The Hill: Dems, Health Groups Demand Immigrant Children Be Quickly Reunited With Families
Democrats and medical professionals on Thursday called for children separated from their families at the border to be immediately reunited to minimize any long-term harm to their mental and physical health. “The executive order President Trump signed yesterday does not resolve this crisis that he created,” said Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) at a press conference with representatives of health groups. (Hellmann, 6/21)

Stat: Could Genetic Testing Help Reunite Separated Immigrant Families?
Amid the family separation crisis at the U.S. border, some concerned observers have floated an idea: Could direct-to-consumer genealogy companies offer free genetic testing to reunite children with their parents?J ust as commercial spit kits have brought together long-lost cousins or unknown siblings, the thinking goes, they might also be able to help in the current crisis. The executive order President Trump signed on Wednesday to end the administration’s policy, after all, does not address the predicament of the over 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents. (Robbins, 6/21)

Modern Healthcare: Immigrant Detention Crisis Could Yield Profit For Some Providers And Payers
As Congress flounders in another messy immigration debate, medical contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars could grow amid the fallout of President Donald Trump's executive order to halt his own policy to separate families illegally entering the country. Healthcare for detained immigrants—both children and adults—is a sprawling, confusing system where various government agencies contract with networks of doctors and community hospitals. It is also an expensive system whose costs are hard to predict and manage since they are based on unexpected surges in people crossing the border. (Luthi, 6/21)

The New York Times: No Relief In Sight For Parents Of Thousands Of Migrant Children Still In Custody
Micaela Samol Gonzalez, dressed in blue detention scrubs, made her way to the front of a windowless courtroom in Colorado on Thursday and faced the judge. After she gave her name and arranged a future court date for her immigration case, the judge asked whether she had any questions. She had just one. (Healy, 6/21)

The Washington Post: The Chaotic Effort To Reunite Immigrant Parents With Their Separated Kids
Each of the mothers had a different memory of the moment she was separated from her child. For some, it was outside a Border Patrol station just north of the Rio Grande, shortly after being apprehended. For others, it was after an interrogation by federal authorities in a bitterly cold air-conditioned office. Jodi Goodwin, an attorney in Harlingen, Tex., has heard more than two dozen variations of those stories from Central American mothers who have been detained for days or weeks without their children. So far, she has not been able to locate a single one of their offspring. (Sieff, 6/21)

The Associated Press: Confusion And Uncertainty At The Border After Trump Acts
The U.S. government wrestled with the ramifications Thursday of President Donald Trump’s move to stop separating families at the border, with no clear plan to reunite the more than 2,300 children already taken from their parents and Congress again failing to take action on immigration reform. In a day of confusion and conflicting reports, the Trump administration began drawing up plans to house as many as 20,000 migrants on U.S. military bases. But officials gave differing accounts as to whether those beds would be for children or for entire families. (Merchant, Bryan and Long, 6/21)

The New York Times: U.S. Prepares Housing Up To 20,000 Migrants On Military Bases
The United States is preparing to shelter as many as 20,000 migrant children on four American military bases, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday, as federal officials struggled to carry out President Trump’s order to keep immigrant families together after they are apprehended at the border. The 20,000 beds at bases in Texas and Arkansas would house “unaccompanied alien children,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Michael Andrews, although other federal agencies provided conflicting explanations about how the shelters would be used and who would be housed there. There were reports of widespread confusion on the border. (Shear, Cooper and Benner, 6/21)

Reuters: Immigration Detainees Influx Squeezes Healthcare At California Prison: Workers
An influx of hundreds of immigration detainees at a U.S. prison in California is straining its medical staff and raising concerns about the adequacy of healthcare for detainees and inmates, several employees at the prison have told Reuters. The Victorville Federal Correctional Institution, a prison for convicted criminals about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is temporarily housing up to 1,000 men detained by federal immigration officials as a result of the U.S. administration's crackdown on illegal border crossings. (Lynch, 6/21)

Reuters: 'Are You The Mother?' A Woman's Search For Baby Taken By U.S. Immigration
It took 85 days for Olivia Caceres to retrieve her baby boy, pulled from his father's arms at the U.S. border, a traumatic experience many more parents face to reunite with children separated under President Donald Trump's immigration policies. Now nearly 20 months old, Mateo was returned to his family on Feb. 8 after a battle across borders, officialdom and languages. He was filthy and terrified of the dark, his mother said. Months later, the boy still screeches even as Caceres rocks him on her chest, sometimes until dawn. (6/21)

