First Edition: August 17, 2022

KHN: Shelter Sickness: Migrants See Health Problems Linger And Worsen While Waiting At The Border
Two days after arriving at a temporary migrant shelter at the border with the U.S. in June, Rosa Viridiana Ceron Alpizar’s 9-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son fell ill. Most of the kids in the converted gym had stomach issues after being served a meal of sausage and beans, she recalled. Alpizar’s daughter quickly got better, but her son didn’t. José had a fever and diarrhea and was throwing up. When the shelter nurses couldn’t help, Alpizar sought out a private doctor, who prescribed antibiotics. (Rayasam, 8/17)

KHN: Public Health Agencies Adapt Covid Lessons To Curb Overdoses, STDs, And Gun Violence
Shannan Piccolo walked into a hotel with a tote bag full of Narcan and a speech about how easy it is to use the medicine that can reverse opioid overdoses. “Hopefully your business would never have to respond to an overdose, but we’d rather have you have some Narcan on hand just in case,” Piccolo, director of Park City-County Health Department, said to the hotel manager. (Houghton, 8/17)

The New York Times: Biden Signs Climate, Health Bill Into Law As Other Economic Goals Remain
Mr. Biden signed the bill, which Democrats call the Inflation Reduction Act, in the State Dining Room at the White House. He and his allies cast the success of the legislation as little short of a miracle, given it required more than a year of intense negotiations among congressional Democrats. In his remarks, Mr. Biden proclaimed victory as he signed a compromise bill that he called “the biggest step forward on climate ever” and “a godsend to many families” struggling with prescription drug costs. (Tankersley, 8/16)

The Hill: Obama: Climate, Health Care Bill ‘A BFD’
“This is a BFD,” Obama wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, quoting his former vice president’s tweet on the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. Obama made the reference to a moment in 2010 when Biden was caught on a hot mic telling Obama that signing the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as ObamaCare, was a ”big f—— deal.” (Oshin, 8/16)

Newsweek: How Much Less Will Hearing Aids Cost With Over-The-Counter Option?
In a report from 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said that "the average retail price for a pair of hearing aids in 2013 was $4,700, which reflected the cost of both the hearing aids and professional services." The announcement by the FDA on Tuesday comes after Congress passed the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act in 2017, which called on the agency to allow for the over-the-counter sale of hearing aids. Biden issued a similar executive order in 2021. (Impelli, 8/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: Stanford Monkeypox Case Raises Questions About Transmission Beyond Sexual Networks
The man had recently traveled to the United States from the United Kingdom, and his highest-risk exposure was attending a crowded outdoor event, where he had close contact with others, including dancing, for a few hours, researchers said. He did not come into contact with anyone who appeared sick, or who had visible lesions. It was not an event attended specifically or mostly by gay and bisexual people, the letter said. (Ho, 8/16)

The Washington Post: D.C. To Publish Monkeypox Data Online After Critique From Council Members
The dashboard, which officials said will go live at 6 p.m. Wednesday, appears to address council members’ concerns about making sure the city’s limited number of vaccine doses go to underserved communities, and parents’ concerns about safety before the upcoming school year. (Brice-Saddler and Portnoy, 8/16)

CIDRAP: Study Heightens Concerns About Asymptomatic Monkeypox Spread
Of 200 asymptomatic people who were screened and were negative for two STIs, 13 (6.5%) were positive for monkeypox. Two of them developed monkeypox symptoms later. The authors said it's not clear if viral shedding can lead to transmission. If so, they wrote that postexposure ring vaccination around people with probable or confirmed infections might not be enough to contain the spread of the virus. (Schnirring, 8/16)

Houston Chronicle: Monkeypox In Harris County: Child Under 2 Is Presumed Positive
A Harris County child younger than 2 years old tested positive for monkeypox — one of a small number cases in young children nationwide, officials announced Tuesday. (Gill, 8/16)

The New York Times: Polio May Have Been Spreading In New York Since April
Changes in the genome of the virus suggest that this version has been circulating, somewhere in the world, for up to a year. Genetically similar versions of the virus were detected in Israel in March and in Britain in June. (Anthes, 8/16)

