First Edition: Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024

KFF Health News: ‘Dreamers’ Can Enroll In ACA Plans This Year — But A Court Challenge Could Get In The Way 
When open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, starts nationwide this week, a group that had previously been barred from signing up will be eligible for the first time: The “Dreamers.” That’s the name given to children brought to the United States without immigration paperwork who have since qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Under a Biden administration rule that has become contentious in some states, DACA recipients will be able to enroll in — and, if their income qualifies, receive premium subsidies for — Obamacare coverage. The government estimates that about 100,000 previously uninsured people out of the half-million DACA recipients might sign up starting Nov. 1, which is the sign-up season start date in all states except Idaho. (Appleby, 10/29)

KFF Health News: Vance Wrongly Blames Rural Hospital Closures On Immigrants In The Country Illegally
During a recent presidential campaign rally in Wisconsin, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) was asked how a Trump administration would protect rural health care access in the face of hospital closures, such as two this year in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. In response, he turned to immigration. “Now, you might not think that rural health care access is an immigration issue,” said Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate. “I guarantee it is an immigration issue, because we’re bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing these hospitals to provide care for people who don’t have the legal right to be in our country.” (Whitehead, 10/29)

KFF Health News: KFF Health News' 'An Arm And A Leg': Can Racism Make You Sick? 
In this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” host Dan Weissmann sits down with KFF Health News’ Cara Anthony to talk about the documentary and podcast series she produced about the impact of a 1942 lynching and a 2020 police killing on a rural Missouri community. The project is called “Silence in Sikeston.” (10/29)

Stat: U.S. Death From Lassa Fever, An Ebola-Like Virus, Is Reported In Iowa 
A person from Iowa who recently returned to the United States from West Africa has died after contracting Lassa fever, a virus that can cause Ebola-like illness in some patients. State health officials reported the case on Monday. (Branswell, 10/28)

CIDRAP: Report Details Locally Acquired Malaria Case In Arkansas Last Fall
For the first time in 20 years, the United States recorded locally acquired malaria cases last year. A report published late last week in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report details the 10th US case, in Arkansas. The previous cases were in Florida, Texas, and Maryland. Since the 1970s, cases of travel-associated malaria have ticked upward in the United States, with 2,048 such cases recorded in 2019 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  (Soucheray, 10/28)

CIDRAP: H5N1 Avian Flu Isolate From Dairy Worker Is Transmissible, Lethal In Animals 
In experiments designed to learn more about the threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus spreading from cows to people, researchers found that an isolate from a sick dairy worker may be capable of replicating in human airway cells, is pathogenic in mice and ferrets, and can transmit among ferrets by respiratory droplets. The team, based at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Japan, reported its findings today in Nature. Working in a high-containment lab, the researchers used an H5N1 isolate grown from the eye of a dairy worker who had experienced conjunctivitis after exposure to infected cows. (Schnirring, 10/28)

Bloomberg: Bird Flu Cases In Dairy Cows Roil California Farmers
Dairy farmers in California are grappling with a steadily advancing outbreak of avian flu in their herds – a problem few of them want to talk about publicly, but that none of them can afford to ignore. Bird flu has been reported in more than 170 herds in California since late August, with the state accounting for nearly half of all US cases detected in dairy cows since the outbreak began in March. (Peng, 10/28)

USA Today: Respiratory Illnesses On The Rise In Young Children, CDC Reports
Respiratory infections among young children have been on the rise since the school year began in August, according to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the past six months, emergency rooms have discharged an increasing number of patients with a Mycoplasma pneumoniae diagnosis, which is typically associated with "walking pneumonia," or acute bronchitis. Discharges peaked in late August, the CDC reported on Oct. 18. (Cross, 10/28)

NBC News: After Eating At McDonald’s, Teen With E. Coli Battles Kidney Failure
In the days before Kamberlyn Bowler became ill, she went to McDonald’s several times for her favorite meal: a Quarter Pounder with cheese and extra pickles. The previously healthy, active 15-year-old is now hospitalized and battling kidney failure — a rare and potentially life-threatening complication of E. coli poisoning. Kamberlyn, of Grand Junction, Colorado, is one of dozens of people who say they became sick after having eaten McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. (Romans, Chuck and Allenbaugh, 10/29)