The New York Times: 16 And Alone, Inside A Center For Separated Children In New York
It was just three weeks ago that the 16-year-old was detained by immigration agents in Texas after traveling with his father to the United States. The father was deported back to Guatemala. The child was sent to New York. Today, he sits in a children’s residence, one of an estimated 700 young people who have been placed with child care agencies in New York since President Trump announced his “zero tolerance” policy of separating children from family members when they are apprehended at the southern border. (McKinley, Robbins and Correal, 6/21)

Texas Tribune: Texas Shelter Operator Says It Knows The Locations Of The Parents Of Separated Children In Its Care
Confusion over the fate of families that were separated by the federal government at the U.S-Mexico border continues to reign, but the Texas-based company that houses nearly half of all undocumented children in federal custody said Thursday that it knows where the parents of all its separated children are located. The children are allowed to be in contact with those parents, as long as the separate federal facility where the parents are being held allows it, according to Alexia Rodriguez, vice president of immigrant children's services for Southwest Key Programs, the nonprofit company that shelters the children. (Cobler and Platoff, 6/21)

Texas Tribune: Texas Mayors Try To Visit Tent City Holding Immigrant Children And Get Few Answers
A trip by a group of mayors to the port of entry Thursday, spearheaded by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, yielded no new information about what, if anything, will change inside the detention center for immigrant children after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end family separations on Wednesday. (Aguilar, 6/21)

Reuters: Head Of New U.S. Corporate Health Plan Cites Surgery As Biggest Cost
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who was named this week to head the company being formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to trim employee healthcare costs, on Thursday cited surgery as the single biggest U.S. healthcare cost and said there are ways to both cut costs and improve patient care. Speaking in San Diego at the annual meeting of America's Health Insurance Plans, a health insurance trade association, Gawande also said that end-of-life care needs to take into account the wishes of patients, something which he said is now sorely lacking. (Beasley, 6/21)

Bloomberg: Atul Gawande Says His Goal Is Better Health Care For 1 Million Workers 
“We will come to a place where we can generate scalable solutions that change the practice of medicine,” Gawande said at the America’s Health Insurance Plans conference in San Diego on Thursday, a day after he was appointed chief executive officer of the health-care partnership. “It’s a long road, but it clearly is possible.” The not-for-profit startup aims to improve care and lower costs for the three companies by creating systems that connect complex medical services with patient counseling while reducing waste caused by irrelevant tests or costly treatment that doesn’t improve quality of life, Gawande said, citing his research as a medical journalist. (Gittelsohn, 6/21)

Stat: How Can Atul Gawande Help Reinvent Health Care With His New Company?
So far, announcements regarding the new enterprise have been light on policy details, leaving many to wonder how exactly it can succeed where so many others have failed. We asked some of the country’s leading health care experts and others for how they would counsel Gawande as he begins his new adventure. (Chen, 6/21)

Boston Globe: Advice For Gawande As He Takes Up Tall Health Care Challenge
“The lack of details makes it a little bit of a shot in the dark,’’ said Dr. Lisa Bielamowicz, cofounder and president of Gist Healthcare, a health care consultancy in Washington, D.C. It “doesn’t point to a lot of meat there yet.’’ So far, little else is known about the venture, other than that it will be based in Boston, and that it has the medical world abuzz because of the big names and big aspirations. (Kowalczyk, 6/21)

Modern Healthcare: White House Proposes HHS Restructuring And Renaming To Consolidate Welfare Programs 
As part of a sweeping reorganization to make the federal government leaner, the White House proposed Thursday to move all major public-assistance programs including food stamps into HHS and renaming the bulked-up agency the Department of Health and Public Welfare. The plan, spearheaded by Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, also would create a new Council on Public Assistance, overseen by the renamed HHS, to restructure and coordinate welfare and workforce issues across all federal agencies. (Meyer, 6/21)

The Washington Post: Trump Wants To Move Food Stamps To A New Agency. That Could Make The Program Easier To Overhaul.
Conservative groups who have pushed the plan, including the Heritage Foundation, say HHS is better equipped to make major reforms to SNAP than the Agriculture Department. They also argue the consolidation will help administrators better track how much money low-income families receive in benefits — a potential precursor to paring back those programs. (Dewey, 6/21)

The Hill: White House Releases Sweeping Proposal To Reorganize Government 
A new Council on Public Assistance would then oversee programs gathered in one place, including food stamps and Medicaid, and have the power to impose uniform work requirements in those programs, a move strongly opposed by Democrats. The reorganization plan faces tough odds in Congress, where even aside from the dispute over work requirements, any reorganization faces opposition from congressional committees that could lose power if their jurisdictions change. (Sullivan, 6/21)

CQ: OMB Proposal Would Move Nutrition Programs To Health Department
The government's current structure, with food-oriented benefits administered by the Department of Agriculture but cash benefits regulated by HHS, "actually creates burdens for the states and frankly takes away resources that should be going to needy families,” Margaret Weichert, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters. (Ferguson and McIntire, 6/21)