NBC News: Polio Vaccine Coverage Is As Low As 37% In N.Y. County Where Paralysis Case Was Found
Low polio vaccination rates plus the presence of the virus in wastewater in a New York county suggest that others are at risk following a case of paralysis from polio in a young adult this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. (Edwards, 8/16)

CIDRAP: Omicron Subvariant BA.5 Now Makes Up 89% Of US COVID-19 Infections
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Nowcast variant tracker estimates that BA.5 now accounts for 88.8% of new US COVID-19 cases, while BA.4 accounts for 5.3% and BA.4.6 accounts for 5.1% of new cases. Four weeks ago BA.5 made up 74.0% of COVID-19 cases, and 2 weeks ago it accounted for 84.5%. (8/16)

The Hill: Most In New Poll Say They Didn’t Take COVID Precautions Before Vacations
Few Americans who reported taking a vacation in the past three months took extra steps to avoid a COVID-19 infection prior to their trip, according to a new Axios-Ipsos poll. The poll found that exactly half of the respondents reported taking a vacation or trip in the past three months. (Schonfeld, 8/16)

AP: California Appeals Court Rejects COVID-19 Fines For Church
A California church that defied safety regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic by holding large religious services won’t have to pay about $200,000 in fines, a state appeals court ruled. (8/17)

Reuters: Exclusive: New Biden Abortion Rights Push Addresses Both Women And Men
Cheered by a decisive win for abortion rights in a Kansas vote and eyeing November midterm elections, the White House is launching a push for abortion access that aims to influence men as well as women, sources with direct knowledge told Reuters. The Biden administration's three-prong playbook leans on two specific federal statutes to target states that limit abortion, communicates to voters the impact on women, and accentuates how forced pregnancies negatively affect both women and men. (Bose, 8/16)

AP: Planned Parenthood To Spend Record $50M In Midterm Elections
The effort, which breaks the group’s previous $45 million spending record set in 2020, comes months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that created a constitutional right to have an abortion. It will be waged by the organization’s political and advocacy arms and will focus on governor’s offices, U.S. Senate seats and legislative races in nine states where abortion rights could be restricted or expanded depending on the outcome at the ballot. (Slodysko, 8/17)

Los Angeles Times: How Pregnancy App Data Could Be Used To Prosecute Abortions
After studying 20 of the most popular period-tracking and pregnancy-tracking apps, researchers from the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation found that 18 of them had data collection practices that raised privacy or security concerns. The report also considered five wearable devices that track fertility but did not raise concerns about their data collection. (Masunaga, 8/17)

Politico: Poll: Abortion Enters Top 5 Latino Issues
For the first time, abortion has entered the top-five issues concerning Latino voters, according to a new poll from two Latino civil rights organizations which showed Democrats with a 2-to-1 edge in the chase for Latinos’ midterm votes. (Martinez, 8/16)

AP: Court: Parentless Girl, 16, Not 'Mature' Enough For Abortion
An appellate court has upheld a lower court ruling that a parentless 16-year-old girl in the Florida Panhandle was not “sufficiently mature” to end her pregnancy while seeking a waiver from a state law that requires minors to get parental consent for an abortion. (8/16)

AP: Abortion Ban Goes To S. Carolina House Floor For Big Fight
A near total abortion ban in South Carolina that does not include exceptions for pregnancies’ caused by rape or incest was sent to the state House floor Tuesday but not without hints and warnings that the lack of exceptions could cause a big legislative fight in a few weeks. (Collins, 8/16)

NPR: Supreme Court Abortion Ruling Has Birth Control Advocates Worried
Advocates like Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association in Washington, D.C., are now calling for Democrats to use every tool at their disposal to increase financial support for Title X, which they say has long been underfunded. (Paviour, 8/16)

