First Edition: Jan. 20, 2023

KHN: The ‘KHN Health Minute’ Debuts On CBS News Radio 
Tune in to the first “KHN Health Minute” to hear how noise pollution affects health and why an optimistic outlook may help people live longer. (1/20)

KHN: NFL Has Been Slow To Embrace Mental Health Support For Players 
When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field in the middle of the “Monday Night Football” game in Cincinnati on Jan. 2, Carrie Hastings, half a continent away, understood what she needed to do — and right away. “I had a few guys that I sort of immediately knew I should check in on,” said Hastings, the Los Angeles Rams’ sports psychologist and mental health clinician. “A couple of spouses and significant others, too.” (Kreidler, 1/20)

KHN: Luring Out-Of-State Professionals Is Just The First Step In Solving Montana’s Health Worker Shortage 
Jenna Eisenhart spent nearly six years as a licensed therapist in Colorado before deciding to move to a place with a greater need for her services. She researched rural states facing a shortage of behavioral health providers and accepted a job as a lead clinical primary therapist at Shodair Children’s Hospital in Helena, Montana, in January 2018. But she couldn’t start her new job right away because state officials denied her application for a license to practice in Montana on the grounds that her master’s degree program required only 48 credits to complete instead of 60. (Larson, 1/20)

KHN: As US Bumps Against Debt Ceiling, Medicare Becomes A Bargaining Chip
While repealing the Affordable Care Act seems to have fallen off congressional Republicans’ to-do list for 2023, plans to cut Medicare and Medicaid are back. The GOP wants Democrats to agree to cut spending on both programs in exchange for a vote to prevent the government from defaulting on its debts. Meanwhile, the nation’s health care workers — from nurses to doctors to pharmacists — are feeling the strain of caring not just for the rising number of insured patients seeking care, but also more seriously ill patients who are difficult and sometimes even violent. (1/19)

Politico: Supreme Court Could Not Identify Who Shared Draft Abortion Opinion 
An investigation by the Supreme Court has been unable to determine who disclosed to POLITICO last year a draft opinion overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion, the court said in a statement Thursday. The internal probe zeroed in on 82 employees who had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, but “was unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” the high court said. ... The court’s statement Thursday emphasized the thoroughness of the probe and said former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was retained to review Curley’s work. Chertoff, a widely-respected former federal appeals court judge before joining President George W. Bush’s Cabinet, said there was little else the court could do to solve the mystery. (Gerstein, 1/19)

The New York Times: Supreme Court Says It Hasn’t Found Who Leaked Opinion Overturning Roe
In a 20-page report, the court’s marshal, Gail A. Curley, who oversaw the inquiry, said that investigators had conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom had denied being the source of the leak. But several employees acknowledged that they had told their spouses or partners about the draft opinion and the vote count in violation of the court’s confidentiality rules, the report said. ... Investigators determined that in addition to the nine justices, 82 law clerks and permanent employees of the court had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft opinion, the report said. (Savage and Liptak, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Supreme Court Dobbs Leak: Probe Finds No Hack, Can't Identify Leaker
“No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document,” the 20-page report said, adding that the leak probably came from within. “While investigators and the Court’s IT experts cannot absolutely rule out a hack, the evidence to date reveals no suggestion of improper outside access,” the report said. (Barnes and Marimow, 1/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court Hasn’t Identified Who Leaked Draft Of Opinion Overruling Roe V. Wade
The report didn’t indicate whether the justices themselves were interviewed. A court spokeswoman didn’t respond to questions on the investigation. ... Some found the report deficient. “The court needs to immediately explain if this investigation included interviews of the justices or not,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, a left-leaning advocacy group. “The idea that the justices themselves may have been excluded from the inquiry undermines the credibility of the whole undertaking.” (Bravin, 1/19)

