First Edition: Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024

KFF Health News: As Interest From Families Wanes, Pediatricians Scale Back On Covid Shots
When pediatrician Eric Ball opened a refrigerator full of childhood vaccines, all the expected shots were there — DTaP, polio, pneumococcal vaccine — except one. “This is where we usually store our covid vaccines, but we don’t have any right now because they all expired at the end of last year and we had to dispose of them,” said Ball, who is part of a pediatric practice in Orange County, California. “We thought demand would be way higher than it was.” (Fortiér, 9/4)

KFF Health News: Breast Cancer Rises Among Asian American And Pacific Islander Women
Christina Kashiwada was traveling for work during the summer of 2018 when she noticed a small, itchy lump in her left breast. She thought little of it at first. She did routine self-checks and kept up with medical appointments. But a relative urged her to get a mammogram. She took the advice and learned she had stage 3 breast cancer, a revelation that stunned her. “I’m 36 years old, right?” said Kashiwada, a civil engineer in Sacramento, California. “No one’s thinking about cancer.” (Reese, 9/4)

KFF Health News: Listen To The Latest 'KFF Health News Minute'
“Health Minute” brings original health care and health policy reporting from the KFF Health News newsroom to the airwaves each week. (9/3)

Reuters: US Will Still Pay At Least Twice As Much After Negotiating Drug Prices
The U.S. government's first-ever negotiated prices for prescription drugs are still on average more than double, and in some cases five times, what drugmakers have agreed to in four other high-income countries, a Reuters review has found. A Reuters review of publicly available maximum prices set by other wealthy nations – Australia, Japan, Canada and Sweden – show that they have negotiated far lower prices for the same drugs. (Beasley, 9/3)

AP: Supreme Court Won't Allow Oklahoma To Reclaim Federal Money In Dispute Over Abortion Referrals
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Oklahoma’s emergency appeal seeking to restore a $4.5 million grant for family planning services in an ongoing dispute over the state’s refusal to refer pregnant women to a nationwide hotline that provides information about abortion and other options. The brief order did not detail the court’s reasoning, as is typical, but says three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — would have sided with Oklahoma. Lower courts had ruled that the federal Health and Human Services Department’s decision to cut off Oklahoma from the funds did not violate federal law. (Sherman, 9/3)

The Hill: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Discloses Daughter’s Autism Diagnosis
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson opened up about her struggles into parenthood, particularly as the mother of an autistic child, in her new memoir. The passage in “Lovely One,” marks the first time Jackson has publicly disclosed her eldest daughter’s diagnosis.  (Daniels, 9/3)

AP: Nebraska Supreme Court Will Hear Lawsuit Challenging Measure To Expand Abortion Rights 
The Nebraska Supreme Court has agreed to expedite a hearing on a lawsuit that could keep voters from deciding whether to expand abortion rights in the state. The court has set a hearing for next Monday for arguments over the suit filed by the conservative nonprofit Thomas More Society, according to court records. The secretary of state said last month that the measure had received enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. (Funk, 9/3)

The Washington Post: In Key Shift, More Men In Red States Speak Out Against Abortion Bans 
More men are speaking out in defense of reproductive rights because of harrowing experiences that wives or partners have suffered when a pregnancy went awry. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 9/3)

Politico: Democrats Target Trump’s Muddled Abortion Message 
The Harris campaign launched a bus tour on reproductive rights in the former president’s adopted home state of Florida, where abortion laws are a centerpiece of the forthcoming election. (Leonard, 9/3)

Stat: Birth Control Access Is A Growing Issue, So Advocates Get Creative
A typical vending machine on a university campus might offer students the usual range of sodas, Sunchips, and Skittles. But a vending machine installed earlier this year at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, has a unique offering: Plan B pills. (Nayak, 9/4)

The Wall Street Journal: The Overlooked Condition Endangering Pregnant Women And New Mothers 
Preeclampsia, marked by a sudden increase in blood pressure, is on the rise. Yet there’s little research about the life-threatening disorder. (McKay, 9/3)

