First Edition: April 5, 2023

KHN: ‘Hard To Get Sober Young’: Inside One Of The Country’s Few Recovery High Schools 
Every weekday at 5280 High School in Denver starts the same way. Students in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction gather on the steps of the school’s indoor auditorium to discuss a topic chosen by staff members. One recent morning, they talked about mental health and sobriety. A teenage boy dressed in tan corduroys, a black hoodie, and sneakers went first. “I didn’t want to have, like, any emotion,” he said. “So I thought, like, the best way to, like, put it down would be to do more and more and more drugs.” (Daniel, 4/5)

KHN: Listen To The Latest ‘KHN Health Minute’ 
The KHN Health Minute this week looks at doctors offering vouchers to bring down the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables, and how new abortion restrictions are complicating efforts to reduce preterm births. (4/4)

Politico: Liberals Take Over Wisconsin Supreme Court — With Major Implications For Abortion 
Liberals flipped the ideological makeup of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Tuesday. Janet Protasiewicz’s win in a high-stakes race for an open court seat means the new 4-3 majority is much more likely to strike down a controversial 19th century abortion ban there. Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee County, won her race, 56.9% to 43.1%, when the Associated Press called the race at 9:53 pm. She defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly. The court is technically nonpartisan, but now has a 4-3 liberal majority through at least 2025. (Montellaro, 4/4)

The New York Times: Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message
The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. ... Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.” (Epstein, 4/4)

AP: Kansas OKs Bill That Penalizes Doctors For Some Abortions 
Doctors accused of not providing enough care to infants delivered alive during certain kinds of abortion procedures in Kansas could face lawsuits and criminal charges under a bill that won final approval Tuesday in the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. The legislation faces an uncertain fate in a legal and political climate that’s made Kansas an outlier on abortion policy among states with GOP-led legislatures. The bill applies not only to “botched” or “unsuccessful” abortions but also when doctors induce labor to deliver a fetus that is expected to die within minutes or even seconds outside the womb, which often occurs because of a severe medical issue. (Hanna, 4/4)

AP: Maine Lawmakers To Consider Bills To Expand Abortion Access 
Maine lawmakers are preparing to take up several proposals in the coming weeks to expand abortion access, including one by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills to allow women in Maine to get abortions later in pregnancy if deemed necessary by a medical provider. Current state law bans abortions after a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks. The governor’s bill would allow later abortions with a doctor’s approval. (4/4)

Reuters: J&J Unit Files For Second Bankruptcy To Pursue $8.9 Billion Talc Settlement
The J&J subsidiary, LTL Management, filed for bankruptcy protection late Tuesday for a second time with the intent to present a reorganization plan containing the proposed settlement to a judge as soon as May 14, the subsidiary said in a court filing. J&J said in a statement that about 60,000 talc claimants had agreed to the proposal. (Knauth andSpector, 4/4)

Reuters: US Rule To Allow Some Inmates To Stay Home After COVID Emergency Lifts 
Federal inmates who were allowed to serve their prison terms at home during the COVID-19 pandemic will be able to remain there after the Biden administration lifts the public health emergency, under new rules unveiled by the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday. The regulations are expected to provide some relief to inmates, who feared they could potentially be hauled back into prison when the public health emergency expires on May 11. (Lynch, 4/4)

Fox News: Prisoners In Home Confinement Due To COVID Measures Can Stay There Even After Emergency Ends, Says DOJ
The Justice Department noted that more than 52,000 inmates were placed under home confinement during COVID, and that most of them have completed their sentences from home. As of late January, there were 3,434 inmates still serving out a sentence at home. (Kasperowicz, 4/4)

Reuters: Gilead Details Promising Early COVID Antiviral Data, Setting Up Larger Studies 
Gilead Sciences Inc on Tuesday unveiled data from the first human study of its experimental oral COVID-19 antiviral, saying the results in healthy volunteers cleared the way for two large Phase III trials of the drug that have begun enrolling patients. The drug, obeldesivir and previously known as GS-5245, is designed to keep the coronavirus that causes COVID from replicating in the body and overwhelming a patient's immune system. (Beasley, 4/4)

Reuters: Arbutus Files Patent Lawsuit Against Pfizer/BioNTech Over COVID Vaccines
Arbutus Biopharma on Tuesday sued U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and its German partner BioNTech SE in a New Jersey district court, claiming their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines infringe five of Arbutus' patents. Arbutus, along with its licensee Genevant Sciences, is seeking damages, including reasonable royalties, over the use of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology in Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to carry and transfer genetic material into the body. (4/4)