The Hill: Five Takeaways From The Supreme Court’s Leak Investigation 
Investigators also attempted to track who printed the draft opinion, but they were only able to discover “very few” instances. ... “The pandemic and resulting expansion of the ability to work from home, as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks, increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information,” the report states. Two employees without electronic access to the draft accessed printed copies, according to the report. Thirty-four people with electronic access said they printed out copies, and four others were unsure. (Schonfeld, 1/19)

Politico: Read The Supreme Court's Report On Its Abortion Opinion Investigation 
Here's the 23-page report on the Supreme Court's investigation into who shared the draft opinion that struck down Roe v. Wade. (1/19)

Stat: FDA Rejects Lilly’s Bid For Accelerated Approval For Alzheimer’s Drug
Eli Lilly said Thursday that U.S. regulators had rejected its application seeking accelerated approval for donanemab, a treatment for people with early stage Alzheimer’s disease. Despite the setback, Lilly said that the planned readout from an ongoing, Phase 3 study of donanemab remains on track for the middle of the year, and if positive, will form the basis of an application for full approval “shortly thereafter.” (Feuerstein, 1/19)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Seeks More Data On Lilly’s Alzheimer’s Drug Candidate 
Lilly said it would work with the FDA to evaluate the fastest pathway to get the drug to market. The company is running a late-stage study testing donanemab in more subjects, with results expected during the second quarter. The FDA indicated it would likely need data from this larger study to make a decision, Lilly said. (Loftus, 1/19)

AP: New USDA Rule Boosts "Organic" Food Oversight, Targets Fraud
The Agriculture Department on Thursday issued new requirements for foods labeled organic, a move aimed at cracking down on fraud and boosting oversight. The rule strengthens enforcement of the USDA’s strict definitions of organic, which must rely on “natural substances and physical, mechanical or biologically based farming methods to the fullest extent possible.” (1/19)

The Washington Post: USDA's Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule Aims To Stamp Out Fraud 
Tom Chapman, chief executive of the Organic Trade Association, said the updates represent “the single largest revision to the organic standards since they were published in 1990.” They should go a long way toward boosting confidence in the “organic” label, Chapman said, noting that the move “raises the bar to prevent bad actors at any point in the supply chain.” Chapman’s business association, which represents nearly 10,000 growers in the United States, has been pushing for stricter guidelines for years, motivated in part by a series of stories in The Washington Post in 2017 revealing that fraudulent “organic” foods were a widespread problem in the food industry. (Reiley, 1/19)

AP: March For Life Returns To DC With New Post-Roe V. Wade Focus 
One year ago, the annual March for Life protest against legal abortion took place in Washington amid a mood of undisguised triumph. With a fresh conservative majority on the Supreme Court, thousands of marchers braved bitterly cold weather to celebrate the seemingly inevitable fall of Roe v. Wade. Now, with the constitutional right to abortion no longer the rule of the land, the March for Life returns Friday with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the Supreme Court, the marchers plan to target the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol. (Khalil, 1/20)

Reuters: Indiana Top Court Appears Skeptical Of Challenge To Abortion Ban 
Indiana's highest court appeared skeptical the state's constitution protects a right to abortion during arguments Thursday in a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood challenging the state's recent abortion ban, but it was not clear whether it would overturn a lower court's order preventing enforcement of the ban while the case proceeds. (Pierson, 1/19)

AP: Minnesota House Backs Abortion Rights After HHS Chief Visits
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited Minnesota on Thursday on a Midwest trip to affirm the Biden administration’s commitment to abortion rights despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Becerra went to a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in St. Paul, then appeared with Gov. Tim Walz and Democratic legislative leaders at a news conference a few hours before the Minnesota House passed a fast-tracked bill to codify abortion rights into state statues by a vote of 69-65. (Karnowski, 1/20)

AP: FBI Offers Reward In Vandalism At Tennessee Pregnancy Clinic
The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for vandalism at a women’s health clinic in Nashville. The fire occurred at the Hope Clinic for Women on June 30. An incendiary device was thrown through the clinic’s front window and the building’s exterior was spray painted, the FBI’s Memphis field office said in a statement. The device did not ignite, but the FBI has labeled it as an arson investigation. (1/20)

