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Opioid overdose deaths have now slowed to the lowest levels nationwide since 2020, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This marks the 12th straight month of decline since a peak last year. Around 70,655 deaths linked to opioids like heroin and fentanyl were reported for the year ending June 2024, the CDC now estimates, falling 18% from the same time in 2023.Almost all states, except for a handful in the West from Alaska through Nevada, are now seeing a significant decrease in overdose death rates. Early data from Canada also suggests overdose deaths there might now be slowing off of a peak in 2023 too. (Tin, 11/13)

Two drug companies will have to pay Baltimore City over $260 million in damages after a jury found them liable Tuesday for contributing to the city's opioid crisis, The Baltimore Banner confirmed. Jury deliberations began on Friday, Nov. 8, and concluded Tuesday afternoon.  Following a six-week trial, the jury decided drug distributors McKesson and AmerisourceBergen would split the $266 million payment. (Lockman, 11/13)

The Arizona Department of Education is distributing opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan to schools across the state in an effort to address the crisis. The Arizona National Guard helped distribute the first 4,000 of 16,000 Narcan kits this week to schools who requested them. The Narcan kits are provided by the Arizona Department of Health Services at no cost to the schools. (Hommel, 11/14)

A notorious Detroit drug dealer who smuggled cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S. from Mexico is going to prison for 60 years after a jury previously found him guilty of running a massive drug operation that peddled deadly drugs in the Saginaw area. (Baldas, 1/13)

With full control of the House and Senate, President-elect Trump and his fellow Republicans have the power to assert their will over health care policies. The GOP is set to have at least 218 seats in the House of Representatives, maintaining control of the chamber, according to CNN, NBC, and ABC. The party has at least 52 seats in the Senate. (Wilkerson, 11/13)

Congress’ most influential health panels will see dramatic changes next year, with several advocates on specific issues like mental health, Medicare and drug pricing retiring or losing their reelection bids. The biggest changes will be in store at the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose wide-ranging jurisdiction includes health insurance, biomedical research, and drug and device safety. (Raman, 11/13)

Mike Johnson clinched the internal GOP nod to serve as speaker again. But he’s not in the clear yet — the true test is a formal vote on the House floor in January, where he’ll have almost no room for error. House Republicans voted unanimously Wednesday to make Johnson their speaker nominee, according to three people in the room. The Louisiana Republican has been shoring up support for months, crisscrossing the country to campaign for his colleagues, and the party is expected to hold onto House control by a slim margin. (Carney and Beavers, 11/13)

President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are readying unconventional strategies to implement at least some recommendations from a new government spending commission with or without congressional approval, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations. ... Although changes to government spending typically require an act of Congress, Trump aides are exploring plans to challenge a 1974 budget law in a way that would give the White House the power to unilaterally adopt the Musk commission’s proposals, one of the people said. ... That effort, if successful, could give Trump far greater authority to remake the federal budget on his own, altering the balance of power among the branches of government. (Stein, Dwoskin, Zakrzewski and Bogage, 11/13)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: After Congress Ended Extra Cash Aid For Families, Communities Tackle Child Poverty Alone 

If you bring a baby into the Hurley Children’s Center clinic in downtown Flint, Michigan, Mona Hanna will find you. The pediatrician, who gained national prominence for helping uncover the city’s water crisis in 2015, strode across the waiting room in her white lab coat, eyes laser-focused on the chubby baby in the lap of an unsuspecting parent. “Hi! I’m Dr. Mona!” she said warmly. “Any chance you guys live in Flint?” She learned the family is from neighboring Grand Blanc. (Wells, 11/14)

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., plans to file a resolution in the House on Thursday that would express support for the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution, which sets the term limits for the president. Term limits are already enshrined in the Constitution in the 22nd Amendment, so the resolution would have little tangible effect, and it's unclear whether it will get a vote on the House floor, which Republicans control. However, he could introduce it as a privileged resolution to force Republicans to vote on the matter. (Shabad and Kapur, 11/13)

To run for a third term, he’d have to repeal that amendment, and that would be difficult. Undoing a constitutional amendment requires an overwhelming level of support from Congress and state legislatures, support he would be unable to obtain. There are two ways to go about rolling back an amendment. The first would require two-thirds of both the House — 290 members — and the Senate — 67 members — to agree to do so. Once they did so, three-fourths of all states — 38 — would then also have to agree. (Zhou, 11/11)