ABC News: Flu Cases Are Ticking Up, What You Need To Know About Influenza B
As fears of a "tripledemic" die down, health officials say they are seeing an uptick of a particular strain of the flu: influenza B. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of tests that are positive for influenza B has increased from 0.12% the week ending Jan. 7 to 0.36% the week ending March 25. (Kekatos, 4/5)

Military.com: Air Force Will Allow More Body Fat For Recruits As Service Struggles To Find New Airmen 
The Air Force will allow recruits to have a greater percentage of body fat in an effort to reach more Americans as the service expects to fall short of its recruiting goals this year. Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women. (Kheel, 4/4)

Military Times: Lawmakers Move To Block VA’s Plans To Resume Health Records Rollout
Plans from Veterans Affairs leadership to restart their embattled electronic health records program this summer could be upended by lawmakers concerned over the long-term safety and reliability of the program. Capitol Hill staff said members in both chambers are discussing how to move ahead on new requirements for the program after a flurry of new legislation aimed at ensuring the new records system doesn’t move ahead until major fixes are made. If a compromise is reached, it could significantly set back plans from VA officials to expand the software to new medical centers in June. (Shane III, 4/4)

Modern Healthcare: Joint Commission Data Show Hospital Falls Up In 2022
Healthcare organizations and patients reported more than 1,400 serious adverse events to the Joint Commission in 2022, an increase from recent years, according to data released Tuesday. Falls, delayed care and wrong-site surgeries continued to be the biggest contributors to severe patient harm and death, the Joint Commission concluded. (Devereaux, 4/4)

Modern Healthcare: CMS Proposes Nursing Homes, Psychiatric Facilities Payment Bump
Skilled nursing facilities would get a 3.7% Medicare reimbursement increase in fiscal 2024 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Tuesday. CMS also pledged that a long-awaited and controversial regulation establishing minimum staffing ratios at nursing homes will debut this spring. President Joe Biden announced that policy, along with other nursing home industry initiatives, during his State of the Union address in 2022, but CMS has yet to take action to implement it. The nursing home industry strongly opposes federal staffing ratios. (Turner and Berryman, 4/4)

NBC News: Fast Closures Of Nursing Homes In Massachusetts Raise Alarms And Worry Over Patients
Hundreds of elderly residents and people with disabilities from four nursing homes in western Massachusetts are quickly being displaced as the company that owns them appears to be accelerating the pace in which such centers stand to close down. (Acevedo, 4/4)

AP: Lauder Family Pledges $200M To Its Alzheimer's Research Work 
The sons of cosmetics giant Estée Lauder, along with her four grandchildren, pledged $200 million Tuesday to the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, a nonprofit the family founded to support research into finding a cure for the disease. Leonard and Ronald Lauder founded the organization in 1998 in honor of their mother, who had Alzheimer’s as did other members of her family, said Mark Roithmayr, the CEO of ADDF. (Beaty, 4/4)

CNN: US Health Officials Aim To 'Transform' Alzheimer's Disease Research With $300 Million Data Platform
The US National Institute on Aging is moving forward with efforts to build a real-world Alzheimer’s disease database as part of its aim to improve, support and conduct more dementia research. Last month, the agency, part of the National Institutes of Health, posted a notice of the grant for the six-year database project, setting its earliest start date as April 2024. (Howard, 4/4)

Bloomberg: Illumina Ordered By FTC To Unwind $7 Billion Grail Deal From 2021
Illumina Inc. was ordered to unwind its $7 billion acquisition of cancer startup Grail by the Federal Trade Commission, an uncommon move by antitrust regulators who said the deal raises competition concerns for cancer testing. The FTC’s 4-0 decision announced Monday overturned an earlier ruling by its in-house judge who found last year that the tie-up wouldn’t harm innovation in the market for early-stage cancer detection. (Nylen and Birnbaum, 4/3)

Reuters: World Making 'Huge Mistake' Not Funding New TB Vaccines - Gates 
A lack of funding could delay late-stage trials of the first new vaccine against tuberculosis for more than a century, warned Bill Gates, whose foundation is backing the development of the shot. The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist said there were a raft of promising innovations in the fight against TB, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, but that more funding was essential. (Rigby, 4/4)