AP: A Decision On A Major Policy Shift On Marijuana Won't Come Until After The Presidential Election 
A decision on whether to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug in the U.S. won’t come until after the November presidential election, a timeline that raises the chances it could be a potent political issue in the closely contested race. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last week set a hearing date to take comment on the proposed historic change in federal drug policy for Dec. 2. The hearing date means a final decision could well come in the next administration. (Whitehurst and Peltz, 9/3)

The Conversation: Mobile Phones Are Not Linked To Brain Cancer, According To A Major Review Of 28 Years Of Research
A systematic review into the potential health effects from radio wave exposure has shown mobile phones are not linked to brain cancer. The review was commissioned by the World Health Organization and is published today in the journal Environment International. (Loughran and Karipidis, 9/3)

Medical Xpress: Novel Light-Based Technique Shows 90% Accuracy In Early Prostate Cancer Detection
A U.K. researcher has used light to develop the first step towards a quicker, cheaper and less painful technique to detect cancer. (9/2)

Stat: Dana-Farber CEO Laurie Glimcher To Step Down After Eight Years
Laurie H. Glimcher, chief executive of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said she would step down next month, ending an eight-year run capped by her surprise split with Dana-Farber’s longtime partner, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and decision to build a cancer center with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. (Edelman, 9/3)

The Guardian: Crucial Information Missing In Elle Macpherson Breast Cancer Story, Experts Warn 
A leading breast cancer surgeon claims many media reports that the supermodel Elle Macpherson treated breast cancer with alternative therapies have left out crucial information, risking people being misinformed. (Davey and May, 9/4)

CNN: Andrew Cuomo Agrees To Testify Publicly Next Week About His Covid-Era Nursing Home Advisory
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will testify publicly before Congress next week about his controversial nursing home advisory from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, informed sources and a House subcommittee say. As CNN reported earlier, Cuomo, who testified in June behind closed doors before members of the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, will testify in front of the same panel on September 10. (Tapper, 9/3)

Los Angeles Times: This Was A 'Prime Weekend' For COVID Spread In California. Why Experts See A 'Real Risk' Ahead
With COVID remaining at stubbornly high levels in California, some doctors are warning that transmission could again accelerate following the busy Labor Day holiday weekend — potentially prolonging a summer wave that has already proved more intense and enduring than some experts had anticipated. Doctors will be closely monitoring the data for any signs of a post-holiday bump, which could materialize due to a few factors. (Lin II, 9/3)

Stat: Covid Boosters, Flu Shots, RSV Vaccine: How To Time Immunizations
With fall coming into view, public health officials across the country are turning to the annual task of persuading legions of Americans to get vaccinated against some combination of influenza, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus, three bugs that sicken mass numbers of people over the winter months, often overwhelming hospitals and health care delivery in the process. (Branswell, 9/4)

CIDRAP: CDC: Overall Teen Vaccine Uptake Plateaus, But Up-To-Date HPV Coverage Drops
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis finds that overall US teen vaccination uptake was similar in 2022 and 2023, with a decline in up-to-date human papillomavirus (HPV UTD) vaccination by age 13 among adolescents born in 2010 versus 2007. (Van Beusekom, 9/3)

USA Today: Oregon Measles Outbreak Is State's Largest Amid National Spike
Oregon's measles outbreak is now the largest in the state in over three decades, mirroring a trend of rising measles cases across the U.S. this year. Nearly one-third of measles cases since the pandemic occurred in the past three months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of cases in Oregon's outbreak first tracked in mid-June grew to 31 as of Tuesday, surpassing the last outbreak in the state, in 2019, when 28 cases were reported. (Funk and Rodriguez, 9/4)

The Boston Globe: Mass. Public Health Officials Confirm 2 More Human Cases Of West Nile Virus For A Total Of 6
Two more Massachusetts men have been exposed to the West Nile virus in Suffolk and Middlesex counties, taking the state from four to six human cases so far this year and matching the total reached in 2023, state health officials announced Tuesday. Risk levels for the mosquito-borne virus have been elevated in several communities throughout the state, the state Department of Public Health said in a statement. (Alanez, 9/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: Confirmed Valley Fever Cases Surge After California Music Festival
The number of festivalgoers who developed a potentially deadly fungal infection after attending Lightning in a Bottle near Bakersfield has quadrupled, according to the California Department of Public Health. As of Aug. 21, there were at least 19 confirmed cases of Valley fever among attendees and workers at the festival, eight of whom were hospitalized. (Vaziri, 9/3)