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointments for top government jobs continued to roll in fast and furiously on Wednesday, and his promise to build a presidential administration fueled by retribution quickly came into view. Those plans were perhaps best summarized by Representative Matt Gaetz, who wrote of his enthusiasm for the wholesale elimination of federal law enforcement agencies just hours before Mr. Trump announced he’d chosen the Florida Republican to lead the Justice Department: “We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people,” Mr. Gaetz wrote on social media on Wednesday. “And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!” (Rogers, 11/13)

The attorney general could influence pressing questions of abortion policy, such as whether to enforce the 1800s anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, which abortion opponents believe could be used to ban the mailing of abortion pills — or even to ban abortion entirely. As a member of Congress, Matt Gaetz has opposed abortion rights, earning an A+ rating from the anti-abortion advocacy group SBA Pro-Life America. He voted against a bill that would have protected the right to contraception and in 2021 co-sponsored a proposed national ban on abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy. In Congress, Gaetz has also opposed federal LGBTQ+ protections such as the Equality Act. (Norwood, Luthra, Rummler and Becker, 11/13)

His resignation came the same day Donald Trump nominated him to be attorney general, but some Republicans think he had other motivations. One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, tied Gaetz’s resignation to trying to “stymie the ethics investigation that is coming out in one week.” (Beavers and Carney, 11/13)

Conservative lawmakers hope that scrapping abortion access policies at the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs will be among the first major changes when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. But overturning those policies may not be as easy as a quick executive order. Advocates say that public protests and legal fights — especially in the case of VA rules — could create roadblocks for the incoming president in the months ahead. (Shane III, 11/13)

Pete Hegseth, 44, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, has said that he believes women should not serve in combat and that he wants to see the military purged of “woke” officials who support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. ... “I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said on the podcast. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.” (Kirell and Ortiz, 11/13)

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move back into the White House, gun violence prevention advocates are bracing for him to keep his campaign promise to sign a nationwide "concealed carry reciprocity" law. The move would allow gun owners with concealed carry permits to travel with their weapons to all 50 states, even those that do not honor out-of-state permit holders from doing so. (Hutchinson, 11/13)

Theodore B. Olson, a leading Supreme Court litigator who built a sturdy reputation as a conservative power lawyer during the 1980s and ’90s, and then surprised colleagues and foes alike when he took up traditionally liberal causes like gay marriage and the children of undocumented immigrants, died on Wednesday in Fairfax, Va. He was 84. Lady Booth Olson, his wife, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was a stroke. Mr. Olson’s third wife, Barbara Olson, was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. One client whom Mr. Olson refused to take on was President Donald J. Trump, when he was asked to join the White House legal team during Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Olson told MSNBC that taking the job would have been too risky. (Risen, 11/13)

The top US public health official warned about the threat of curtailing vaccination efforts as longtime skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prepares for an influential role in the incoming Trump administration. “We have a very short memory of what it is like to hold a child who has been paralyzed with polio, or to comfort a mom who lost their kid from measles,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen said Wednesday at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit in Washington. “I don’t want to have to see us go backward in order to remind ourselves that vaccines work.” (Smith, 11/13)

Two senior Biden administration officials on Wednesday warned there could be serious consequences for the nation’s children if it had to relearn lessons about the public health benefits of vaccines. (Branswell and Oza, 11/13)

After years of financial growth, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recorded a more than 30% drop in revenue last year, to $16 million, according to recent tax filings. The pandemic boosted the profiles and pocketbooks of anti-vaccine organizations and activists, but none more than Children’s Health Defense and Kennedy. The nonprofit doubled its revenue in 2020 to $6.8 million, then grew again to $16 million in 2021 and $23.5 million in 2022. Last year was the first substantial loss in the organization’s history, of about $3 million, driven by a reduction in contributions, according to the filings.  (Zadrozny, 11/13)

