First Edition: May 2, 2023

KFF Health News: After Idaho’s Strict Abortion Ban, OB-GYNs Stage A Quick Exodus
At a brewery in this northern Idaho city, hundreds of people recently held a wake of sorts to mourn the closure of Sandpoint’s only labor and delivery ward, collateral damage from the state’s Republican-led effort to criminalize nearly all abortions. Jen Quintano, the event’s organizer and a Sandpoint resident who runs a tree service, called to the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder as children ran underfoot, “Raise your hand if you were born at Bonner General! Raise your hand if you gave birth at Bonner General!” Nearly everyone raised their hand. (Varney, 5/2)

KFF Health News: The Nation’s Health Secretary Has This Doctor On Call
Carolina Reyes, a Harvard-trained physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, got into medicine to help women obtain health care, especially underserved or marginalized people who face systemic racism. She’s seen progress, albeit slow, over three decades, yet the number of maternal deaths each year continues to rise. Luckily, she’s got the ear of President Joe Biden’s health secretary. (Young, 5/2)

KFF Health News: Community Paramedics Don’t Wait For An Emergency To Visit Rural Patients At Home
Sandra Lane said she has been to the emergency room about eight times this year. The 62-year-old has had multiple falls, struggled with balance and tremors, and experienced severe swelling in her legs. A paramedic recently arrived at her doorstep again, but this time it wasn’t for an emergency. Jason Frye was there for a home visit as part of a new community paramedicine program. (Zionts, 5/2)

KFF Health News: Listen: How Are States Spending Money From The Opioid Settlements? It’s Not Easy To Know
KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani appeared on NPR’s “1A” on May 1 to discuss issues related to how opioid settlement funds are being distributed.

AP: Loneliness Poses Risks As Deadly As Smoking: Surgeon General
Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic. About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an 81-page report from his office. (Seitz, 5/2)

The Hill: More Than 30 Percent Of LGBTQ Youth Attribute Poor Mental Health To Anti-LGBTQ Laws
Close to a third of LGBTQ youth say laws and policies that target LGBTQ people have had a substantial and negative impact on their mental health over the past year, according to an annual report published Monday by The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group. Nearly 1 in 3 LGBTQ young people said their mental health is poor either “most of the time” or “always” because of policies and legislation that takes aim at their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to Monday’s report, which analyzed survey responses from more than 28,000 LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 24 across the U.S. (Migdon, 5/1)

Houston Chronicle: 41% Of LGBTQ Youth Seriously Considered Suicide In 2022, New Survey Finds
LGBTQ youth, and particularly those who are transgender and non-binary, continue to be at high risk of attempting suicide, according to a new survey. The fifth annual survey published by The Trevor Project, the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, found that 41 percent seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including half of transgender and nonbinary young people. That’s down slightly from last year’s 45 percent of LGBTQ youth who seriously considered suicide. (Goldenstein, 5/1)

The New York Times: Emergency Room Visits Have Risen Sharply For Young People In Mental Distress, Study Finds
Mental health-related visits to emergency rooms by children, teenagers and young adults soared from 2011 to 2020, according to a report published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The sharpest increase was for suicide-related visits, which rose fivefold. The findings indicated an “urgent” need for expanded crisis services, according to the team of researchers and physicians who published the report. (Richtel, 5/1)

CIDRAP: More Depression, Especially In Girls, Seen In Kids During Pandemic
A longitudinal meta-analysis today in JAMA Pediatrics surveyed studies published in 12 countries about the rates of anxiety and depression among adolescents and children before and after the pandemic and found that rates of depression increased, especially among female youth in high-income counties. (Soucheray, 5/1)

AP: Feds: Hospitals That Denied Emergency Abortion Broke The Law
Two hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor put her life in jeopardy and violated federal law, a first-of-its-kind investigation by the federal government has found. (Seitz, 5/1)

AP: National Groups Rebut Abortion-Ban Ordinances In New Mexico
National and regional advocacy groups have urged the New Mexico Supreme Court to strike down recent abortion-ban ordinances in several cities and counties, in a legal filing Monday. The Supreme Court has not said yet whether it will consider legal arguments from independent parties, including a professional society for obstetricians and gynecologists, and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. The court blocked local abortion ordinances while it deliberates. (Lee, 5/2)

AP: Oregon Lawmakers Advance Bill On Abortion, Trans Health Care
Oregon lawmakers have advanced a sweeping bill intended to protect abortion and gender-affirming health care for transgender people by boosting legal safeguards and expanding access and insurance coverage. Democratic representatives on Monday night passed the bill along party lines in a House floor vote that stretched for roughly six hours after Republicans sought to stall it. (Rush, 5/2)

AP: Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr Sues Over Removal From House Floor
Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr asked a court Monday to allow for her return to the House floor after she was silenced and barred for chiding her Republican colleagues over legislation to restrict gender-affirming health care and for encouraging protesters. (Beth Hanson and Brown, 5/2)