The Washington Post: Smith & Wesson CEO Mark Smith Blames Politicians For Gun Violence
In the statement posted Monday on Twitter, he accused “a number of politicians and their lobbying partners in the media” of trying to “disparage” his company and shift blame to gunmakers. Smith, who refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee, said politicians had “vilified, undermined and defunded law enforcement” and “generally promoted a culture of lawlessness,” causing a wave of crime. (Shammas, 8/16)

Reuters: U.S. FDA Gets Over 48,000 Reports Of Faulty Philips Respiratory Devices In May-July
he U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had received more than 48,000 reports of faulty Dutch medical equipment maker Philips' (PHG.AS) ventilators and respiratory devices between May and July, which included 44 deaths. This was more than twice the number of reports it had received in over a year until April, the agency said on Tuesday. (8/16)

Reuters: Plaintiff In First Zantac Lawsuit Set For Trial Drops Case
The plaintiff in the first lawsuit over the heartburn drug Zantac scheduled to go to trial has agreed to drop his case, according to his attorney and drugmakers named as defendants. The news on Tuesday came days after shares of GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L), Sanofi SA (SASY.PA), Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Haleon Plc (HLN.L) were hit by investor concerns about thousands of lawsuits claiming the drug, which U.S. regulators pulled from the market in 2020, causes cancer. (Pierson, 8/16)

The Wall Street Journal: J&J Unit Tells Appeals Court Only Bankruptcy Can Settle Talc Claims
A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary urged a federal appeals court to uphold the controversial legal strategy it used to move to bankruptcy roughly 38,000 lawsuits linking its talc-based products to cancer. The subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, said in court papers filed on Monday that chapter 11 is the only option for compensating all claimants relatively quickly. (Randles, 8/16)

Reuters: Baby Formula Supplies Improving, Say U.S. Retailers Walmart And Target
Two big U.S. retailers Walmart Inc (WMT.N) and Target Corp (TGT.N) said on Tuesday that supplies of baby formula were improving, months after the country faced acute shortages that had caused a panic among parents. Considering the still-existing supply constraints, Target said it will continue with the purchase restrictions both at its stores and online. (8/16)

CIDRAP: Higher Risk Of Vein Blood Clots In COVID Vs Flu Patients
Hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients before and after SARS-CoV-2 vaccine availability had significantly higher odds of venous—but not arterial—thromboembolism than those hospitalized for influenza before the pandemic, finds a study published today in JAMA. (Van Beusekom, 8/16)

CIDRAP: Healthcare Workers Wearing Respirators 40% Less Likely To Contract COVID
A study of more than 2,900 healthcare workers (HCWs) shows that those who wore a respirator were more than 40% less likely to be infected with COVID-19 than those wearing a surgical mask. (8/16)

The Hill: Children Who Live Near Fracking Sites At Birth Face Increased Risk Of Leukemia: Study
Pennsylvania children living near fracking sites at birth are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia during early childhood than those who did not live near such facilities, a new study has found. The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives on Wednesday, explored the connection between the development of cancer and proximity to such unconventional oil and gas development — also known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” (Udasin, 8/17)

NBC News: Childhood Lead Exposure Is Linked To Low Test Scores For Black Students, Study Finds
The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are based on surveys of more than 25,000 fourth graders in North Carolina. The data shows that Black students are disproportionately exposed to lead in racially segregated neighborhoods and that these stressors are linked to poor test scores in reading among Black youth relative to their white peers. (Bellamy-Walker, 8/16)

Stat: Frustrated By Known Cancer Biomarkers, Biologists Make Their Own
The hunt for cancer cures has, to a large degree, been a hunt for biomarkers — DNA, peptides, RNA, proteins or more — that might set tumor cells apart from healthy tissue. The trouble is that for many cancers, the known biomarkers have been a disappointment, particularly for early cancer detection. (Chen, 8/17)

Reuters: Sanofi Trial Failure Ends Development Of Breast Cancer Treatment Amcenestrant
French healthcare company Sanofi (SASY.PA) said it would stop further work on amcenestrant, once seen to have large potential against breast cancer, after a second trial failure dealt a major blow to its drug development prospects. (Burger and Hummel, 8/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospital Finances Are Deteriorating, Fitch Says
Rising labor and supply costs will land many nonprofit hospitals in violation of debt covenants to bondholders this year, according to an analysis released Tuesday by Fitch Ratings. Salaries for nurses are particularly competitive, with Covid-19 driving up demand. Labor costs and other inflation pressures are squeezing budgets at senior-living facilities as well. (Gillers, 8/16)