The Hill: California Drought Fuels Spread Of Dangerous Valley Fever Fungus, Study Finds
Climate changed-induced drought conditions have been driving the dispersal of a dangerous airborne fungus across California in recent years, a new study has found. Cases of the flu-like disease coccidioidomycosis — also known as “Valley fever” — have risen dramatically over the past two decades, tripling from 2014 to 2018 and again from 2018 to 2022, according to the study, published Tuesday in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas. While the disease can cause grave or even deadly complications, the authors said they have identified certain seasonal patterns that could help public health officials prepare for future surges. (Udasin, 9/3)

CIDRAP: FDA Clears New Lyme Disease Test 
Diagnostics company ID-Fish Technology announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its new Lyme disease test. The iDart Lyme IgG ImmunoBlot Kit is a stand-alone test for detecting Lyme-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies that includes 31 Lyme antigen bands, more than any other Lyme test on the market. (9/3)

Modern Healthcare: American Academy Of Physician Associates Calls Out AMA
The American Academy of Physician Associates is calling out the American Medical Association for allegedly spreading misinformation and making disparaging remarks about the profession. In a letter to the AMA dated Tuesday and made public, the trade group said the AMA has not responded to its request to meet to discuss "the impact of AMA’s disparaging rhetoric targeted at the physician associate profession." (DeSilva, 9/3)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealthcare To Launch Prior Authorization Gold Card Program
UnitedHealthcare is launching a program next month geared toward streamlining prior authorization for qualifying providers. The UnitedHealth Group subsidiary's "gold card" program, offered across its commercial, individual exchange, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid business lines, will allow certain providers to use a simplified process for about 500 procedure codes. (DeSilva, 9/3)

The Boston Globe: After The Closing Of Carney Hospital, Residents Wonder Who Is To Blame
Bill Walczak knows as much about community health care as anyone in Boston. And the closing last weekend of the Carney Hospital in Dorchester — his neighborhood — has left him gutted. Not just sad, but angry. “I think the parts of state government that are responsible for our health care had an opportunity to save the parts of Carney that are essential — the emergency room, the psychiatric care, and the residency program,” he said Tuesday. “And they chose not to.” (Walker, 9/3)

Modern Healthcare: Where Nursing Unions Are Negotiating With Hospitals In 2024
Thousands of healthcare workers nationwide are negotiating for new contracts, and staff at some facilities are preparing for the possibility of strikes in the coming months. Nurses at HCA Healthcare’s MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas voted last week to authorize a strike if no progress is made in negotiating for a contract that ensures higher pay, meal breaks for nurses and better retention strategies. (Devereaux, 9/3)

Modern Healthcare: Prime Healthcare Taps Sunny Bhatia As First President
Prime Healthcare has named Dr. Sunny Bhatia as its first systemwide president, the health system announced Tuesday. The cardiologist was most recently CEO of the health system's West Coast region. He joined Prime in 2011, serving as chief medical officer at its Sherman Oaks Hospital and Encino Hospital Medical Center, both in California. (DeSilva, 9/3)

CNBC: Retirees Can Face A 'Phantom Tax' On Marketplace Health Insurance
Since most Americans aren’t eligible for Medicare before age 65, many younger retirees rely on Marketplace health insurance, which offers lower monthly premiums through the end of 2025 thanks to boosted tax breaks. But retirees can face a costly tax surprise without proper planning, experts say. (Dore, 9/3)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Dexcom Starts Selling Its New Over-The-Counter Glucose Monitor. Here’s How Much It Costs
San Diego’s Dexcom began sales this week of Stelo, the industry’s first FDA-approved continuous glucose monitor that doesn’t require a prescription. With a two-pack of the biosensor costing just under $100 per month, the local company aims to tap a new market of users and increase access to this technology. Now, people without health insurance coverage for such devices have the option to buy Stelo directly from Dexcom’s website. (Rocha, 9/3)