The Washington Post: Government Reorganization Plan Embraces Conservative Goals For The Safety Net
Whether these changes are a good idea lies at the core of a deep philosophical divide about the proper size of government and its role for people who live in poverty or close to it. “The federal government is bloated, opaque, bureaucratic and inefficient,” Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, said Thursday in unveiling the proposal, much of which would require Congress’s approval. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow for domestic policy studies at the Heritage Society, who has advised Trump administration officials on ideas for safety-net programs that he has advanced for a decade, said, “You have to treat the welfare system holistically.” He said in an interview Thursday that the government could, for instance, align assistance programs to remove financial deterrents to marriage. (Goldstein and Dewey, 6/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Proposes Combining Workforce Training, Welfare Programs In Agency Revamp
Critics say restoring the word “welfare” to the agency’s name would give the assistance programs a negative connotation and make them vulnerable to budget cuts. Proponents argue the consolidation would streamline oversight and make things easier for states and consumers. (Hackman, 6/21)

Stat: White House Proposes A Narrowing Of FDA's Mission — And A New Name
The Trump administration has proposed a fundamental change to the mission of the Food and Drug Administration, one that would transfer most of the responsibility for regulating food safety to the Department of Agriculture and rename the FDA the “Federal Drug Administration. ”The proposal is part of a wide-reaching plan that was released Thursday by the White House and that includes other broader ideas to reform the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS would be renamed the “Department of Health and Public Welfare” and absorb some food assistance programs currently run by the USDA. (Swetlitz, 6/21)

Stat: Frustrated At The Pace Of Biosimilar Development, FDA Yanks A Draft Guidance 
In an unusual step, the Food and Drug Administration withdrew a draft guidance that was issued last fall to help companies develop biosimilar medicines that resemble brand-name biologics. By doing so, the agency acquiesced to concerns expressed in recent months by companies over some of the recommendations that were made for concocting a biosimilar, which is a nearly identical variant of a biologic medicine and is expected to provide the same result in patients. (Silverman, 6/21)

In other pharmaceutical news —

The Hill: Skyrocketing Insulin Prices Provoke New Outrage
Rising insulin costs are drawing outrage from diabetes advocates, leading to calls for greater transparency and federal oversight of the market for a drug that helps more than 7 million Americans. Insulin was first discovered nearly 100 years ago, and as newer forms of the drug have been introduced, the price has climbed. (Weixel, 6/21)

California Healthline: California Poised To Expand Access To Hepatitis C Drugs
Patrick Garcia wasn’t completely surprised when he learned recently he had hepatitis C. Until a few years ago, he had experimented with numerous drugs, injecting heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine — you name it. “I haven’t lived exactly a perfect life,” said Garcia, 43, whose mouth, hand and back were injured in a motorcycle wreck last year.Medi-Cal, California’s public health program for the poor, paid for his post-accident care and the bloodwork that led to his hepatitis C diagnosis. But it wouldn’t pay for the pricey new medications that cure the disease. (Bartolone, 6/21)

Politico Pro: Reversal Of Fortune: Big Obamacare Rate Hike Causing Political Headaches For Republicans 
Obamacare premiums are once again poised to spike by double digits in 2019, causing heartburn for politicians as voters will head to the polls within days of learning about the looming hit to their pocketbooks. But unlike recent campaign cycles, when Republicans capitalized on Obamacare sticker shock to help propel them to complete control of Congress and the White House, they’re now likely to be the ones feeling the wrath of voters. That’s because Republicans are now in total control of the federal government and therefore on the hook for the health care system’s chronic shortcomings. Polling data has consistently suggested that more voters will blame Republicans for future problems with Obamacare. In addition, the GOP’s repeated failures to repeal Obamacare after eight years of campaign promises will make it difficult to galvanize the base on health care. (Demko, 6/21)

Des Moines Register: Health Insurance Costs In Iowa Won't Balloon...For These Customers
Medica’s exact rate-increase proposal was not made public this week. But Iowa Insurance Division announced Wednesday which insurance companies were proposing increases of more than 5.6 percent. Any proposals over that level would require a public hearing in front of Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen. Medica’s proposal did not go over the threshold, the division said. Medica's 45,000 customers should receive information this fall about how much the carrier plans to increase their premiums. About 85 percent of them will be shielded from the increases, because they qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies that rise as premiums go up. (Leys, 6/21)

In other health law news —

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Buyer Beware: Inexpensive Health Plans Often Not What They Seem
Under the federal health-care law, all plans sold to individuals and small businesses were required to cover a list of basic benefits, such as maternity, mental-health services, and prescription drugs. Now, association health plans, through which small businesses buy insurance together, will be able to omit some of those benefits. (Gantz, 6/22)