The Hill: People With Asthma Have Higher Risk Of Cancer, And Not Just In Lungs: Study 
The cancer risk was elevated with statistical significance in 5 of 13 cancers analyzed in the study, not merely in cancers related to the respiratory system: lung cancer, blood cancer, kidney cancer, melanoma and ovarian cancer. The study, researchers assert, is the first “to report a positive association between asthma and overall cancer risk in the US population.” (Mueller, 5/1)

The Washington Post: Inhaled Steroids For Asthma May Offer Some Cancer Protection, Study Says
People with asthma were found to be 36 percent more likely to develop cancer than people who do not suffer from the chronic respiratory disease, according to research published in the journal Cancer Medicine. The study tracked 360,084 participants, ages 18 to 65, for eight years, including 90,021 people with asthma. In that time, those with asthma had a higher risk for developing five types of cancer — lung cancer, blood cancer, melanoma, kidney cancer and ovarian cancer — from the 13 types of cancer the researchers analyzed. (Searing, 5/1)

The Washington Post: Most Federal Covid Vaccine Mandates To End May 11
The Biden administration will end its requirements that most international travelers, federal workers and contractors, health-care workers and Head Start educators be vaccinated against the coronavirus effective on May 11 — the same day it terminates the pandemic-related public health emergency. (Diamond, 5/1)

NPR: Long COVID Clues Point To Viral Reservoirs As Key Target
Brent Palmer's first inkling about long COVID started in the early days of the pandemic, before the term "long COVID" even existed. Some of his friends had caught the virus while on a ski trip and returned home to Colorado with the mysterious, new illness. It was a frightening time — and an irresistible opportunity for Palmer, who studies the immune response to infectious diseases like HIV. (Stone, 5/2)

AP: Rule Requiring Prior OK For Medicaid-Paid Abortions Halted
A judge in Montana temporarily blocked a new rule Monday that would have required physicians in the state to provide prior documentation showing that an abortion is medically necessary before the state’s Medicaid program will authorize payment for the procedure. (5/2)

AP: GOP Candidates Discuss Medicaid Work Requirements In Debate
Several Republican gubernatorial candidates offered support for imposing work requirements for some able-bodied Kentucky adults receiving Medicaid health coverage as they met in a high-stakes debate on statewide television Monday night, about two weeks before the state’s primary election. (Schreiner and Lovan, 5/2)

Politico: Federal Study Details Extent Of PFAS In Firefighters' Gear
Concentrations of "forever chemicals" were found in every textile sample of firefighters' protective gear, according to a federal report that could add fuel to a yearslong battle to get the hazardous chemicals out of firefighters' personal protective equipment. The report, published Monday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, tested 20 new samples from firefighters' gear for 53 types of PFAS and found traces of 26 types. (Borst, 5/1)

CBS News: Freshwater Fish Contaminated With Toxic "Forever Chemicals" Found In Nearly Every State
Health experts have been sounding the alarm about PFAS, human-made toxic chemicals that last so long in the environment and people that they've been called "forever chemicals. The compounds have been linked to cancer and other illnesses, and more than 95% of all Americans who have been tested have detectable levels in their blood. (Saberi, 5/1)

CIDRAP: Study Of Novavax COVID Vaccine Estimates 100% Efficacy Against Hospitalizations
A post hoc analysis of a phase 3 randomized, controlled trial estimates that two doses of the Novavax (NVX-CoV2373) COVID-19 vaccine were 100% effective against hospitalization by 95 days during a period dominated by the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant. (Van Beusekom, 5/1)

CIDRAP: Data Show Omicron Common Cause Of COVID-19 Reinfections
A study of 541 children and young adults in Ohio with two or more SARS-CoV-2 infections finds that the median interval between two infections was 229 days, and reinfection counts were higher during the Omicron era. The study is published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. (Soucheray, 5/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Nurses Flock Back To Hospitals After Leaving In The Pandemic
Many nurses who left hospital staff jobs during the pandemic out of exhaustion or for lucrative temporary jobs are coming back. Their return in recent months, spurred by falling pay from the temp agencies and new hospital perks, is helping ease shortages that have crowded emergency rooms and forced hospitals to turn away patient referrals. (Evans, 5/1)

AP: Wisconsin Legislators To Consider Opioid Settlement Payout
Wisconsin legislators are poised to accept the state’s share of a settlement stemming from another multistate lawsuit accusing drug manufacturers and distributors of contributing to the nation’s opioid crisis. A coalition of states and local governments secured settlements in November and December with opioid manufacturers Teva and Allergan as well as with pharmaceutical chains Walmart, Walgreens and CVS totaling $19.2 billion. (5/2)

AP: Low-Income New Yorkers Win The Right To A Root Canal
For millions of low-income New Yorkers, access to routine dental care has long hinged on whether or not they still have eight crucial teeth. A mouth with just four pairs of matching back teeth is considered “adequate for functional purposes,” according to the state’s rules for Medicaid recipients. And those considered functional, no matter how many other teeth they’re missing, aren’t covered for root canals and crowns, two of the field’s most common procedures. (Offenhartz, 5/1)