Mother Jones: Trump’s Surgeon General: Please Don’t Let RFK Jr. “Go Wild On Health” 
Donald Trump’s pledge alarmed public health professionals, including Dr. Jerome Adams, his own surgeon general. ... Adams has been a strong supporter of the development and distribution of Covid vaccines, and others, including by testifying at a 2021 House hearing on how to encourage Covid vaccine uptake. On Monday, Adams spoke at a conference of the American Public Health Association—which endorsed his 2017 nomination as Surgeon General—on his concerns about Kennedy, especially his anti-vaccine stances. (Metraux, 10/28)

Politico: Harris Turns Up The Volume On Abortion In Her Stump Speech
Kamala Harris has spent the last 99 days of her candidacy talking about abortion. She’s taking that message up a notch in the final week of her campaign. Borrowing from the impassioned abortion-focused address she gave in Houston on Friday, Harris’ revamped stump speech now cuts even deeper on reproductive rights. At a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan Monday night, Harris slammed Texas’ abortion ban, which prohibits the procedure at conception with no exceptions for rape and incest, punishable by up to 99 prison years in prison; rebuked Trump for “[refusing] to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused”; and appealed to the “men of America” to protect the women in their lives. (Messerly, 10/28)

CBS News: What To Know About Amendment 4, Florida's Abortion Amendment On The 2024 Election Ballot
Amendment 4 is a proposal to change Florida's constitution. It is titled "Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion" and states "no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider." The amendment does not affect a current constitutional provision that permits a law requiring parents to be notified before a minor can receive an abortion. (Geisel and Rodriguez, 10/28)

NPR: 3 Health Care Issues At Stake In The Presidential Election
As the 2024 election heads into its final weeks, the direction of policies affecting the health of millions of Americans is at stake. The next president and Congress will have the power to put their mark on major health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid that combined cover nearly 150 million Americans. They’ll be able to direct resources for how the United States fights the drug overdose crisis and how the country prepares for the next pandemic. (Levi, 10/28)

Modern Healthcare: Why Healthcare Issues Matter Despite Low Priority In 2024 Election
The point of campaign rhetoric is to convince people to vote for one side or the other, catering to hopes those words will turn into policy. The ads and news clips blaring at voters are impossible to avoid. But what happens when a vital issue is all but missing from the debate? That’s a question stakeholders in the healthcare industry need to at least consider this election season when immigration, inflation, crime, abortion and the fate of democracy are the dominant themes on the hustings. (McAuliff, 10/28)

The Washington Post: Fentanyl Victims’ Parents Divided On Trump, Harris
Many have taken to social media to echo Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vows to tighten border security and deliver harsher penalties for criminals trafficking fentanyl. To share how fentanyl poisoned their son or daughter, others have joined candidates at roundtables, on campaign videos and even rallies like ones held recently by Vice President Kamala Harris. One group, Families Against Fentanyl, put up billboards during both political conventions to highlight the unrelenting drug crisis. (Ovalle, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Biden’s Cancer Moonshot’s Last Acts: Easing Pediatric Drug Shortages
The Biden administration took steps to alleviate shortages of cancer drugs for children, part of a final push for one of the president’s domestic priorities: reducing the nation’s cancer burden. The federal government is testing a new way to prevent treatment disruptions for seven pediatric cancer drugs by improving communication between hospitals, nonprofits and wholesalers. Shortages of cancer medicines regularly plague hospitals and patients, sometimes forcing them to delay or change care. (Abbott, 10/28)

Stat: Dreams Of Cancer Vaccines Are Becoming More Real. Here Are 9 Scientists Making It Happen
Vaccines are the original immunotherapy, in the view of Ryan Sullivan, a cancer immunotherapy researcher and oncologist at Mass General Cancer Center. But many other modes of immunotherapy for cancer were approved first — checkpoint blockade drugs like Keytruda and engineered immune cell therapies like Yescarta. Shadowed by the successes of other therapies, the field of cancer vaccines was “seemingly dying,” Sullivan said. (Chen, 10/29)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital-At-Home Programs Delayed, Cut Amid Cost, Size Concerns
Some health systems are pausing, scrapping or delaying the launch of hospital-at-home programs despite a broader industry push to provide more healthcare in the home. Health systems such as Tufts Medicine, Franciscan Health, Cone Health and UCSF Health pointed to high costs, a shortage of eligible patients and regulatory uncertainty as driving their decisions to curtail home-based hospital programs. But despite the hurdles, others are moving full-speed ahead with new programs or expansions. (Eastabrook, 10/28)