Stat: Study: Hospital Mergers Without Antitrust Scrutiny Lead To Higher Prices
Hospitals that merge under state regulations that shield them from federal scrutiny tend to eventually break free of those controls and raise prices substantially, new research finds. (Bannow, 8/17)

Modern Healthcare: FTC Wants States To Scrap Certificate Of Public Advantage Laws
States are not equipped to oversee hospital mergers under certificate of public advantage laws, a new paper from the Federal Trade Commission concluded. Some states have allowed hospitals to merge via COPAs, shielding the merging parties from federal antitrust scrutiny in exchange for prolonged state oversight. While hospital executives and state officials claim that mergers under COPAs will lead to lower costs and better outcomes, some transactions have produced the opposite results, the FTC said Monday in an analysis of hospital deals. (Kacik, 8/16)

Modern Healthcare: Providence's Net Loss Nears $2B As Industry Trends Dent Results
Providence, a not-for-profit health system based in Washington, on Tuesday reported a first-half net loss of $1.84 billion, as the industry's higher expenses and staff shortages plague another heath system. (Hudson, 8/16)

AP: Minnesota Nurses Authorize Strike Against 7 Health Systems
Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against seven health systems in the Twin Cities and Duluth, union officials say. The vote Monday gave nurse negotiators the ability to call a strike, with a 10-day notice to employers. The union represents 15,000 nurses. The next negotiation session is set for Aug. 30. (8/16)

Crain's Detroit Business: Michigan Nurses Association Sues UM Over Workload Expectations
The Michigan Nurses Association at the University of Michigan filed a lawsuit against the university on Tuesday over the workload its members are facing. The MNA alleges UM is breaking the law by refusing to bargain over nurses' workloads in its contract negotiations with the University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council. (Fifelski, 8/16)

AP: Atlanta Schools To Give More Students Access To Telehealth
Responding to the pandemic’s toll on student health, Atlanta’s public schools are launching a new program to give most of their schoolchildren remote access to doctors and therapists. The telehealth services should be available to all students — from kindergarten through 12th grade — at 64 of the district’s 87 schools by the end of the school year after the Board of Education last week approved a contract with provider Hazel Health, the district said in a news release. (8/16)

Stateline: Scorching Summer Tests States' Workplace Heat Rules
More than 130 labor and environmental organizations, led by the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen, have called on OSHA to issue emergency rules. The Biden administration in 2021 directed the federal agency to develop workplace regulations for heat exposure, but that process takes on average seven years to implement and could be stalled if the next occupant of the White House is less open to such rules. (Bolstad, 8/16)

CBS News: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf Signs Executive Order To Protect LGBTQIA+ Community From Conversion Therapy
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed Executive Order 2022-2 on Tuesday, which aims to protect the LGBTQIA+ community in the state from the harmful practices of conversion therapy. Wolf tweeted Tuesday that the bill directs commonwealth agencies to "1) Do everything in their power to discourage conversion therapy 2) Actively promote evidence-based medical treatment for LGBTQIA+ individuals 3) Update policies and procedures to better support LGBTQIA+ Pennsylvanians." (Mandler, 8/16)

Detroit Free Press: E.Coli Cases Reach A High During The Month Of August
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services have flagged an increase in the number of E.coli related illnesses this month. So far, there have been 98 recorded cases in the month of August. This is a significant increase compared to the 20 reported cases from the same time last year. (Webb, 8/16)

The Boston Globe: 3 Police Departments Will Share Mental Health Clinician
Three small police departments South of Boston — in Norfolk, Plainville, and Wrentham — are joining forces with a social services agency to avoid arresting people with mental health or substance abuse problems and to get them help instead. (Seltz, 8/16)