The Hill: Cigna Announces Goal To Reduce Drug Overdoses By 25 Percent In Key Areas
Cigna, one of the country’s largest health insurers, announced Thursday an initiative to reduce drug overdoses 25 percent by 2021 in certain communities hit by the opioid epidemic. The effort will focus initially on four states — Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia — as well as the metropolitan areas of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. (Roubein, 6/21)

The Associated Press: Pain Medicine Group Cancels Doctor Training About Marijuana
A national medical group Thursday abruptly canceled its plans to train doctors about marijuana for pain relief after a federal agency pulled its funding. The episode highlights an ongoing conflict between federal and state laws on marijuana. The American Academy of Pain Medicine scrubbed its plans for a one-hour online course next month after a request from the U.S. government agency that provided the funding, a spokeswoman for the pain medicine group said. (Johnson, 6/21)

Politico Pro: Opioid Bills Unleash Lobbying Blitz From Health Companies Eyeing Windfall  
House lawmakers are speeding through votes on dozens of bills aimed at responding in force to the opioid crisis — and in the process, quietly boosting the fortunes of a handful of drugmakers and health interests invested in addressing the addiction epidemic. In a two-week legislative blitz, the House has backed narrowly tailored measures that could spur sales for selected companies that have collectively spent millions on lobbying in recent months, according to a review of the more than five dozen bills up for votes. (Cancryn, 6/21)

Kaiser Health News: Doling Out Pain Pills Post-Surgery: An Ingrown Toenail Not The Same As A Bypass
What’s the right painkiller prescription to send home with a patient after gallbladder surgery or a cesarean section? That question is front and center as conventional approaches to pain control in the United States have led to what some see as a culture of overprescribing, helping spur the nation’s epidemic of opioid overuse and abuse.The answer isn’t clear-cut. (Appleby, 6/22)

Chicago Tribune: To Combat Opioid Crisis, Suburb Will Have Overdose-Reversing Naloxone Available In Public Places
Elk Grove Village will become one of the few towns in America to put overdose-reversing medication in public places, a key step in what Mayor Craig Johnson said will be a wide-ranging strategy to battle the opioid epidemic. Johnson said at a news conference Thursday that the village will put kits containing the nasal spray form of naloxone in libraries, park district buildings and Village Hall, among other places. The village also wants to make the antidote widely available in schools and private businesses, similar to how defibrillators are placed in common areas. (Keilman, 6/21)

PBS NewsHour: New Study Gives Broader Look Into How Police Killings Affect Black Americans’ Mental Health 
Police killings of unarmed black Americans negatively affect the mental health of black adults in the states where the fatal incidents occur, according to a study published Thursday. The report, published today in British journal The Lancet, focused on the mental well-being of black adults who are not directly involved in acts of police violence, adding to a body of research that suggests the killings are “a public health issue,” said Dr. Atheendar S. Venkataramani, one of the study’s lead authors. (Barajas, 6/21)

The New York Times: Police Killings Have Harmed Mental Health In Black Communities, Study Finds
The mental health of white Americans was not similarly affected, the researchers found. Nor were negative health effects associated with police killings of unarmed white Americans or armed black Americans. While these findings might seem unsurprising, particularly to African-Americans, the researchers contended that their study was a significant attempt to assess the measurable, if indirect, harms that police violence has inflicted on the broader psychological and emotional well-being of African-Americans.(Eligon, 6/21)

The New York Times: 25th Person At U.S. Embassy In Cuba Is Mysteriously Sickened
Another diplomat working at the United States Embassy in Havana has been sickened by a mysterious attack, bringing to 25 the number of personnel who have fallen ill there, the State Department said on Thursday. The case was the first confirmed in Cuba since August and could suggest that whatever caused the illnesses in late 2016 and the first part of 2017 had started again or was continuing. Complicating the situation for officials was news this spring that at least one diplomat at a consulate in Guangzhou, China, had experienced symptoms almost identical to those reported by diplomats in Havana. (Harris, 6/21)

The Associated Press: Another US Worker Confirmed Hurt By Mystery Cuba Incidents
The new "medically confirmed" worker is one of two who were recently evacuated from Cuba after reporting symptoms. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the other worker is "still being evaluated" by doctors. Prior to the newest incident, the most recent medically confirmed case from Cuba had been in August 2017, Nauert said. The confirmed Cuba patients have been found to have a range of symptoms and diagnoses including mild traumatic brain injury, also known as concussions. (Lederman and Lee, 6/22)