Stat: Athira Alzheimer's Drug Fails In Trial
A dark horse effort to treat Alzheimer’s disease, already marred by a data manipulation scandal, fell short in a randomized trial reported Tuesday afternoon. Athira Pharma said that Alzheimer’s patients who received its experimental injection fosgonimeton did not decline at a significantly slower rate than patients who received a placebo injection. (Mast, 9/3)

The Oklahoman: Oklahoma Company Offering New Device For Female Incontinence
An Edmond-based startup health care company is beginning to ship out its urinary incontinence products after receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Yoni. Fit Bladder Support from Watkins-Conti Products hit pharmacy shelves in Oklahoma for the first time on Monday, the company announced. The product is a new prescription for women experiencing stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Allison Watkins, the company's founder and CEO, said plans call for expansion nationally by the fourth quarter of this year. (Heliot, 8/30)

NBC News: Disabled People In Florida Still Struggling To Get Medicaid Restored After ‘Unwinding’
Lauren Eakin is legally blind and confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy. For years, Eakin, 34, lived in her own apartment with the help of caregivers who assist her with nearly everything. This summer, she lost much of her relative independence when the state of Florida revoked her essential Medicaid coverage. ... Eakin’s Medicaid coverage lapsed in June, a loss she discovered only when payment to her caregivers stopped. As a result, they substantially reduced their hours. (Kane, Kirsch and Obregon, 9/3)

Minnesota Public Radio: As School Begins, Nurses Face High Turnover And Heightened Student Mental Health Needs
Tuesday is the first day of school for many students and school nurses in some areas of the state are facing pressures on staffing. Tara Cliff, health services supervisor at Eastern Carver County schools, said that turnover has been a challenge for her district so she’s spending the start of the school year getting new nurses ready. (Moini and Bui, 9/3)

The CT Mirror: CT Hospital Workers Demand More Security Amid Spike In Violence
A handful of health care workers at the Bradley Memorial Campus of the Hospital of Central Connecticut gathered at the Southington facility on Tuesday morning to demand more security in response to what they describe as a patient population that’s grown increasingly agitated and aggressive since the start of the pandemic. Employees say aggressive behavior can range from “minor incidents,” like patients throwing cups of water or urine, to more serious incidents, like when a patient attempted to choke a nurse. (Golvala, 9/3)

AP: Oregon Hospital Hit With $303M Lawsuit After A Nurse Is Accused Of Replacing Fentanyl With Tap Water 
Attorneys representing both living and deceased patients of an Oregon hospital filed a $303 million lawsuit against the facility on Tuesday after a nurse was accused of replacing prescribed fentanyl with nonsterile tap water in intravenous drips. The wrongful death and medical malpractice complaint accuses Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford of negligence. The suit says the hospital failed to monitor medication administration procedures and prevent drug diversion by their employees, among other claims. A spokesperson said the hospital had no comment. (9/3)

News Service of Florida: Moody Wants Florida Supreme Court To Hear Opioid Dispute With Hospitals And School Districts 
Attorney General Ashley Moody wants the Florida Supreme Court to resolve a legal battle about whether hospital districts and school boards should be able to pursue opioid-epidemic lawsuits after she reached settlements with the pharmaceutical industry. (Saunders, 9/3)

Reuters: 'Ketamine Queen,' Doctor To Face March Trial In Matthew Perry Death 
A California doctor and a woman charged with illegally supplying the drug ketamine to "Friends" star Matthew Perry before his overdose death will face trial in March, according to court documents released on Tuesday. Dr. Salvador Plasencia, and Jasveen Sangha, whom authorities said was a drug dealer known to customers as the "ketamine queen," have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the October 2023 death of Perry. (Richwine, 9/3)

The New York Times: Rethinking Addiction As A Chronic Brain Disease 
Some researchers argue that the roles of social environment and personal choice have to be considered in order to make progress in treating people addicted to drugs. (Hoffman, 9/3)