AP: People Opt Out Of Organ Donation Programs After Reports Of A Man Mistakenly Declared Dead 
Transplant experts are seeing a spike in people revoking organ donor registrations, their confidence shaken by reports that organs were nearly retrieved from a Kentucky man mistakenly declared dead. It happened in 2021 and while details are murky surgery was avoided and the man is still alive. But donor registries in the U.S. and even across the Atlantic are being impacted after the case was publicized recently. A drop in donations could cost the lives of people awaiting a transplant. (Neergaard, 10/28)

Chicago Tribune: Nurses At University Of Illinois Hospital Vote To Authorize Second Strike
Nurses at University of Illinois Hospital & Clinics have voted to authorize what could be their second strike since August — as they continue to ask for better pay, staffing and security. Of about 1,700 nurses who voted, 88% percent voted in favor of giving their bargaining team the authority to call a strike, according to the union, the Illinois Nurses Association. (Schencker, 10/28)

Modern Healthcare: Atrium Health, Novant Health Compete For Beds In North Carolina
Atrium Health and Novant Health are vying for the state's approval to add patient beds at their respective facilities in Charlotte, North Carolina. The state's health department determined this year hospitals could apply by Oct. 15 to add 89 total acute-care beds in Mecklenburg County. The agency is undecided whether to deny one organization's application or divide the approved beds between the health systems, a spokesperson said Monday. (DeSilva, 10/28)

The Boston Globe: Mass General Brigham Touts Cancer Institute Amid Dana-Farber Divorce
More than a year has passed since Dana-Farber Cancer Institute dumped Mass General Brigham for a rival hospital chain, but the state’s biggest health care system is making a push now to say when it comes to cancer care, MGB’s still got it. Beginning in 2028, Dana-Farber will end its long and nationally acclaimed adult oncology partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Instead, it will team up with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to open a new freestanding 300-bed, $1.68 billion cancer hospital in the Longwood Medical Area. (Saltzman, 10/28)

Stat: New Schizophrenia Treatment Uses Avatars To Address Inner Voices
Promising results from a new digital therapy could help tackle one of psychiatry’s most intractable problems — hearing voices. Auditory verbal hallucinations are one of the hallmarks of psychosis, particularly in people with schizophrenia, which affects 24 million people globally. These voices often bully or abuse the voice hearer, commenting incessantly on the person’s thoughts and behavior or even urging them to harm themselves. (Broderick, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: IOS 18.1 Is Out Now: Apple Intelligence, New Siri Look And AirPod Hearing Aids Arrive
Don’t be fooled by the tiny decimal in iOS 18.1. Apple’s latest software update might be small in name, but it’s big in significance. Released Monday, the software brings the first wave of Apple Intelligence features—that is, if you’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro or any of the new iPhone 16 models. If you’ve got a pair of AirPods Pro 2, iOS 18.1 brings the ability to take the new clinical-grade hearing test and then, if you need the assistance, set the earbuds up as a pair of hearing aids. (Stern, 10/28)

Axios: Your Next Prescription Could Include An App For Personalized Health Care
Federal regulators are confronting a new twist in drug development: manufacturers that include software with the medicine to prod patients to take pills as directed, manage side effects or track how well a treatment works. (Reed, 10/29)

The Washington Post: Many Older Americans Don’t Trust AI-Generated Health Information
About 74 percent of adults older than 50 say they would have little or no trust in health information generated by artificial intelligence, according to the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. The report analyzed data from a survey administered in February and March to 3,379 U.S. adults between ages 50 and 101. Over half of the adults (58 percent) reported looking for health information on the web in the past year. (Docter-Loeb, 10/28)

Modern Healthcare: Epic Sues Epic Staffing Group Over Trademark Claims
Healthcare software developer Epic Systems sued Epic Staffing Group this month claiming trademark infringement, according to court documents. Epic Staffing Group disputes the claims. According to the court filing, “The services that Epic and Epic Staffing Group offer under their EPIC-formative marks are closely related because they both can be, and are, used to provide services to healthcare providers. Epic’s customers, and consumers in general, are likely to believe Epic Staffing Group’s services originate from and/or are affiliated with Epic.” (Johnson, 10/28)