The Washington Post: D.C. Vending Machines To Dispense Narcan, Fentanyl Test Strips 
The opioid antidote Narcan, fentanyl test strips, coronavirus test kits and male and female condoms are among the items that soon will be available at six free vending machines throughout the District, with the aim of reducing drug overdoses. The District joins Las Vegas, Chicago, Cincinnati and Puerto Rico in deploying harm reduction vending machines to provide around-the-clock access to people who are homeless, vulnerable to opioid abuse or wary of contacting community services. In Europe, Denmark opened the first community-based harm reduction vending machines in 1987, followed by Norway. Today there are hundreds of such machines in at least seven countries on the continent. (Portnoy, 4/4)

USA Today: Overdose Deaths And Xylazine: Narcan Doesn't Work On Animal Tranq
Harm-reduction experts said it's important to carry naloxone because the vast majority of overdoses involve opioids such as illicit fentanyl or heroin. More than 107,000 people died from overdoses during the 12 months through August 2023, and two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids. Still, doctors warn naloxone doesn't work on xylazine, which is increasingly found in illicit fentanyl and heroin. (Alltucker, 4/4)

Axios: Opioid Addiction Treatment In EDs Not A Guarantee
The overdose crisis is prompting more hospitals to initiate opioid addiction treatment in emergency rooms — a change welcomed by many behavioral health experts. Yes, but: It's resurfacing tension among providers over who's really responsible for addressing the underlying problem of opioid misuse. (Moreno and Dreher, 4/5)

AP: Kansas Passes Trans Bathroom Bill; Arkansas OKs Own Version
A Kansas bill to impose some of the nation’s broadest bathroom restrictions and ban transgender people from changing the name or gender on their driver’s licenses cleared the Legislature by margins Tuesday that suggest backers could override the Democratic governor’s expected veto. Kansas Senate voted 28-12 with one vote more than a two-thirds majority needed to overturn any veto, giving final passage to an earlier House-passed version and sending it to Gov. Laura Kelly. Both chambers have Republican supermajorities. (Hanna and DeMillo, 4/4)

AP: Indiana Trans Health Care Ban 'Clear As Mud,' Governor Says 
Whether a ban all gender-affirming care for minors will become law in Indiana remains unclear after the state’s Republican governor said Tuesday that the bill on his desk is “clear as mud.” The bill Republican state lawmakers advanced last week would prohibit transgender youth under 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and surgeries in the state. (Rodgers and Davies, 4/4)

The Boston Globe: Former CDC Adviser Appointed Head Of Department Of Public Health 
Dr. Robbie Goldstein, a senior policy adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been appointed as the new commissioner for the state’s Department of Public Health. (Bartlett and Lazar, 4/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Longevity Seekers Rethink Their Use Of Metformin To Fight Aging 
Spurred by a selection of research that has suggested metformin could improve longevity, a growing community of self-described biohackers latched onto it, taking it even though they don’t have diabetes. A tech-heavy crowd seeking to engineer improvements in their health through gadgets, data analysis and medications, they trade tips in forums on sites like Facebook, Reddit and chat app Discord.  ... However, the science behind its effectiveness as a longevity improver in healthy people is mixed, and some recent studies have been discouraging, giving some advocates pause. (Janin, 4/4)

The Boston Globe: How The Hip Replacement Became The Hot Gen-X Surgery
Not her. Beth Laliberty was only 54. A skier, a soccer player — a kid. Sure, she’d been limping for years. And yeah, when she caught sight of her reflection in a window at Market Basket in Haverhill she was shocked by the hunched figure leaning on the cart for support. “Who’s that 85-year-old woman?” she wondered. But even so, when a surgeon suggested a hip replacement, Laliberty recoiled. “That’s for old people,” she thought. (Teitell, 4/4)

The Washington Post: Prebiotic Sodas Claim To Boost Your Health. Experts Are Skeptical
Can soda ever be a health food? A growing number of beverage companies are betting it can, and have introduced a variety of “prebiotic” sodas that they claim are good for your gut, brain and immune health. Sales of these carbonated drinks have boomed because of a marketing blitz on TikTok, where videos about gut health get millions of views and influencers are routinely paid to promote prebiotic sodas and their health claims. (Amenabar and O'Connor, 4/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Just How Much Of A Workout Do You Get From Carrying Your Own Golf Clubs? Probably Not As Much As You Think
Carrying a bag of golf clubs over 18 holes of golf may sound like grueling exercise, but it may not be as good of a workout as many golfers might think. That’s according to a new study that found that the calories burned from carrying a golf bag, with 14 clubs, weighing 15 pounds, wasn’t significantly different than manually pulling a golf bag on wheels or using an electric trolley, which requires no additional effort and is very similar to using a golf caddie since the trolley can automatically follow golfers around the course. (Ward, 4/4)