First Edition: July 12, 2024

KFF Health News: Lifesaving Drugs And Police Projects Mark First Use Of Opioid Settlement Cash In California
Sonja Verdugo lost her husband to an opioid overdose last year. She regularly delivers medical supplies to people using drugs who are living — and dying — on the streets of Los Angeles. And she advocates at Los Angeles City Hall for policies to address addiction and homelessness. Yet Verdugo didn’t know that hundreds of millions of dollars annually are flowing to California communities to combat the opioid crisis, a payout that began in 2022 and continues through 2038. (Pattani and Thompson, 7/12)

KFF Health News' 'What The Health?' Podcast: GOP Platform Muddies Abortion Waters
As Donald Trump prepares to be formally nominated as the GOP’s candidate for president next week, the platform he will run on is taking shape. And in line with Trump’s approach, it aims to simultaneously satisfy hard-core abortion opponents and reassure more moderate swing voters. (Rovner, 7/11)

The Hill: Abortion Bans' Impact: Senate Report Highlights Travel, Access Issues
A report from Senate Democratic staff shows the cascading effects of abortion bans across all states, even those where the procedure is still legal. The report, led by staff of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and joined by all the Democratic women senators, as well as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), was based off interviews with more than 80 health care providers and advocates. (Weixel, 7/11)

AP: Majority Of U.S. Adults Support Protecting Access To IVF: AP-NORC Poll
Relatively few Americans fully endorse the idea that a fertilized egg should have the same rights as a pregnant woman. But a significant share say it describes their views at least somewhat well, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The new survey comes as questions grow around reproductive health access in the continued fallout from the decision by the Supreme Court to end federal abortion protections. (Long and Thomson-Deveaux, 7/12)

AP: Arizona Abortion Initiative Backers Sue To Remove 'Unborn Human Being' From Voter Pamphlet Language
Backers of a November abortion rights ballot initiative have sued a GOP-led legislative committee that seeks to include proposed language for the voter pamphlet referring to a fetus as an “unborn human being.” Arizona for Abortion Access filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court on Wednesday, asking that a judge refuse to allow the language favored by a Republican-dominated legislative group for the initiative summary. The summary will appear on a pamphlet voters can use to decide how to cast their ballots. (7/12)

AP: New York's Top Court Allows 'Equal Rights' Amendment To Appear On November Ballot
A proposed amendment to New York’s constitution to bar discrimination over “gender identity” and “pregnancy outcomes” will appear on the ballot this November, the state’s high court ruled Thursday. The decision from the Court of Appeals affirms a lower court ruling from June, dismissing an appeal “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved,” effectively declining to take up the case. (Izaguirre, 7/11)

Politico: House Panel Advances HHS 2025 Budget
Despite Democratic efforts to slam the brakes on Republican plans to limit abortion access and restructure the NIH, the House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal 2025 HHS spending plan along party lines on Wednesday. The budget proposal, unveiled last month by Republicans, includes $107 billion for HHS — a 7 percent cut. It would streamline the NIH, slash Title X family grants and increase funding for substance-use disorder prevention block grants. (Cirruzzo and Leonard, 7/11)

The Hill: House Democrats Call For Investigation Into Crisis Pregnancy Center Funding
A pair of Oversight Committee Democrats are asking a government watchdog to investigate the amount of federal funding directed toward crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), anti-abortion nonprofits designed to convince people not to terminate pregnancies. In a letter sent Thursday to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and shared first with The Hill, ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) asked for a study into how much federal money CPCs have received annually and from which federal accounts. (Weixel, 7/11)

Politico: Google Makes Changes To Privacy Oversight, Worrying Policymakers
With no strong government rules in place to regulate AI, private companies like Google are largely responsible for policing the potential harms of their own products. The fast growth of AI has raised new worries about the risks to citizens and consumers, from potential use of private data like images and texts without consent, to possible bias in AI systems that make decisions about people’s access to housing, financial assistance and health care. (Ng, 7/11)

Stat: New Medicare Rules Offer A Lifeline For Digital Therapeutics Firms
In what could prove to be a lifeline for a new crop of health tech startups, Medicare regulators proposed new codes that support payment for digital mental health treatments, like apps that deliver cognitive behavioral therapy. The new codes in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule released this week would allow clinicians to bill for supplying apps and other digital treatments as part of behavioral health treatment, as well as for time spent on services related to a patient’s use of these devices. (Aguilar, 7/11)