Modern Healthcare: Many Digital Hypertension Tools Not Effective: Peterson Study
Many digital health hypertension tools aren’t effective or worth the cost, according to a new study published Monday. The study is the latest from the Peterson Health Technology Institute, a digital health research group that previously analyzed virtual solutions focused on diabetes and physical therapy. The group's analysis on virtual hypertension concludes that programs focused on behavior change and blood pressure monitoring fall short of providing strong clinical outcomes that would reduce long-term costs. (Turner, 10/28)

North Carolina Health News and The Charlotte Ledger: Four More N.C. Hospital Systems Cancel Old Medical Debt Judgments
Five hospitals responsible for nearly all of North Carolina’s lawsuits filed against patients for medical debt have committed to erasing all of their existing judgments, The Charlotte Ledger/NC Health News has learned. Atrium Health, the state’s largest health care system, announced in September that it would clear old judgments and lift liens against thousands of patients. It had quietly stopped filing medical debt related lawsuits in early 2023. (Crouch, 10/29)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Cuts $600 Million From Special Education Program
Texas is clawing back more than $607 million per year in federal funding for special education services, a move local school district officials say will likely worsen already strained budgets for students with disabilities. The School Health and Related Services (SHARS) program provides hundreds of school districts critical funding for special education services, reimbursing them for counseling, nursing, therapy and transportation services provided to Medicaid-eligible children. (Edison, 10/28)

WFSU: Florida Kicks Off A Mental Health Hotline For First Responders
Florida has launched a hotline for first responders dealing with mental health issues. Those in need can call 1- 866-4-FL-HERO (866-435-4376 ) or go online to lasttoask.com. Attorney General Ashley Moody announced the "First Responder Hope Line" during a press conference in Tampa. Moody said the statewide service developed from several regional ones around Florida that have found success. It’s meant to help police, firefighters or EMTs seek help for trauma they receive on the job. (Wood, 10/28)

The Hill: California's Salton Sea Dust Triggering Child Respiratory Issues: Study
Wind-strewn dust from California’s lithium-rich, shrinking Salton Sea may be triggering respiratory issues in children who live nearby, a new study has found. Among the many symptoms — worse for those young people who reside closest to the saline lake — are asthma, coughing, wheezing and sleep disruptions, according to the study, published in Environmental Research. (Udasin, 10/28)

Politico: A California Ballot Measure Wants To Ban Slavery. Why Is It Losing? 
A ban on slavery and involuntary servitude seems like it should be an easy sell in a progressive state like California. So why does it look like voters may reject Proposition 6 next week? The measure, which would amend California’s state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in an effort to eliminate forced prison labor, faces no formal opposition. But its backers are struggling to explain it to voters with limited resources at their disposal. Their efforts are complicated by a louder debate about another crime-related measure, Prop 36, on which voters appear inclined to back a tougher approach. (Schultheis, 10/28)

The Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Landmarks To Light Up In Teal
The Charm City skyline will light up in teal Friday night to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease. The Baltimore World Trade Center, Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, M&T Bank Stadium and other landmarks are participating in the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s “Light the World in Teal” display along with over 1,300 buildings around the world, according to a news release from the foundation. November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. (Mullan, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: The Battle Brewing Over How Much Red Meat You Eat 
Get ready for a big debate over the amount of red meat on your plate. Scientists advising the U.S. government on its next round of dietary guidelines have drafted recommendations that would tell Americans to limit how much red meat they eat. It is part of an effort to nudge us to eat more plant foods, including beans, peas and lentils. The draft recommendations have drawn an immediate outcry from the meat industry, setting up a potential fight over the final guidelines—expected late next year—and the amount of red meat we should have in our diets. (Petersen, 10/28)

Stat: One Researcher On Why Drafting New Rules On Ultra-Processed Foods Is So Hard
Ultra-processed foods are part of daily life, filling 60% to 70% of the American diet. That umbrella term covers a wide variety of packaged foods, from snacks carrying added sugar, salt, and saturated fat combined with preservatives for shelf life, additives for flavor, colorants for eye appeal, and chemicals like bisphenols in the packages themselves. Processed meats, as their name would suggest, also belong in this category. (Cooney, 10/29)