Reuters: Rite Aid To Dispense Abortion Pill In A Limited Number Of Stores
Rite Aid Corp plans to dispense abortion medication in a limited number of its pharmacies and will serve customers either in person or through mail delivery, the U.S. drugstore chain said on Thursday. The company aims to dispense the pill, mifepristone, in compliance with federal and state laws. (1/19)

The Hill: More Than 1,300 Nursing Homes Had COVID Infection Rates Of At Least 75 Percent In 2020: HHS 
More than 1,300 nursing homes in the U.S., most of them for-profit facilities, experienced extremely high COVID-19 infection rates in 2020, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Health and Human Services. For the OIG’s study, the agency took Medicare claims data to find nursing homes with beneficiaries who tested positive for COVID-19. The study looked at 15,086 nursing homes across the country. (Choi, 1/19)

CIDRAP: First-Wave COVID Patients Had Much Higher Risk Of Death For 18 Months
In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, infected UK patients had a significantly elevated risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) for at least 18 months, suggests a study of nearly 160,000 people published today in Cardiovascular Research. (Van Beusekom, 1/19)

NPR: How Are Rapid COVID Tests Holding Up As The Pandemic Enters Its Fourth Year 
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth year, a negative result on a little plastic at-home test feels a bit less comforting than it once did. Still, you dutifully swab your nostrils before dinner parties, wait 15 minutes for the all-clear and then text the host "negative!" before leaving your KN95 mask at home. (Lupkin, 1/19)

NBC News: Flu, RSV And Covid May Have Peaked. But The Threat Isn't Over.
Emergency room visits related to three of the most disruptive viruses — the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and Covid — are falling nationwide. (Edwards, 1/19)

CIDRAP: Global Mpox Cases Rise Slightly, With More Deaths Reported
In its latest situation report on mpox today, the World Health Organization (WHO) said cases since its last update on Jan 5 have risen 1%, and, of 11 countries reporting increases, the largest was in Mexico. ... Meanwhile, other health groups also posted mpox updates. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday reported 46 more cases over the past week, along with 2 more deaths, raising the nation's total to 30,026 cases, 23 of them fatal. (Schnirring, 1/19)

The Boston Globe: Massachusetts Detects Troubling New Strain Of Gonorrhea 
Massachusetts health officials have detected a strain of gonorrhea, never before seen in the United States, that shows signs of resistance to every recommended treatment for the disease. The bacteria were found in two Massachusetts residents, both of whom were cured with standard treatment. (Freyer, 1/19)

CBS News: U.S. Investigating First Cases Of "Concerning" New Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea Strain 
Investigators are now working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test other samples collected from gonorrhea cases in the state. Massachusetts is also conducting contact tracing to find out if the drug-resistant strain has spread to others. "The discovery of this strain of gonorrhea is a serious public health concern which DPH, the CDC, and other health departments have been vigilant about detecting," Margret Cooke, head of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said Thursday in a statement. (Tin, 1/19)

Fierce Healthcare: Healthcare Ranked Lowest For Employee Satisfaction, Survey Finds
Healthcare ranked last for employee satisfaction compared to 27 other industries, according to the 2023 Healthcare Experience Trends Report from Qualtrics. The survey of 3,000 healthcare employees across 27 countries paints a grim picture, reporting that only half of healthcare employees believe they are paid fairly, 38% report they are at risk of burnout and 39% are considering leaving their organizations. Qualtrics also surveyed 9,000 consumers, finding that hospitals ranked among the lowest across industries for satisfaction. (Burky, 1/19)

The Boston Globe: New Legislation Would Boost Nurse-To-Patient Ratios In Mass
As hospitals continue to struggle with overcrowding and understaffing, Massachusetts nurses are making a new push to limit the number of patients that can be assigned to a registered nurse at one time — a measure that advocates say would increase patient safety and lure more nurses back to the workforce. (Bartlett, 1/19)

