextGen Healthcare. NextGen shareholders approved the deal during a meeting Tuesday and will receive $23.95 per share. NextGen is the latest health technology business to go private, following private equity deals for companies that struggled on the public markets, such as SOC Telemed, Allscripts and Tivity Health. (Turner, 11/10)

Prospect Medical Holdings, a Los Angeles-based company has been underfunding two Rhode Island hospitals to the point where its impacting operations and canceling patient surgeries, according to a new compliance order issued by the state health department Thursday night. ... “These latest issues are part of a pattern of Prospect Medical Holdings engaging in non-compliance and creating delays in making required disclosures of financial information,” the state health department said in a news release. (Gagosz, 11/9)

More than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers have voted to ratify a new labor contract that will boost wages, promote increased hiring and give front-line healthcare employees a stronger voice on the job. The workers, represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, voted 98.5% in favor of the four-year labor agreement that runs from Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2027. ... “When healthcare workers stand shoulder-to-shoulder to fight for our patients and our jobs, we can win.” (Smith, 11/9)

Mass General Brigham said Friday it has offered buyouts to an unspecified number of employees who work in its technology arm as the financially strained health care giant seeks to “better optimize our workforce.” The company said in a statement that it had offered “volunteer separation” to employees in its Digital unit, which provides services ranging from information technology to maintenance of patients’ electronic health care records. (Saltzman, 11/10)

An investigational drug aimed at preventing strokes significantly reduced the risk of bleeding compared with a commonly used blood thinner for stroke prevention, showing potential to be a safer alternative for patients. (Chen, 11/12)

Verve Therapeutics said Sunday that the first 10 people to receive a one-time treatment powered by a form of CRISPR called base editing showed reductions in bad cholesterol levels — study results that are preliminary but signal the potential for gene-editing treatments to benefit people with an inherited type of cardiovascular disease. (Feuerstein, 11/12)

Novo Nordisk A/S unveiled details from a closely watched study that supports the use of Wegovy, its blockbuster weight-loss drug, to cut heart attacks and deaths in obesity patients with a history of cardiovascular disease. The results are “game-changing,” Eugene Yang, the chair of the American College of Cardiology’s prevention section, said in an interview. (Muller and Kresge, 11/11)

In the study of overweight and obese patients based on body mass index who had preexisting heart disease but not diabetes, Wegovy reduced the risk of non-fatal heart attack by 28%, non-fatal stroke by 7% and heart-related death by 15% compared to a placebo. Given that patients had not started losing weight when the cardiovascular benefits first appeared suggests the heart protection was not purely the result of weight loss, Novo said. (Wingrove, 11/12)

“We’ve just identified a new best practice,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief of the division of cardiology at Northwestern Medicine, who was not involved with the study. But the research also raises questions about exactly how the drug helps the heart — through weight loss itself, or other mechanisms — and whether it can be as effective in a real-world setting, with a more diverse group of patients than those included in the trial. (Blum, 11/11)

Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant that makes the blockbuster Wegovy obesity drug, said it will invest more than $6 billion to boost production capacity. (Chopping, 11/10)

Obesity drug maker Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) said on Friday it will spend $6 billion to boost production in Denmark, although its chief executive warned the industry was far from being able to produce enough weight-loss drugs to meet global demand. Novo Nordisk has had phenomenal success with its anti-obesity drug, Wegovy, but has scrambled to address shortages that have forced it to limit the number of patients. (Fick and Gronholt-pedersen, 11/10)

Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) wants to buy more companies with drugs in early- to mid-stages of development through "bolt-on" deals of up to a few billion dollars, CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen told Reuters on Friday. As the company's fortunes soar on demand for its popular weight-loss medicine Wegovy, Jorgensen said Novo sought to acquire companies working on medicines in the areas where it is already focused. (Fick and Gronholt-pedersen, 11/10)

Doctors are getting inundated with patients' requests for wildly popular new anti-obesity drugs, including from many who don't really need them. Primary care doctors in particular, who typically have little training in obesity, have found themselves as gatekeepers for a class of injection drugs, including Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy, that are effective but still face questions about who should take them. (Reed, 11/13)