The Washington Post: How Prepared Is The World For The Next Epidemic? This Tool Shows Most Countries Are Not.
Public health officials and business leaders like Bill Gates have long warned that the world is not ready for the next pandemic. Now an initiative led by Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has developed a tool that spotlights gaps in preparedness, and actions that countries and organizations can take to close them. The new website, PreventEpidemics.org, gives an individual score to each country and uses color codes to rank the world by five levels of preparedness. (Sun, 6/21)

Stat: ‘Living Legos’ Form Blood Vessels To Simulate Heart Disease And Test Drugs
In the field of tissue engineering, many scientists grow cells in sheets, or use an artificial scaffold to give shape and structure to the cells. But Marsha Rolle, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and some colleagues are developing a more modular approach, in a process she compares to both building blocks and baking pans. Rolle chose this approach to build both a more accurate model of healthy blood vessels as well as damaged ones, hoping to learn more about cardiovascular diseases and whether drugs will effectively treat them. (Cooney, 6/22)

Bloomberg: AI Hospital Software Knows Who’s Going To Fall 
Falls are dangerous and costly. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 700,000 to 1 million hospitalized patients fall each year. More than one-third of those falls result in injuries, including fractures and head trauma. The average cost per patient for an injury caused by a single fall is more than $30,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015, medical costs for falls in the U.S. totaled more than $50 billion. Like most other U.S. hospitals, El Camino had invested time and money in fall prevention efforts, such as the call lights, but the various methods hadn’t been effective enough. The parameters for at-risk patients are wide enough that many are tagged as likely to fall at some point. It’s even harder if a hospital has a bigger share of high-risk patients as El Camino does—about 50 percent of its patients are at risk for falls. Effectively monitoring that many people can be tough when nurses are already overworked. (Ockerman, 6/21)

Southern Illinoisan: HUD Is Failing To Protect Children From Lead Paint Poisoning, Audits Find
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development failed to protect hundreds of thousands of children living in subsidized housing from potential exposure to lead paint and lead poisoning, according to a pair of recent federal reports. The reports describe a hodgepodge reporting system within HUD, as well as disjointed communication between the federal agency and the local housing authorities it oversees. (Parker, 6/22)

The Associated Press: Demi Lovato Sings About Addiction Struggles On ‘Sober’
Demi Lovato celebrated six years of sobriety in March, but her new song indicates she may no longer be sober. The pop star released “Sober “ on YouTube on Thursday, singing lyrics like: “Momma, I’m so sorry I’m not sober anymore/And daddy please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor.” Lovato tweeted a link to the song with the words “My truth.” The singer-actress struggled with an eating disorder, self-mutilation and other issues, entering rehab in 2010. She has spoken out about her battles with drugs and alcohol over the years, and she’s become a role model for young women and men who have faced their own issues. (6/21)

The New York Times: Obesity Rates Higher In Country Than City
Obesity is more common in rural areas than in cities in the United States, two new studies have found. The two analyses, one of adults and the other of children, used data on weight, height and where people lived that was gathered in a series of nationally representative surveys from 2001 to 2016. They were published online together in JAMA. (Bakalar, 6/21)

Dallas Morning News: She Drank Live Viruses For Two Weeks. It Worked
For five years, Patti Swearingen battled an infection that refused to go away. Doctors prescribed round after round of antibiotics, but the infection kept coming back. Eventually, the microscopic war inside her body left Swearingen so weak and debilitated she could barely leave her living room couch. In March, she and her husband Gary decided that modern drugs had failed them. Instead, they turned to a treatment from the past. As reported in The Dallas Morning News and on KXAS-TV (NBC5), they flew 6,500 miles to a small clinic in Tbilisi, Georgia. There, doctors had her drink live viruses twice a day for two weeks. Now Swearingen’s medical records confirm the outcome: She is cured. (Kuchment and Castro, 6/21)

NPR: DNA Snippet Once Called 'Junk' Found To Drive The Development Of Embryos
One of the enduring mysteries of biology is why so much of the DNA in our chromosomes appears to be simply junk. In fact, about half of the human genome consists of repetitive bits of DNA that cut and paste themselves randomly into our chromosomes, with no obvious purpose. A study published Thursday finds that some of these snippets may actually play a vital role in the development of embryos. (Harris, 6/21)

Stateline: Nonstick Chemicals Can Really Stick Around – In Your Body
For decades, American consumers have been buying water-resistant packaging and clothing, stain-resistant carpets and Teflon cookware. Now there is growing alarm that the chemical components that give those products their appeal are ending up in the water supply. Drinking water in 33 states from New Jersey to California has been tainted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, more commonly referred to as PFAS. Now they are also showing up in human blood: A 2015 study found PFAS in 97 percent of blood samples tested. (Beitsch, 6/22)