Modern Healthcare: Physician Fee Schedule Proposal Renews Telehealth Flexibilities
Advocates for telehealth viewed the proposed physician payment rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as a win but emphasized the need for Congressional action. CMS’ proposed regulation of the 2025 Medicare physician fee schedule, published on Wednesday, renewed a series of telehealth flexibilities that started during the public health emergency amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But telehealth advocates say more actions will be needed by Congress before the industry can operate with certainty. (Turner, 7/11)

USA Today: USDA Warns Of Canned Meats Illegally Imported From Philippines
Multiple ready-to-eat meat products were illegally imported from the Philippines, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a public health alert. The department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS, issued the alert on Wednesday, according to a news release. The items were shipped to Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia, the FSIS said, adding that the Philippines is not eligible to export meat and poultry products to the U.S. (Martin, 7/11)

NPR: A Tween Skin Care Craze On Social Media Has Some Doctors Concerned
Dermatologist Elizabeth Houshmand sees a lot of tweens and teens in her Dallas practice. A few months ago, a mother brought her 9-year-old daughter in with a significantly red, itching face. It turns out the daughter had been using a moisturizer that she'd seen promoted on social media. ... But neither mother nor child realized that the moisturizer contained glycolic acid, an exfoliating ingredient that can be too harsh for the thinner skin of preteens. (Godoy, 7/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Think You Will Live To 100? These Scientists Think You’re Wrong
Human lifespan has a limit and we might have reached it. S. Jay Olshansky, who studies the upper bounds of human longevity at the University of Illinois Chicago, believes people shouldn’t expect to live to 100. Most, he contends, will reach between 65-90. (Dockser Marcus, 7/11)

North Carolina Health News: Sowing A Community For People With Disabilities
Set against the gently rolling Piedmont hills between Greensboro and Burlington, Peacehaven Community Farm is an active experiment in supporting the choices of people with disabilities to live an active and meaningful life where they choose. Beds of lettuce, collards, green beans and other seasonal staples grow alongside dahlias and sunflowers on the 89-acre property. On “garden work days,” people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their loved ones and volunteers from nearby converge to work the farm — tilling the soil, rooting out weeds, picking flowers and produce. (Nandagiri, 7/12)

NPR: Hiking In High Temperatures And How To Stay Safe
A child collapses and later succumbs to the heat after hiking in scorching temperatures on a Phoenix trail. A couple runs out of water near California's Joshua National Park and are airlifted from a dry creek bed. Three hikers die at the Grand Canyon in less than a month amid extreme heat. A stifling heat wave in the Western U.S. has turned some of its most alluring nature trails deadly. Here's why hiking in extreme heat can be so dangerous and how to keep yourself safe. (Hartounian, 7/12)

The Washington Post: 1 In 10 People Infected During Pregnancy Develop Long Covid, Study Finds
Nearly 1 in 10 people infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy developed long covid, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. Thursday’s study, which highlights the consequences of the virus during pregnancy, suggests long covid is more prevalent among people infected while pregnant than in the population overall. (Malhi, 7/11)

CIDRAP: Study: Initial COVID-19 Infection Severity Predicts Reinfection Severity
A new study that used health data from 212,984 Americans who experienced COVID-19 reinfections found that severe SARS-CoV-2 infections tended to foreshadow similar severity of subsequent infections. The researchers also found that long COVID was more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. The findings were published today in Communications Medicine. (Soucheray, 7/11)

CIDRAP: RSV Monoclonal Antibody Nirsevimab 83% Effective In Babies
The New England Journal of Medicine has published results of a randomized controlled trial showing an estimated effectiveness of nirsevimab (Beyfortus) against hospitalization for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated bronchiolitis in babies of 83%. Nirsevimab was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2023, and little real-world data on efficacy are available. The study aimed to establish efficacy rates during the most recent RSV season at six hospitals in France. (7/11)