Michelle Wilson got COVID three years ago. She's still waiting for her brain and nervous system to recover. Wilson's memory is spotty, she's frequently in pain, and even a short walk leaves her exhausted. "I actually bought a cane that turns into a seat so I can go to the botanical garden," she says. It's a big change for Wilson, 66, who had worked as a nurse at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. But after years of waiting to get better, she says she's realized something: "This might be as good as it gets." (Hamilton, 11/13)

Persistent central nervous system (CNS) immune activation is not the primary cause of neurologic long COVID, suggests a case-control study by Yale researchers. The research, published today in JAMA Network Open, involved 37 US patients who self-reported neurologic long-COVID, also known as post-COVID-19 condition (PCC), and 22 asymptomatic controls recruited for other studies before the pandemic. All participants underwent a large-volume lumbar puncture and blood draw for analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). (Van Beusekom, 11/10)

The loss of taste and smell — hallmarks of a coronavirus infection early in the pandemic — became a stubborn blight for many long Covid sufferers, but new research shows that the sensory problems gradually abate. Smell and taste disturbances were reported in almost two-thirds of the 100 people who had caught a mild case of Covid-19 in the fall of 2020 in Trieste, Italy, and were randomly selected for studying alongside 100 uninfected people for comparison. Both groups were followed for three years. (Gale, 11/10)

Infants as old as 6 months were protected from COVID-19 infections only when mothers were vaccinated prenatally, and not before pregnancy, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open. The study is one of the largest to compare outcomes among infants whose mothers were vaccinated before pregnancy, during pregnancy, or were unvaccinated at the time of birth. (Soucheray, 11/10)

A report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found an increase in exemptions rates for childhood vaccines in more than 40 states. For the more than 3.8 million children entering kindergarten, the vaccine exemption rate increased overall to 3% for the 2022-2023 school year, according to the CDC, the highest ever reported. (DeLetter, 11/10)

The number of kindergarteners with vaccine exemptions increased 0.4 percentage points to 3.0% during the 2022–23 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year, according to a new study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. (Soucheray, 11/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: How Lawmakers In Texas And Florida Undermine Covid Vaccination Efforts

Katherine Wells wants to urge her Lubbock, Texas, community to get vaccinated against covid-19. “That could really save people from severe illness,” said Wells, the city’s public health director. But she can’t. A rule added to Texas’ budget that went into effect Sept. 1 forbids health departments and other organizations funded by the state government to advertise, recommend, or even list covid vaccines alone. “Clinics may inform patients that COVID-19 vaccinations are available,” the rule allows, “if it is not being singled out from other vaccines.” (Maxmen, 11/13)

A sweeping ban on COVID-19 vaccine requirements for all private businesses, including hospitals, is the latest blow to medically vulnerable Texans who rely on others’ immunization to shield themselves from highly transmissible viruses. Tamer coronavirus variants and a soft vaccine booster rollout have contributed to a lessened sense of urgency around the virus. But the new measure, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law on Friday, could risk the health of groups like organ transplant recipients, cancer patients and those with underlying conditions as common as severe asthma. (Bohra, 11/13)

Researchers say they've located a "kill switch" that can trigger the death of cancer cells. Scientists at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center in Sacramento, California, have identified a protein on the CD95 receptor that can "program" cancer cells to die, as detailed in a study published in the journal Cell Death & Differentiation last month. A receptor is a protein within a cell that receives and transmits signals. (Rudy, 11/12)

The handful of patients had severe heart disease that had caused chest pain and heart attacks. After trying available cholesterol-lowering medications, they could not get their cholesterol as low as cardiologists recommended. So they volunteered for an experimental cholesterol-lowering treatment using gene editing that was unlike anything tried in patients before. The result, reported Sunday by the company Verve Therapeutics of Boston at a meeting of the American Heart Association, showed that the treatment appeared to reduce cholesterol levels markedly in patients and that it appeared to be safe. (Kolata, 11/12)