Axios: Study Finds Hospitals Are Still Not Posting Prices
Only 19% of hospitals fully comply with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule that requires facilities to post estimated costs for items and services, an analysis published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine has found. The U.S. continues to spend more on health care than other countries for less value, and federal efforts to bring transparency to pricing have so far yielded little. (Dreher, 1/19)

NPR: Therapy By Chatbot? The Promise And Challenges In Using AI For Mental Health
Advances in artificial intelligence — such as Chat GPT — are increasingly being looked to as a way to help screen for, or support, people who dealing with isolation, or mild depression or anxiety. Human emotions are tracked, analyzed and responded to, using machine learning that tries to monitor a patient's mood, or mimic a human therapist's interactions with a patient. (Noguchi, 1/19)

AP: Mississippi Board Approves Operation Of Burn Center At UMMC 
The University of Mississippi Medical Center has received permission to provide care for burn patients, months after another hospital closed the only other burn center in the state. The governing board for the state’s eight public universities met Thursday and approved the medical center’s request to operate a burn center on UMMC’s main campus in Jackson. (1/19)

Stat: For The Second Time, A Big Drugmaker Offers Warranty On A Medicine
In a bid to blunt competition and address rising drug costs, Sanofi is offering a warranty that will cover the cost for any hospital if a specific medicine fails to work, marking only the second time a major pharmaceutical company has taken such a step. (Silverman, 1/19)

Stat: FDA Cites Indian Drugmaker For Numerous Quality Control Problems
In a stunning rebuke, the Food and Drug Administration accused a drugmaker of a “cascade of failures” for a litany of quality-control problems at a manufacturing plant, the latest instance in which the regulator has castigated an Indian pharmaceutical company for such lapses. (Silverman, 1/19)

NBC News: What Happens When You Stop Taking Wegovy Or Ozempic? Many People Regain The Weight.
Wegovy, or semaglutide, is part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. They mimic a hormone that helps reduce food intake and cuts appetite. In clinical trials, Wegovy was shown to reduce body weight by around 15%. (Lovelace Jr., Lynch and Thompson, 1/19)

Scientific American: An Old TB Vaccine Might Help Stave Off Diabetes, Cancer Alzheimer's, And More
Beyond protecting against various infections, researchers are starting to find that the BCG vaccine can also modulate the risk of other diseases in which the immune system goes awry, including type 1 diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Claims about such broad-ranging effects have been controversial but have grown less so in recent years. Open questions still linger, however, as to which patient groups, and for which conditions, the nonspecific effects of BCG might produce a meaningful clinical benefit. (Callier, 1/19)

NPR: New Tech Targets Epileptic Seizures With Lasers, Robots And Precision Surgery 
About three million people in the United States have epilepsy, including about a million who can't rely on medication to control their seizures. For years, those patients had very limited options. Surgery can be effective, but also risky, and many patients were not considered to be candidates for surgery. (Hamilton, Scott, Lu and Spitzer, 1/20)

AP: US Settlement Signals Protections For Addiction Medicine
A former Tennessee correctional officer will receive $160,000 in back pay and damages after he was forced to resign for taking Suboxone to treat his opioid use disorder, if a judge approves a landmark consent decree filed in federal court in Nashville on Wednesday. It is the first time the U.S. Department of Justice has used the Americans with Disabilities Act to settle a claim that an employee was discriminated against for taking a prescribed medication to treat drug addiction, according to the Department. (Loller, 1/19)

AP: Oregon's Drug Decriminalization Gets Poor Marks On Audit 
Oregon’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization has had a rocky start, but Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said Thursday in releasing an audit of the program that it’s too early to call it a failure. Decriminalization of personal-use amounts of drugs, approved by voters in 2020 under Ballot Measure 110, was supposed to channel hundreds of millions of dollars of marijuana tax revenues into drug treatment and harm reduction programs. But that hasn’t yet translated into an improved care network for a state with the second-highest rate of substance use disorder in the nation and ranked 50th for access to treatment. (Selsky, 1/19)