The Hill: Cancer Cases In US Linked To Modifiable Risk Factors
Four in 10 cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths among U.S. adults 30 years old and older in 2019 were linked to “modifiable” risk factors like smoking, drinking, poor diet and not getting vaccinated, according to a new study from the American Cancer Society. Lead author of the study Farhad Islami, senior scientific director of cancer disparity research at the American Cancer Society, explained that modifiable risk factors are typically behavioral. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/11)

Stat: CAR-T Therapy’s Risks And Benefits Are Becoming Clearer
Researchers were perplexed when the Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating whether CAR-T therapy, one of the most effective treatments for blood cancers, could cause lymphoma. This was always a theoretical risk of genetically engineered therapies like CAR-T, but it never materialized in the decades after the technology’s birth. So, when the agency pointed late last year to a couple dozen cases of T cell lymphoma in patients who had previously been treated with CAR-T cells, it felt like an old question had been reignited. (Sajani and Chen, 7/12)

CNN: Secondhand E-Cigarette Aerosols Expose Kids To Less Nicotine Than Cigarettes, Study Finds, But Can Still Be Risky
Children who live in homes where adults use e-cigarettes are exposed to significantly less nicotine through secondhand aerosols than children in homes where adults use traditional cigarettes, a new study shows. But vaping still exposes kids to nicotine and may present other risks, too. To keep children completely nicotine-free, according to the researchers, people shouldn’t smoke or vape around kids at all. (Christensen, 7/11)

CIDRAP: Experts Choose Target Pathogens For Olympic Wastewater Monitoring
Experts from the French national public health agency have developed a model framework to identify priority pathogens for wastewater surveillance (WWS) at the upcoming summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, expected to draw 16 million visitors from around the world. Viruses that cause polio and flu topped the list. (Van Beusekom, 7/11)

CIDRAP: Promising Findings For Doctor-Led Penicillin Allergy Delabeling
A physician-led effort to remove penicillin allergy labels from low-risk patients at a Veterans Administration medical center removed the label in more than a third of those who were evaluated, researchers from Texas reported today in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. Earlier studies have found that more than 95% of people reporting penicillin allergies, often labeled during childhood, are not truly allergic to penicillin and other beta-lactam antibiotics. (Schnirring, 7/11)

The Washington Post: Report: NIH, Federal Agencies Should Boost Research On Women’s Health
Research into chronic conditions affecting women is significantly lacking, and the National Institutes of Health and other agencies should do more to investigate issues that lead to worse medical treatment for women, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says. Women are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and depression, according to the study requested by NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health and published Wednesday. (Malhi, 7/11)

Reuters: Musk's Neuralink Says Tiny Wires Of Brain Chip In First Patient Now Stable
The tiny wires of Neuralink's brain chip implant used in the first participant in a trial run by Elon Musk's company have become "more or less very stable", a company executive said on Wednesday. The company had in May said that a number of tiny wires inside the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a 2016 diving accident, had pulled out of position. (Leo and Roy, 7/11)

The New York Times: Can Narcissism Go Away?
If you’re hoping that the narcissist in your life will change, a new study suggests that you may have to wait a very long time. And even then, you might see only a small difference. The research, which was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin on Thursday, analyzed 51 studies with more than 37,000 participants — mostly from North America, Europe and New Zealand — to explore how narcissism changes over a person’s life span. (Caron, 7/11)

Reuters: Pfizer Moves Forward With Once-Daily Weight-Loss Pill
Pfizer plans to move a reworked, once-a-day version of its weight-loss pill danuglipron into clinical trials later this year, the company said on Thursday, after scrapping a twice- daily version of the drug late last year. The new drug is part of the second generation of weight-loss pills under development by companies including Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will offer patients a more convenient alternative to injections. (Erman and Mishra, 7/11)

Reuters: Gerresheimer's Weight-Loss Drug Deals Pipeline Helps Profits Meet Forecasts
Medical equipment group Gerresheimer posted second-quarter adjusted core profit in line with expectations on Thursday, driven by the deal pipeline for its plastics and devices business, which supplies weight-loss drug makers with autoinjector pens. The company confirmed guidance for the mid-term that its deals with weight-loss drug manufacturers, such as Novo Nordisk, are expected to bring at least 350 million euros ($379.44 million) of annual revenue over the next three years, despite lower demand in its primary packaging glass division. (Demetz, 7/11)