Preliminary results from a study involving 10 patients born with a genetic condition that causes very high cholesterol found that editing a gene inside the liver can significantly reduce levels of "bad cholesterol." The experimental treatment needs to be tested on more patients who would be followed for much longer to confirm the approach is safe and effective. But the results are being hailed as a potential landmark proof-of-concept that could eventually provide a powerful new way to prevent heart attacks and strokes. (Stein, 11/12)

Cutting 1 teaspoon of salt from your diet each day can lower your top blood pressure reading just as much as a typical hypertension medication, even if you don’t have high blood pressure, a new study found. (LaMotte, 11/11)

A new study, and the bold doctor who led it, could result in big questions about how researchers study medical devices and surgical treatments and, eventually, what procedures patients undergo. (Herper, 11/11)

A pair of studies have found that older adults who use marijuana have more risk of heart attack or stroke when hospitalized than non-users and are more likely to develop heart failure if they are a daily user. The two studies, which have not been published, were presented Monday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia. Both studies excluded cannabis users who also smoke tobacco to focus solely on the cardiovascular effects of marijuana consumption. (Matthews, 11/9)

Scientists have developed a new toothpaste that shows potential to prevent severe allergic reactions in adults with peanut allergies. An early-stage clinical trial tested whether 32 adults with peanut allergies could safely brush their teeth with the toothpaste, which contains trace amounts of peanut protein. The hope is that introducing small amounts of peanuts to the body over time will help the immune system get used to the allergen and reduce severe reactions. (Mogg, 11/9)

Some pet foods have been recalled after infants were sickened with Salmonella. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and state partners, is investigating seven human cases of Salmonella Kiambu infection potentially associated with pet food made by Mid America Pet Food,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a release Thursday. (Suter, 11/10)

The CDC said illness onsets ranged from January 14 to August 19. One patient was hospitalized, and no deaths were reported. Six patients are children younger than 1 year. A sample of the dog food collected and tested by the South Carolina State Department of Agriculture yielded the outbreak strain, and genetic sequencing shows that the strain is closely related to the one that infected people. (Schnirring, 11/10)

Officials in Nebraska are testing more than 500 children and staff at an Omaha area YMCA drop-in daycare center for possible exposure to tuberculosis after a case at the site prompted a public health emergency. On Thursday, Douglas County Health Director Lindsay Huse declared an emergency citing the risk of the infectious disease spreading at the Westview YMCA, in the Omaha suburbs. Exposures would have happened between May and late October. The incubation period for tuberculosis is from two and 10 weeks. (Cuevas, 11/11)

Tuberculosis testing for hundreds of children in Omaha began Saturday, after a large group of infants, toddlers and children was potentially exposed to infection through a drop-in day-care program. More than 500 children need to be tested within the next week, local health officials said, and younger ones will be given preventive drugs. It’s an unusually large tuberculosis exposure of children, who are more vulnerable to the disease and can become very sick quickly. (McDaniel, 11/11)

The famed media personality and sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer will serve as New York’s loneliness ambassador, a first-of-its-kind role intended to assist an underserved mental health need, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced Friday. Westheimer, known for her once-prominent radio and television shows as simply “Dr. Ruth,” pitched Hochul on the job last year. (Robertson, 11/10)

"Farming can be a lonely endeavor, and it can also be a stressful industry when the economy takes a turn for the worst, tornadoes and derechos devastate farmland, and animal diseases infect flocks and livestock — all of which impact the well-being of our producers," Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, explained to Fox News Digital. Feenstra's bill, the Farmers First Act, is meant to "expand behavioral health resources in our rural communities and connect our farmers with medical professionals who can provide the care that our producers deserve," he said. (Elkind, 11/12)

There are more Americans who say they have serious cognitive problems — with remembering, concentrating or making decisions — than at any time in the last 15 years, data from the Census Bureau shows. The increase started with the pandemic: The number of working-age adults reporting “serious difficulty” thinking has climbed by an estimated one million people. (Paris, 11/13)