Moderate Republican senators, some of whom have bucked President-elect Trump in the past, are reluctant to criticize Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who could be nominated for a Senate-confirmed health care leadership role in the next Trump administration. Kennedy has recently tried to distance himself from the anti-vaccine rhetoric that’s made him famous, claiming he just wants more data about vaccines. But for decades, Kennedy has pushed the unfounded theory that vaccines cause autism. (Zhang, Wilkerson and Owermohle, 11/13)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faults Democrats for failing to prioritize healthy food. “The fact that Democratic sachems are debating whether their party should support public health as a political strategy rather than embracing it as a core value is testimony to how out of touch and morally bankrupt the party has become,” Kennedy told The Washington Post. “Healthy food and clean, uncorrupted government agencies ought not to be partisan issues.” (Roubein, Weber, Scherer and Ovalle, 11/14)

What happens when a 78-year-old, Diet Coke-drinking, McDonald’s-consuming president-elect buddies up with an alternative medicine aficionado like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? He gets publicly chided for his eating habits. Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic whose ideas about remaking the nation’s public health system include getting processed food off grocery store shelves, spared no niceties in passing judgment on Mr. Trump’s food choices during a recent interview with Joe Polish, a marketing industry podcaster. His remarks were first reported by The Daily Beast. “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” Mr. Kennedy said, recounting the offerings on Mr. Trump’s plane. (Stolberg, 11/13)

Less than 1% of all state medical-board disciplinary actions against physicians in the five most populous US states were for spreading misinformation about topics such as vaccines and therapies during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared with 29% for negligence, according to an analysis from the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Law. Yet two public health experts argue that, because of First Amendment rights and other factors, that's how it should be. (Van Beusekom, 11/13)

Nearly 4 in 10 seniors have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine so far this year, new survey data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests, marking a steep increase in vaccination rates compared with the same time last year. The data from the CDC's National Immunization Survey estimates that 37.6% of Americans ages 65 and older had gotten a shot of this season's updated COVID-19 vaccine by Nov. 2, compared with 22.6% of older adults by the same week in 2023. (Tin, 11/13)

Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access. The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes. (Diaz, 11/13)

State lawmakers in Ohio want to prohibit local governments from using public dollars in support of abortion. They’re casting a wide net. Legislation sponsored by state Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania, bars public funds from being given directly or indirectly to an organization that provides abortions that aren’t necessary to protect the life of the mother. In addition, the bill prohibits funding going to any group providing services for people seeking such abortions like transportation, housing or wage reimbursement. (Evans, 11/14)

The left sees setbacks on abortion, drug legalization, minimum wage and election-process questions from coast to coast. (Schultheis, Zhang and Ukenye, 11/13)

In the Texas panhandle city of Amarillo on Election Day, in the buckle of the Bible Belt, Dexie Organ, 60, dressed in black leggings and a red shirt, stepped out of her beat-up Nissan and headed across the parking lot to vote. On her way, she saw a volunteer holding a sign that read: “Vote No on Prop A.” Organ stopped. “I need a little education,” she told the sign-holder, Diann Anderson, who explained to her that Proposition A was an abortion travel ban that would deputize private citizens to sue anyone they suspected of helping someone travel through Amarillo to get an abortion out of state. “I do believe that is unconstitutional,” Organ told me. “We’re women; I don’t know why they think they need to suppress us.” Organ told me she has 14 children—and she’s had an abortion. “I have eight daughters…and I want them to have what they want,” she told me. (Littlefield, 11/14)

Americans have been stocking up on emergency contraception and abortion pills in the wake of the election, with reproductive health company Cadence OTC reporting purchases in a single day that were five times the amount it normally gets in a week. But amid this surge in interest, social media discourse has also been highlighting concerns about whether the drugs are less effective for people at higher weights. (Broderick, 11/14)

Despite deep partisan divides on issues like abortion and contraceptive access, lawmakers from both parties appear to have forged a cautious consensus on another women’s issue: menopause. The agreement became evident earlier this year, when a bipartisan group of female senators introduced legislation that would increase federal research on menopause and coordinate the federal government’s existing programs related to menopause and midlife women’s health for the first time. (Heller, 11/13)

Many pregnant women in the U.S., particularly in the South, face inadequate prenatal care, complicated by abortion restrictions, air pollution and extreme heat, according to a new March of Dimes report. As a result, there have been no improvements in the preterm birth rate in the last 10 years. In its annual report, released Thursday, the March of Dimes gave the U.S. a dismal D+ grade based on the number of babies born too soon last year. Last year, the preterm birth rate was 10.4%. In 2022, it was 10.5%. In fact, little has changed in the past decade. In 2013, the preterm birth rate was 9.8%. (Edwards, 11/14)

