LA County Public Health Announces 2 More Cases In Dengue Cluster

CIDRAP: California Identifies Dengue Case Cluster In LA County
Los Angeles County Public Health yesterday announced that two more locally acquired dengue cases have been identified, raising the number in the cluster to three. The two latest patients are from Baldwin Park, the same area where the first case was reported last week. (Schnirring, 9/19)

Minnesota Public Radio: Vaccine Hesitancy Concerns Physicians Amid Minnesota Measles Outbreak
Minnesota’s measles outbreak has grown to 51 cases as of Thursday, and most infected are unvaccinated children in the Somali community living in Hennepin County, as confirmed by the state health department. Twelve people have been hospitalized. Across the board, people are challenging the need for all vaccines, not just the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The general vaccination rate is even lower in the Somali community, Michael Osterholm, head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told MPR News. (Wurzer and Stockton, 9/19)

WJCT: Jacksonville Joins An International Partnership To Stop The Spread Of HIV
Jacksonville is joining hundreds of cities or metropolitan areas and international organizations trying to stop the spread of HIV by 2030. The city held a signing ceremony Wednesday to join a global partnership called Fast-Track Cities. (Ponson, 9/19)

Houston Chronicle: HISD Considering Policy Against Student Phone Use During Emergencies
Houston ISD is working toward a new policy prohibiting students from using cellphones during certain campus emergencies because they could be “counterproductive," top school safety officials said Thursday. ... “I understand the need for communication, and parents want to make sure that their children are safe, so there's a time and a place for cellphones, but again, as it pertains to a lockdown situation, the best practice is to remain silent, and so the use of cellphones, as natural as it may be, may be counterproductive,” HISD Police Chief Shamara Garner said. (Menchaca, 9/19) 

Mississippi Today: An Epidemic Of Antipsychotic Drugs In Mississippi Nursing Homes 
Mississippi consistently ranks in the top five in the nation for its rates of antipsychotic drugging in nursing homes, data from the federal government shows. More than one in five nursing home residents in the United States is given powerful and mind-altering antipsychotic drugs. That’s more than 10 times the rate of the general population – despite the fact that the conditions antipsychotics treat do not become more common with age. In Mississippi, that goes up to one in four residents. (Paffenroth, 9/19)

KFF Health News: Rural NC County Is Set To Reopen Its Shuttered Hospital With Help From A New Federal Program
On a mid-August morning, Christopher Harrison stood in front of the shuttered Martin General Hospital recalling the day a year earlier when he snapped pictures as workers covered the facility’s sign. “Yes, sir. It was a sad day,” Harrison said of the financial collapse of the small rural hospital, where all four of his children were born. Quorum Health operated the 49-bed facility in this rural eastern North Carolina town of about 5,000 residents until it closed. (Sisk, 9/20)

KFF Health News: Fighting Staff Shortages With Scholarships, California Bill Aims To Boost Mental Health Courts
A seemingly innocuous proposal to offer scholarships for mental health workers in California’s new court-ordered treatment program has sparked debate over whether the state should prioritize that program or tackle a wider labor shortage in behavioral health services. Nine counties have begun rolling out the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Act, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law in 2022 to get people with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, many of them incarcerated or homeless, into treatment. (Castle Work, 9/20)