A majority of those polled in a survey released Friday say the U.S. is losing ground on illegal drugs. The Gallup survey found that 52 percent of Americans said the country has lost ground in the fight against drugs, which Gallup said was a first since it began polling on the subject in 1972. A record-low 24 percent said the nation has made progress in the fight, while 23 percent said things had stood still. (Suter, 11/10)

Sixty years after Harvard fired Timothy Leary over his experiments with psychedelic drugs, a hospital affiliated with the university has reopened the door on such research by testing whether hallucinogenic mushrooms can help dying patients face death. (Saltzman, 11/10)

When Krista Marquick discovered kratom, it filled a hole in her life that quitting alcohol had left — kratom is often served at specialized bars, so it provided a way to socialize with friends and unwind after work without, she thought, the risk of addiction. Within a few months, Marquick found herself with a brand new addiction that left her feeling, as she put it, “out of control.” On bad days, she spent $80 on kratom. (Xie and John Milton, 11/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Who Will Care For Older Adults? We’ve Plenty Of Know-How But Too Few Specialists

Thirty-five years ago, Jerry Gurwitz was among the first physicians in the United States to be credentialed as a geriatrician — a doctor who specializes in the care of older adults. “I understood the demographic imperative and the issues facing older patients,” Gurwitz, 67 and chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, told me. “I felt this field presented tremendous opportunities.” (Graham, 11/10)

The largest hospital in Gaza has ceased to function and fatalities among patients are rising, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday, as a fierce Israeli assault continues in the Hamas-controlled strip. Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave, including the al-Shifa complex, are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside, with three newborns dead and more at risk from power outages amid intense fighting nearby, according to medical staff. (Al-Mughrabi and Williams, 11/13)

Thousands of people appear to have fled from Gaza’s largest hospital as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle outside its gates, but hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies at risk of dying because of a lack of electricity, remained inside, health officials said Monday. With only intermittent communications, it was difficult to reconcile competing claims from the Israeli military, which said it was providing a safe corridor for people to move south, and Palestinian health officials inside the hospital, who said the compound was surrounded by constant heavy gunfire. (Shurafa and Magdy, 11/13)

More patients are dying because of a lack of power at Gaza’s main hospital, medical staff said on Sunday amid conflicting accounts from Israel and health authorities in Gaza over why a badly needed fuel delivery for the besieged and crumbling facility had been held up. (Yee, Harouda and Abuheweila, 11/13)

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 9,000 Minnesotans could be drinking contaminated water and not even know it. ... "Nitrate pollution is primarily caused by fertilizer and manure application to agricultural fields," Currie said. "It is a naturally occurring compound as well. But when it exceeds certain levels, it can cause pretty dramatic health impacts." (Henry, 11/10)

The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the city’s first case of St. Louis Encephalitis — a mosquito-borne virus with symptoms akin to West Nile virus — on Thursday, Nov. 9. It’s the first documented case of St. Louis Encephalitis, or SLEV, in Long Beach since 1984, the health department said Thursday. The city’s announcement came a little more than a week after it confirmed a case of dengue fever. (Hutchings, 11/10)

Infant mortality in Missouri went up 16% between 2021 and 2022, according to federal data released this month. Missouri babies died before their first birthday at a rate of 6.8 per 1,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers were painful to see for Melinda Monroe, CEO of Nurses for Newborns, a nonprofit that provides screening services and care for infants and families. (Fentem, 11/10)

Pharmacies were once abundant in the South Side of Chicago. Now, residents living in the majority Black neighborhood often find themselves with few options when it’s time to get a prescription refilled or stock up on cold medicine. (Nayak, 11/10)

Harris County officials on Thursday offered few details about the investigation into a recent ransomware attack on the county’s provider for mental health services, saying cybesecurity experts had recommended they not share information. ... Late Wednesday, officials with the center said it had been the target of a ransomware attack Tuesday and that some employee files had become inaccessible because of encryption. (deGrood, 11/9)