Infant mortality rates remained relatively unchanged from 2022 to 2023, but racial and ethnic disparities still persist, new provisional federal data released early Thursday finds. The U.S. provisional infant mortality rate in 2023 was 5.61 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, unchanged from the 2022 rate, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The report also found that infants born to Black mothers still died at much higher rates than those born to white and Asian mothers -- more than double the rate of white infant mortality, according to the CDC. (Kekatos and Rayala, 11/14)

A decade ago, one ZIP code in Akron had the highest infant mortality rate in the country. The rest of Ohio wasn’t faring much better. Of every 1,000 babies born in the state, statistically 7.6 died — one of the highest rates in the nation. Since then, Ohio policy makers have attempted to reduce infant deaths, even passing bipartisan legislation with that goal in mind. But years later, more than seven of every 1,000 babies born in Ohio still die before their first birthday, according to a report from Groundwork Ohio, a nonprofit that advocates for the state’s young children. (Gottsacker, 11/13)

With a lack of regulation for coroners, a child who dies unexpectedly or outside of a doctor’s care in Idaho is less likely to be autopsied than anywhere else in the United States. (Dutton, 11/11)

Hospitals performed more than 200,000 unnecessary back surgeries on Medicare beneficiaries in the U.S. over three years, according to a new analysis. Roughly $2 billion was spent on the "low value" procedures while patients were put at risk of poor outcomes, researchers from the Lown Institute wrote. (Reed, 11/14)

Aetna, Cigna and Elevance Health sell Medicare Advantage plans. But that doesn't necessarily mean they want people to buy them. Partway through the Medicare annual enrollment period for 2025, which started Oct. 15 and ends Dec. 7, those three insurers stopped offering commissions to brokers and other third-party marketers who steer new customers toward some of their Medicare Advantage products. Sam Melamed, CEO of the dental and vision insurer NCD and founder of a social media platform for brokers and agents called Insurance Forums, has never seen anything like it. (Tepper, 11/13)

For Lincare, paying multimillion-dollar legal settlements is an integral part of doing business. The company, the largest distributor of home oxygen equipment in the United States, admitted billing Medicare for ventilators it knew customers weren’t using (2024) and overcharging Medicare and thousands of elderly patients (2023). It settled allegations of violating a law against kickbacks (2018) and charging Medicare for patients who had died (2017). The company resolved lawsuits alleging a “nationwide scheme to pay physicians kickbacks to refer their patients to Lincare” (2006) and that it falsified claims that its customers needed oxygen (2001). (Lincare admitted wrongdoing in only the two most recent settlements.) (Elkind, 11/13)

Medicare Advantage now provides health coverage to around 55% of the nation’s seniors, but some hospitals and health systems are choosing to end contracts with some MA plans due to administrative hurdles. The most frequently cited challenges include high prior authorization denial rates and delayed payments from insurers. Becker's connected with four health system CFOs at our 12th Annual CEO-CFO Roundtable on Nov. 11 to understand how hospital finance leaders are navigating Medicare Advantage today. (Emerson, 11/11)

Nurses at University of Illinois Hospital & Clinics walked off the job Wednesday morning, with plans to strike for an indefinite length of time. The nurses are seeking better security to prevent patients from attacking them at the hospital, are concerned about potential staffing changes, and they’re asking for higher pay. (Schencker, 11/13)

Baystate Health has eliminated 134 leadership positions as part of a larger cost-saving effort amid financial challenges. The cuts will affect less than 1% of the system's workforce, the system said in a statement Wednesday. Some of the affected positions are vacant roles that will not be filled. (Desilva, 11/13)

The Ohio Auditor of State’s office has released the findings of its criminal investigation and special audit of the allegations that ex-MetroHealth president and CEO Dr. Akram Boutros paid himself $1.9 million in unauthorized bonuses. The report, published Tuesday, Nov. 12, on the state auditor’s website, says the office concluded Boutros’ actions were not criminal, and it was not able to determine whether he had proper authorization to receive supplemental performance-based variable compensation (SPBVC). (Bennett, 11/13)

Although palliative care has been shown to improve quality of life for patients with severe illnesses, two studies from St. Louis University researchers indicate it’s not offered frequently to patients who may benefit from the treatment. Palliative care is treatment that helps manage side effects, symptoms and mental health issues for people with cancer and other severe illnesses. (Fentem, 11/14)

The weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy may be beneficial for people struggling with alcohol addiction, a study published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry said. The study examined about 228,000 people in Sweden who had alcohol use disorder and Type 2 diabetes. The people who were taking drugs like semaglutide were less likely to be hospitalized for alcohol-related issues. Of the nearly 228,000 individuals, 58.5 percent experienced alcohol-related hospitalization. The study noted that while semaglutide drugs “substantially decreased” the risk of hospitalization, the results were not associated with suicide attempts. (Irwin, 11/13)

Hims & Hers is launching a new GLP-1 tracker in its efforts to fight back against the FDA’s decision to end compounded GLP-1s on the market. The tracker allows patients to self-identify, provide their location, and say which brand of GLP-1 drug they are not able to find. The data will be aggregated and regularly published by Hims in order to provide proof to the FDA that the shortages of the branded drugs haven’t ended, according to co-founder and CEO Andrew Dudum. (Khemlani, 11/13)

Following an impressive data drop this summer highlighting the potential for Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide to stave off progression to Type 2 diabetes in prediabetic patients, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker is laying out full results from its longest completed study of the dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist to date. In the three-year SURMOUNT-1 trial, tirzepatide curbed the risk of disease progression to Type 2 diabetes by 94% versus placebo in adult prediabetes patients who were obese or overweight, Lilly said in a release Wednesday. (Kansteiner, 11/13)

23andMe, the struggling ancestry tracing company, continues to spiral, raising questions about its business prospects and what could happen to its sensitive customer genetic testing data. CEO Anne Wojcicki has said she intends to take the company private and is not considering third-party takeover proposals. Customer data collected from its genetic testing tools makes up the company's most valuable asset. Because 23andMe is not a health care company, health privacy laws don't apply, raising questions about what the business might opt to do with its 15 million users' personal genetic data. (Cerullo, 11/13)

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration continues to struggle with a lack of investigators needed to inspect domestic and foreign pharmaceutical manufacturing plants and has not yet developed a plan to keep needed staff, a U.S. government watchdog found. (Silverman, 11/13)

The Ohio Senate on Wednesday approved a ban on transgender students using bathrooms that fit their gender identities and sent the measure to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. The Republican-backed bill applies to public K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. It requires the schools to designate separate bathrooms, locker rooms and overnight accommodations “for the exclusive use” of either males and females, based on one’s gender assigned at or near birth, in both school buildings and facilities used for a school-sponsored event. (Smyth, 11/13)

An eighth grade transgender boy, who was allegedly threatened with expulsion for using the boys restroom, is suing his South Carolina school district and the state over a budget rule that restricts accommodations for transgender students. In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, John Doe, a pseudonym for a 13-year-old student in the Berkeley County School District, said that administrators told him in August he could only use the girls restroom or a single-occupancy toilet in the nurse’s office due to a new state rule. The school suspended him for a day when administrators later caught him using the boys restroom, and the principal warned that the punishment could escalate to expulsion if he did it again, according to the suit. (Kingkade, 11/13)

A Tennessee couple says the district is failing to accommodate their 9-year-old son’s service dog, which helps detect his seizures. (Edwards, 11/13)

Disability rights advocates said kids like Ty should not be getting arrested under Tennessee’s school threats law. And they tried to push for a broader exception for kids with other kinds of disabilities. It didn’t work. (Swaby and Pfleger, 11/13)

Applications for MinnesotaCare, a health care program for Minnesotans with low incomes, are now open to all residents, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, as long as they meet other eligibility criteria. People living in Minnesota can qualify for MinnesotaCare if they have an income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, irrespective of immigration status, according to the Department of Human Services. (Thamer, 11/13)

The Chinese community, like many others, has a growing elderly population while facing a critical shortage of caregivers. As the largest Asian ethnic group aged 65 years and older, Chinese Americans are projected to grow to 7.9 million by 2060, more than tripling from 2.5 million in 2019. With more Chinese American adult children moving away from traditional expectations of caregiving, the need for care has increased. Chinese seniors often struggle to find caregivers who can speak the language and attend to their needs. As a result, undocumented Chinese workers are increasingly entering  the workforce to address the shortage of caregivers for older Chinese adults. (Zhao, 11/11)