AP: Virginia House Panel Votes Down 'Magic Mushrooms' Bill
Virginia House Republicans have voted down a bill that would have allowed doctors to prescribe psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms,” for treatment of a small set of mental health conditions. A GOP-led House Courts of Justice subcommittee voted 5-2 Wednesday to defeat the legislation in a way that leaves open the possibility of revisiting it later, TV station WRIC reported. (1/19)

The Littleton Independent: Methamphetamine Contamination Found In Third Public Library In Colorado
The Bemis Public Library in Littleton closed Wednesday after test results indicated there was methamphetamine contamination in several bathrooms. A city statement, released after business hours on Wednesday, did not say how long the library will be closed. (Joss, 1/18)

AP: Mississippi House OKs Ban On Minors' Gender-Confirming Care
The Republican-controlled Mississippi House voted Thursday to ban gender-confirming care for minors, joining about a dozen other conservative states in trying to restrict health care access for young transgender people. Republican Rep. Nick Bain said in response to Democrats’ questions during a debate that he knows no examples of such surgeries being done on people younger than 18 in Mississippi. (Wagster Pettus, 1/20)

News Service of Florida: A Federal Judge Rejects The State’s Request To Evaluate Kids In Transgender Medicaid Fight
A federal judge has rejected a request by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to conduct “mental examinations” on a pair of 12-year-olds who are plaintiffs in a challenge to a state rule prohibiting Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care. (Kam, 1/19)

Connecticut Public: CT Aid In Dying Bill Gets Push From Grieving Family Members
Advocates of the proposed Aid in Dying bill made an emotional plea to state legislators in Hartford on Wednesday to approve the legislation, introduced 15 times in Connecticut since 1994. (Srinivasan, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Alabama Farmer Secretly Paid Strangers’ Pharmacy Bills For 10 Years 
Hody Childress was a farmer living off his meager retirement savings in the small town of Geraldine, Ala. About 10 years ago, he walked into Geraldine Drugs and pulled aside owner Brooke Walker to ask if there were families in town who couldn’t afford to pay for their medications. “I told him, ‘Yes, unfortunately that happens often,’” recalled Walker, 38. “And he handed me a $100 bill, all folded up.” (Free, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Ala. Landfill Has Burned For Nearly 2 Months, Forcing People From Homes
The smoke billowing from the burning landfill 100 yards from Richard Harp’s house in central Alabama has, he said, given his young sons headaches and nosebleeds. Harp and his wife have battled fever and bouts of bronchitis brought on, his doctor told him, by breathing the acrid air. Like many of their neighbors, the family fled weeks ago. They have patched together stays in multiple hotels, in a short-term rental and with relatives out of state, waiting for the end to a disaster that never seems to come. ... On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) declared a state of emergency over the ongoing fire at the privately owned landfill in St. Clair County, northeast of Birmingham, which has inundated residents from miles around with smoke since at least Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving. (Dennis, 1/19)

NPR: Thinx Settled A Lawsuit Over Chemicals In Its Period Underwear. Here's What To Know
If you live in the U.S. and bought Thinx underwear recently, you could soon be getting some money back. That's because the period panty brand has just settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that its products — long marketed as a safer, more sustainable approach to menstrual hygiene — contain potentially harmful chemicals. (Treisman, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Burnout Is Real. Here’s How To Know If You Have It And How To Cope
When Jacinda Ardern announced her decision to resign as New Zealand’s Prime Minister, she didn’t cite burnout as the reason. But she described it. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice,” she said. “It is that simple.” The World Health Organization in 2019 acknowledged burnout as an “occupational phenomenon,” but job or work burnout can still take a significant toll on your mental and physical health, and is closely linked with depression and anxiety. (Soong, 1/19)