How many radiologists does it take to build a working MRI from scratch? New York University radiologists Leeor Alon and Tobias Block wanted to find out. The two hosted 50 researchers in New York City last month, and over the course of five days, managed to build a small, low-field MRI. Alon and Block are currently fine-tuning its imaging abilities. The overarching message of the gathering: MRIs don’t need to be as expensive as they currently are. (Lawrence, 11/13)

Four homeless people have died in Anchorage in the last week, underscoring the city’s ongoing struggle to house a large homeless population at the same time winter weather has returned, with more than 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow falling within 48 hours. (Thiessen, 11/11)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Why It’s So Tough To Reduce Unnecessary Medical Care

The U.S. spends huge amounts of money on health care that does little or nothing to help patients, and may even harm them. In Colorado, a new analysis shows that the number of tests and treatments conducted for which the risks and costs exceed the benefits has barely budged despite a decade-long attempt to tamp down on such care. The state — including the government, insurers, and patients themselves — spent $134 million last year on what is called low-value care, according to the report by the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, a Denver nonprofit that collects billing data from health plans across Colorado. The top low-value items in terms of spending in each of the past three years were prescriptions for opiates, prescriptions for multiple antipsychotics, and screenings for vitamin D deficiency, according to the analysis. (Hawryluk, 11/13)

The first person I met with long COVID was Kenton Kaplan, a student I was mentoring at Georgetown University. Without much warning, he had called me in January 2022 to drop out of our departmental honors program. As we talked over the next year and a half, he told me about debilitating fatigue, dizziness and intense memory inconsistencies. He and his doctors believed that these symptoms were related to a COVID infection he likely caught at a New Year’s Eve party. (Emily Mendenhall, 11/10)

According to researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Health, Department of Nursing, nurses are at higher risk of suicide than the general population. And it goes without saying that our nurses are in serious need of support. (Kate Judge, 11/12)

Shelly has long known that short staffing undermines quality care, but the understaffing crisis has recently hit a boiling point. On most shifts, she's one of just two CNAs caring for 60 residents. Residents rely on her for everything from bathing to eating to getting dressed, not to mention daily health emergencies. (Mary Kay Henry and Ai-jen Poo, 11/9)

In the U.S. over 550,000 people are on kidney dialysis but less than 100,000 have even managed to get on a waiting list for a transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation. That’s not because those who didn’t make the cut wouldn’t benefit from a transplant — about half of them will die within five years — there was just no point in trying. There are only enough donors for about 25,000 transplants every year. (Michael L. Davis, 11/13)

As Kansans get older, many will experience some form of hearing loss. By age 60, 30% of older adults will experience hearing loss, and by age 80, that statistic rises to 50%. Often, older Kansans will eventually move to long-term care facilities. Yet these facilities frequently do not have communication support for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing — leaving a large percentage of seniors without the resources they need to thrive. The good news is we could start to address this issue immediately by expanding Medicaid. (Robert J. Cooper, 11/12)

In late August 2017, Hurricane Harvey brought Texas rain that just wouldn’t stop. After four torrential days, 75 people had died, and Houston — America’s fourth largest city — was deep under water. But given that the area is home to Superfund sites, fossil fuel-fired power plants, and other petrochemical hubs, this wasn’t ordinary rainwater. It was more like a toxic soup. Aerial photographs taken in the aftermath of the storm show the luminescent sheen of oil slicks and other toxins spreading across the city. Dangerous chemicals were also in the air. (Jacob Carter and Martha Kinsella, 11/10)

With the election of Rep. Mike Johnson as speaker of the House, the urgent and important work of passing appropriations and vital national security legislation is now advancing. But it is also the time to address additional important issues affecting the well-being of Americans, such as one highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as recent wildfires and hurricanes: the care and support for America’s most vulnerable. Leading health organizations and experts in geriatrics, pediatrics, and the care of the disabled have long cited the need to address the health consequences of these vulnerable groups when disasters disrupt their care. (Robert Kadlec, Sue Anna Bell and Michael Wasserman, 11/13)