Providers and advocates renewed their calls to reject a potential return to Medicaid managed care during multiple meetings hosted by the Department of Social Services last week. (Golvala, 11/13)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: As California Taps Pandemic Stockpile For Bird Flu, Officials Keep Close Eye On Spending

California public health officials are dipping into state and federal stockpiles to equip up to 10,000 farmworkers with masks, gloves, goggles, and other safety gear as the state confirms at least 21 human cases of bird flu as of early November. It’s the latest reminder of the state’s struggle to remain prepared amid multibillion-dollar deficits. Officials said they began distributing more than 2 million pieces of personal protective equipment in late May, four months before the first human case was confirmed in the state. They said they began ramping up coordination with local health officials in April after bird flu was first detected in cattle in the U.S. Bird flu has now been confirmed at more than 270 dairies in central California, and traces were recently detected at a wastewater sampling site in Los Angeles County. Bird flu was also recently detected in a flock of commercial turkeys in Sacramento County. (Thompson, 11/14)

Foodborne and opportunistic pathogens can survive wastewater treatment when they hitch a ride on microplastics in the water and quickly form a supportive and protective microbial biofilm, posing a potential threat to human and environmental health when the treated water is reused for things like drinking and crop irrigation, suggest researchers from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. (Van Beusekom, 11/12)

Surveillance data released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that rates of meningococcal disease have risen sharply in the United States since 2021 and now exceed pre–COVID-19 levels. A total of 438 confirmed and probable cases of meningococcal disease were reported in 2023, the most US cases reported since 2013. (Dall, 11/13)

At least 104 people have been sickened, with 34 hospitalized, in an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions served on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers, federal health officials said Wednesday. Cases have been detected in 14 states, according to an update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One person died in Colorado and four people have developed a potentially life-threatening kidney disease complication. (Aleccia, 11/13)

A Canadian teenager who is in critical condition after contracting H5N1 bird flu was infected with a version of the virus that is different from the one circulating in dairy cattle in the United States, Canadian authorities announced Wednesday. (Branswell, 11/13)

In 2017, Maryland’s Department of Health found funding for a program to send caseworkers to the homes of asthmatic children to help get their disease under control, but they had a problem: finding the kids. Targeting infectious diseases like influenza or lead exposure would have been easier: State laws required reporting those illnesses to public health officials. But asthma is a chronic disease that health care providers weren’t required to report. How could caseworkers find the children they wanted to help? (Feder, 11/13)

Most Americans could probably guess that heart disease, diabetes and cancer are among the world’s fastest-growing causes of death. Yet one rapidly accelerating health threat now lurks under the radar, despite its devastating consequences. The threat comes from antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, the evolved immunity of dangerous microbes to lifesaving drugs. (Howard Dean, 11/13)

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data in May of this year that showed overall progress in reducing new HIV infections, everyone breathed a sigh of relief — and had the sense that the light at the end of the tunnel in a 40-year epidemic was getting brighter. Of course, the paradox of progress is that it reveals how much further we must go. Case in point: The same CDC data also revealed a largely invisible crisis facing Latinos. (Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, 11/13)

You’re probably not worried about the role that Strava is playing in the teen mental health crisis. But you should be. Strava seems extremely benign — especially compared to an app like Instagram or TikTok. It simply “lets you track your running and riding with GPS, join Challenges, share photos from your activities, and follow friends,” in the company’s own words. Yet we recently heard a high school track coach point to Strava as an example of how tech can contribute to the pressure teens face. Even during the off-season, teens see how their runs compare with those of their peers three towns over or three states away. Competition isn’t confined to competitions; it’s accessible and quantifiable all year long. (Emily Weinstein and Sara Konrath, 11/14)

During the closing weeks of the election, Republican campaigns spent over $65 million on ads ridiculing, among several candidates, Kamala Harris for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” and “illegal aliens,” all ending with variations on the tagline: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” (Pamela Paul, 11/14)

As a medical intern in the late 1980s, I’d occasionally see priests and rabbis on hospital wards, but we basically ignored one another. When we doctors walked into a patient’s room, they’d quickly leave, and when we exited, they’d enter. They seemed to operate in a wholly different realm. After all, we were scientific. They weren’t. But in recent years, as patients’ and their families’ religious, spiritual, and existential attitudes and needs have shifted, so, too, have chaplains. (Robert Klitzman, 11/14)