KCUR: 7 Years After Joplin Tornado, Mercy Builds Hospitals With Disaster In Mind 
A visitor to the new wing of the Mercy hospital in Festus can likely tell immediately where the old building ends and the new part begins. The atrium still smells of fresh paint, and instead of dark, winding hallways, windows let in natural light. Builders designed it to be prettier and more user-friendly. But Mercy Hospital Jefferson is safer, too. Making its new hospitals safer has become a top priority for St. Louis-based based Mercy health system after one of the most destructive tornadoes in recent memory hit St. John’s Hospital in Joplin in 2011. (Fentem, 6/21)

Detroit Free Press: Man Left Measles Germs In Ann Arbor, Detroit Metro Airport
Health authorities are warning travelers and area residents about potential exposure to measles after a traveler on his way to Ann Arbor arrived at Detroit Metro Airport with the disease. "The person who contracted the illness is an adult male who's an international resident who was travelling to Michigan," said Angela Minicuci, communications director at Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. (Paige, 6/21)

Minnesota Public Radio: Ketamine Use Criticized In City Council Committee 
The director of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights says it's "unfortunate" and "regrettable" that a draft report alleging forced sedation of people in police custody was leaked to the Star Tribune. The newspaper reported last week that in some cases police officers suggested or urged emergency medical staff to use the drug after a person was already in handcuffs or restrained. (Williams, 6/21)

The Star Tribune: Children's Genomics Partnership To Boost Treatment
A superteam of seven pediatric hospitals with advanced genetic and genomic testing capabilities is reporting progress in their efforts to improve the diagnosis of rare childhood diseases and hasten treatment. Minneapolis-based Children’s Hospital joined the Sioux Falls-based Sanford Children’s Genomic Medicine Consortium, because the sharing of genetic data and know-how is the fastest way to identify the origins of rare disorders, said Dr. Nancy Mendelsohn, a geneticist and chief of specialty pediatrics at Children’s. (Olson, 6/21)

New Hampshire Public Radio: CDC Study Shows PFAS Chemicals May Be Risky At Lower Levels Than N.H. Regulates
The federal government has published new data about the health risks of industrial chemicals known as PFAS. The Centers for Disease Control study backs the concerns of some residents in contaminated areas here in New Hampshire, who say federal and state limits on PFAS aren't strict enough. (Ropeik, 6/20)

Miami Herald: His House In Miami Gardens Is Housing Kids Taken From Parents 
As Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, both Democrats, waited for permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to tour the facility, their aides worked to account for dozens of children being held somewhere in Florida. ...One facility housing some of the children separated from their parents is His House Children's Home, a shelter for migrant children and foster kids run by a nonprofit organization in Miami Gardens, Executive Director Silvia Smith-Torres confirmed Thursday to the Miami Herald. (Gurney and Vassolo, 6/21)

Health News Florida: Yellow Fever Outbreak In Brazil Possible Threat To Florida
A large, ongoing yellow fever outbreak in Brazil has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning people not to travel there unless they get vaccinated against the deadly mosquito-borne illness. With Florida being a hub for visitors from South and Central America, some health officials are concerned yellow fever, which is spread by the same mosquito that carries the Zika virus, could make its way to the United States. (Colombino, 6/21)

The CT Mirror: U.S. House Bill Cuts Thousands From Connecticut's Free School Lunch Program 
The U.S. House on Thursday narrowly approved a massive farm bill that would cut thousands of children from free school meals in Connecticut. The farm bill, approved on a 213-211 vote, previously failed last month after the GOP’s conservative Freedom Caucus members withheld support as leverage to force a vote on a hard-line immigration measure, which was also voted on Thursday and failed to win enough support. (Radelat, 6/21)

New England Journal of Medicine: A Randomized Trial Of A Family-Support Intervention In Intensive Care Units 
Among critically ill patients and their surrogates, a family-support intervention delivered by the interprofessional ICU team did not significantly affect the surrogates’ burden of psychological symptoms, but the surrogates’ ratings of the quality of communication and the patient- and family-centeredness of care were better and the length of stay in the ICU was shorter with the intervention than with usual care. (White, Angus, Shields et. al., 6/21)

JAMA: Association Of Stress-Related Disorders With Subsequent Autoimmune Disease
Are psychiatric reactions induced by trauma or other life stressors associated with subsequent risk of autoimmune disease? ... Stress-related disorders were significantly associated with risk of subsequent autoimmune disease. (Song, Fang, Tomasson, et. al., 6/19)

