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Hoarding disorder disproportionately affects older people. As baby boomers age, it is a growing public health concern. Effective treatments are scarce, and treating hoarding can require expensive interventions that drain municipal resources. Some experts fear a coming crisis.
Tools used to contain previous bird flu outbreaks aren鈥檛 working this time, experts say. The virus has sickened at least 67 people in the U.S. and killed one, with egg producers begging for a new approach. 鈥淚 call this virus a terrorist,鈥 said one egg farmer, who lost 6.5 million birds to H5N1 in two weeks.
Some hospitals are bringing in dogs to spend entire shifts with doctors and nurses. The trained canines help staffers cope with the stress of their work amid high levels of burnout.
The number of unhoused seniors in the U.S. is expected to triple by 2030. About half of this population is becoming homeless for the first time. Homeless services struggle to help. Finding affordable housing that鈥檚 also accessible for older Americans with medical conditions is an extra challenge.
The migration of fentanyl into illicit stimulants such as cocaine is especially dangerous for people who are not regular opioid users. That鈥檚 because they have a low tolerance for opioids, putting them at greater risk of an overdose. They also often don鈥檛 take precautions 鈥 such as not using alone and carrying the opioid reversal medication naloxone 鈥 so they鈥檙e unprepared if they overdose.
Doctors in Boston got tired of writing letters to utility companies asking for assistance for their medically vulnerable patients who need power and heat to stay healthy. So a hospital decided to share the power its solar panels generate with patients who needed help with their electricity and gas bills.
Last winter, only 4 in 10 nursing home residents got an updated covid vaccine. The low uptake leaves a fragile population vulnerable. Some industry watchdogs say it could be a sign of eroding trust between nursing home residents and providers.
The child tax credit passed by Congress at the height of covid has expired, but states and localities are trying to fill the gap with their own programs and funding. In Michigan, Rx Kids already covers every family with a new baby in Flint. Now, other communities aim to follow.
Medications such as methadone can cut the risk of a fatal opioid overdose in half. Medicaid covers the medication. But as state Medicaid programs reevaluated coverage of each enrollee following a pause in disenrollments during the covid-19 pandemic, some patients lost a crucial pillar of their sobriety.
State and local governments are struggling to keep up with the increasing burden of heat-related illness as summers get hotter because of climate change. In Missoula County, Montana, officials are working with researchers to understand trends in heat-related 911 calls.
Ten states have not expanded Medicaid, leaving 1.5 million people ineligible for the state and federal insurance program and also unable to afford private insurance. Seven of those states are in the South, where expansion efforts may have momentum but where lawmakers say political polarization is holding them back.
Louisiana lawmakers have added two drugs commonly used in pregnancy and reproductive health care to the state鈥檚 list of controlled dangerous substances, a move that has alarmed doctors in the state.
Until this spring, Michigan was the only state that had a broad criminal ban on surrogacy. Many families say that left them in limbo: forcing them to leave the state to have children, finding strangers on Facebook who would carry their child, or going through the legal hassle of having to adopt their biological children.
New data on substance use among young adults suggests that many former teen e-cigarette users are continuing the habit.
Puff inhalers can be lifesavers for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases, but some types release potent greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. That, in turn, worsens wildfires, contributes to air pollution, and intensifies allergy seasons 鈥 which can increase the need for inhalers. Some doctors are helping patients switch to more eco-sensitive inhalers.
Some of the nearly 130,000 Montanans who have lost Medicaid coverage as the state reevaluates eligibility are homeless. That鈥檚 in part because Montana kicked more than 80,000 people off the program for technical reasons rather than income ineligibility. For unhoused people who were disenrolled, getting back on Medicaid can be extraordinarily difficult.
Nurses are telling lawmakers that there are not enough of them working in hospitals and that it risks patients鈥 lives. California and Oregon legally limit the number of patients under a nurse鈥檚 care. Other states trying to do the same were blocked by the hospital industry. Now patients鈥 relatives are joining the fight.
The surge in overdose deaths among teens is opening a new path to treatment: pediatricians. A doctor in Massachusetts shows how it works with a 17-year-old patient.
A shortage of primary care providers is driving more people to seek routine care in emergency settings. In Rhode Island, safety-net clinics are under pressure as clinicians retire or burn out, and patients say it鈥檚 harder to find care as they lose connections to familiar doctors.
A California law that takes effect this summer will grant minors on public insurance the ability to get mental health treatment without their parents鈥 consent, a privilege that their peers with private insurance have had for years. But the law has become a flashpoint in the state鈥檚 culture wars.
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