Health Affairs: Hypothetical Network Adequacy Schemes For Children Fail To Ensure Patients’ Access To In-Network Children’s Hospital 
We examined the percentage of pediatric specialty hospitalizations that would be beyond existing Medicare Advantage network adequacy distance requirements for adult hospital care and, as a secondary analysis, a pediatric adaptation of the Medicare Advantage requirements. ...Instead of, or in addition to, time and distance standards, policy makers may need to consider more nuanced network definitions, including functional capabilities of the pediatric care network or clear exception policies for essential specialty care services. (Colvin, Hall and Thurm, 6/1)

Urban Institute: What Explains 2018’s Marketplace Enrollment Rates? 
We found that shifts in marketplace enrollment reflected whether the cheapest premiums were available on- or off-marketplace, whether states maximized the size of premium tax credits through “silver loading,” the amount of marketplace advertising, the length of open enrollment periods (which some states did not shorten), and whether state officials encouraged consumers to enroll in coverage. (Burton, Peters, Wengle, et. al., 6/20)

Boston Globe: Needed: A National Effort To Fight Depression 
The recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain are prominent examples of a rising trend. They add to the daily opiate overdoses in all our communities to make an urgent point: our country needs a nationally coordinated effort to address a major underlying cause — depression. (David Silbersweig, 6/21)

Chicago Tribune: Can We Talk About Alcoholism And Anthony Bourdain?
I didn't know Anthony Bourdain, but felt like I did in one small important way. In him, I saw a drinking alcoholic with a front-stage vigorous attempt to do it successfully. His was a fantastic life-embracing show, with drinking taking a prominent role in the joie de vivre, and sometimes that made it hard for me to watch. ...Can Bourdain's death please generate a conversation about alcoholism and not just befuddlement about his fantastic life that countless people wish they had? Because you don't want his life. The travel, the breadth of his experiences, sure, maybe. But this man on the move had to stop sometimes. No cameras, no action. Just himself. I didn’t know him, but I do know addiction and it can be a fiercely critical companion that may take a back seat but lies in wait. It can tear us down and sometimes just won't shut up — goading shame, provoking self-loathing and inviting emotional isolation. (Jo Ann Towle, 6/21)

Sacramento Bee: Candidates Must Talk About Mental Health. A New Coalition Will Make Them.
The recent tragic suicides of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and designer Kate Spade have once again put a spotlight on an issue that too many of us are afraid to confront – behavioral health. And it’s important to focus on our own friends, family, co-workers and neighbors who struggle day in and day out with mental illness. (Carmela Coyle and Jessica Cruz, 6/18)

The Hill: With So Much Trauma, Let’s Make Mental Health America’s No. 1 Issue 
Since it seems as though the only thing that counts in Washington is election outcomes, we’ll be clear: Mental health matters. The mental health of Americans underlies many of the major policy conversations and crises happening today in the United States; daily, it seems, we move mental health closer to the center of our national discourse. After every school shooting, Republicans tell us, “It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem.” (They’re wrong; it’s both.) Our current immigration crisis, in which Central American children as young as 3 months old have been taken from their parents and placed in “tender age” shelters, has unified the medical and psychiatric community to warn us about the potentially disastrous mental health outcomes. (Jessie Tarlov and Danielle Thibodeau, 6/21)

Detroit News: Legislature Threatens To Pour Gas On Mental Health Fire
Mental health has been in the news lately, especially in Detroit, where Police Chief James Craig has decried the volume of his department’s mental illness cases and the city has formed a Mental Health Task Force. We have an epidemic of people with mental illness imprisoned. Our publicly funded mental health system, run through governmental Community Mental Health (CMH) programs the past several decades, has too much bureaucracy, lacks statewide uniformity, is weak on rights protection, has meager hospital resources, and is not well monitored by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). (Mark Reinstein, 6/21)

The Hill: Small Businesses Just Scored A Win On Health-Care Costs
This is a big week for American small businesses. On Tuesday, the Department of Labor published its anticipated final rule expanding association health plans (AHPs). These plans provide expanded health-care coverage options for small business owners and their employees by making it easier for them to group together in associations, where they can enjoy similar regulations and economies of scale as their big business competitors.The rule shifts some AHP oversight to the federal level, working to level the playing field between small and large businesses. This frees AHP’s from some of the burdensome requirements of ObamaCare, which imposes more regulations on small business plans. (Alfredo Ortiz and Tom Price, 6/22)

Boston Globe: A Program Exists To Save Puerto Rico. Make It Law. 
On Oct. 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall, thrashing the East Coast while leaving the lives of many in shambles. Within five months, the Disaster Housing Assistance Program, or DHAP, was activated in response. The program provided rent subsidies, security-deposit assistance, and also helped pay utilities. Five years later on Sept. 20, 2017, the nation watched as Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on the more than 3 million residents of Puerto Rico. Roughly eight months have passed, yet the people of Puerto Rico have received no equivalent to what their counterparts received after Sandy. Instead of DHAP, they received a deadline —on June 30 the Federal Emergency Management Agency will end the Transitional Sheltering Assistance program that has provided housing for more than 7,000 families throughout the country. (Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, 6/22)

The New York Times: Why Competition Won’t Bring Down Drug Prices
Martin Shkreli is in prison, but Daraprim still costs $750 per pill. Heather Bresch was hauled before Congress, but EpiPens still cost three to six times more than they did in 2007. Every week we hear of a new outrageous drug price hike. In polls, some 80 percent of Americans say that government should do more to curb drug prices. Having proclaimed just before his inauguration that drug makers were “getting away with murder,” President Trump last month issued a 50-point blueprint to bring down prices, mainly by injecting more competition — and a dose of public shaming — into the market. Though the document was light on specifics (containing more than 130 questions), the blueprint included proposals for speeding the development and sale of generics, increasing insurers’ negotiating clout, and making pricing more transparent. The administration apparently hopes that, with a nudge and prod, the market will control pharmaceutical pricing excesses. If history is a guide, it won’t. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 6/21)

Stat: We Need More Answers About Immunotherapy For The Elderly
An old idea — using the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells, first proposed more than a century ago — has become one of the most promising approaches to treating cancer today. Immunotherapy is effective against a variety of cancers, with sometimes spectacular results. But I worry about how effective it is in people over age 65, who make up half of cancer patients. (Ankur Parikh, 6/22)

USA Today: Opioid Epidemic Needs Laws For Quality Treatment Instead Of Punishment
In the decades since the crack epidemic, our country has learned an important lesson: there is no arresting our way out of drug addiction. The failed “War on Drugs” put too many people in jail instead of treatment, a mistake that cost us countless lives and taxpayer dollars. Now, we’re facing a new drug crisis — and this time, we have to do better. ...In Dayton, we know how much is at stake. Dayton was  the first cities in Ohio to declare a state of emergency related to the opiate crisis, opening the door to critical resources for our residents. It allowed us to open CarePoint, a syringe exchange program that prevents the spread of disease, keeps dirty needles off our streets, and links users to the treatment they need. CarePoint served clients over 2,300 times in just the first five months of 2018. (Nan Whaley, 6/22)

San Jose Mercury News: Treatment Programs For Homeless Youth Need Oversight
Kids who sleep in tents, cars or shelters have already survived the worst – sexual abuse, hunger, trauma and insecurity.  Scarce funding and confusing mandates between multiple state and local agencies allow many to fall through the cracks. But without clear standards or oversight for the money headed toward youth substance-use disorders, we risk not only squandering these resources, but failing our kids again. (Seth Ammerman, 6/21)

Sacramento Bee: Trump's Immigration Policy Is Damaging Jailed Children 
Losing a parent is one of the most profound stressors a child can experience; it threatens the child’s safety and causes a heightened state of “fight or flight.” ...Decades of science suggest that these separations are traumatic and likely to cause lifelong mental and physical health problems. (Leah Hiber and Andrea Buhler-Wassman, 6/21)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Needs Answers On Medicaid Savings, Not A Kansas-Style Shell Game
Iowa's new Medicaid director is turning out to be as much of a disappointment in this state as he was in Kansas. Mike Randol again this month failed to adequately explain how his office arrived at a $141 million estimate of annual savings from Iowa's privatization of Medicaid. He was also unable or unwilling to explain to a human services council why that estimate was triple the one his office previously released. Then he scooted out of the conference room, refusing to take questions from reporters. Information about the financial impact of privatization is important because Gov. Terry Branstad promised $232 million in savings when he handed over Medicaid management to three for-profit companies in 2016. While Iowans have heard many anecdotes about the negative consequences on low-income patients and health providers, we know essentially nothing about how taxpayers have fared. (6/21)

NH Times Union: Prison Drug Treatment Saves Lives And Makes Us Safer
AIt's not news that New Hampshire continues to suffer the deadly scourge of the overdose epidemic. Nationwide, we are third for overdose deaths in the nation, only behind West Virginia and Ohio. Expanding drug treatment has been key in trying to slow the rate of fatalities, but more must be done. We need to start thinking about expanding treatment in places that are often overlooked— specifically in our prisons and jails. Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is widely recognized as the gold standard when it comes to treating opioid addiction. Methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone (all types of MAT) are effective ways of reducing heroin use. Methadone and buprenorphine have been shown to cut the overdose death rate in half. Nonetheless, surprisingly only 9 percent of drug treatment programs in the country offer these treatments, a sad statistic at a time where overdose deaths are the leading cause of accidental death in the nation. Treatment centers should be offering all three treatments and seeing which one works best with patients. Instead, they offer none. (Michelle Merritt, 6/22)