Reuters: Indivior Shares Dive On Profit Warning, Dropping Of Schizophrenia Drug
Drugmaker Indivior Plc (INDV.L) slashed its 2024 profit forecast while signaling a slowdown in sales of its top-selling opioid addiction treatment, and said it would discontinue sales of its schizophrenia drug Perseris, prompting its shares to plunge 44% on Tuesday. Indivior's Sublocade drug has faced intense competition from the launch of a rival, as well as the end of pandemic-relief measures that has led to loss of coverage in the United States for some people enrolled in government-backed Medicaid plans. (Anilkumar, 7/11)

Bloomberg: Therapy Startup Headway Nabs $2.3 Billion Valuation
Mental health startup Headway is raising a new funding round valuing the company at $2.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, roughly doubling its valuation from a year earlier. The financing brings in about $100 million for Headway, which connects people with therapists and can handle tasks like looking up benefits and booking appointments. (Roof, 7/12)

Modern Healthcare: Pennant Group To Acquire Signature Healthcare Assets For $80M
Healthcare services provider Pennant Group has agreed to buy some assets from home health and hospice company Signature Healthcare at Home for $80 million. Pennant Group entered into two separate purchase agreements, it said Thursday. The deals, which are each subject to regulatory approval, would expand its footprint by 13 locations across Idaho, Oregon and Washington, according to a news release. (Eastabrook, 7/11)

Modern Healthcare: Insurers, Employers See Payoffs Switching To Smaller PBMs
Smaller pharmacy benefit managers may be having more than a moment as some health insurers and employers show the major players the door. Insurance companies and employers fed up with commonplace industry practices are ditching PBMs owned by CVS Health, Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group, and instead are inking contracts with smaller competitors pushing transparent business models. (Berryman, 7/11)

AP: Thousands Of Oregon Hospital Patients May Have Been Exposed To Infectious Diseases
More than 2,400 patients at hospitals around Portland, Oregon, may have been exposed to infectious diseases such as hepatitis B and C, as well as HIV, because of an anesthesiologist who may not have followed infection control practices, officials said. Providence said in a statement Thursday that it is notifying about 2,200 people seen at Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center in Oregon City and two patients seen at Providence Portland Medical Center that the physician’s actions might have put them at low risk of exposure to possible infections. (7/12)

Central Florida Public Media: Hack On Florida's Vital Statistics Is Just The Latest Cyberattack On Health-Related Systems
Health care centers and medical record-holders are targets for ransomware gangs. But why? The Florida Department of Health is working to recover systems that affect its efficiency in distributing birth and death certificates. The outages came after ransomware gang claimed it hacked into the network and stole 100 gigabytes of personal data. The department hasn't confirmed the cyberattack but said its Vital Statistics system was going through a temporary outage. (Pedersen, 7/11)

AP: Here's What Seems To Work In Miami To Keep Deaths Down As Temperatures Soar
Despite a record 46-day streak of triple digit feels-like temperatures, Miami’s unprecedented brutal summer last year wasn’t that deadly, contrasting with the rest of the nation where federal records show heat fatalities nationally spiked to a 45-year high. One of the reasons is that Miami takes heat seriously, not just reacting when temperatures soar, but planning months in advance. ... The Miami-Dade government and the local National Weather Service office team up to treat heat like something more scary, but often less deadly. (Borenstein, 7/11)

AP: Kentucky Drug Crackdown Yields 200 Arrests In Operation Summer Heat
A sweeping investigation into suspected drug trafficking rings has produced more than 200 arrests and drug seizures valued at nearly $685,000, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday. He also touted prevention and treatment programs fighting the deadly addiction epidemic. ... The crackdown, dubbed Operation Summer Heat, is ongoing and will result in additional arrests, said State Police Commissioner Phillip Burnett Jr. (Schreiner, 7/11)

AP: West Virginia, Idaho Asking Supreme Court To Review Rulings Allowing Transgender Athletes To Compete
West Virginia and Idaho are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review rulings that blocked the enforcement of state laws prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in sports. “If the Supreme Court takes this up, it will determine the fate of women’s sports across the entire country for many years to come,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Thursday at a briefing with reporters at the state Capitol in Charleston. (Willingham, 7/11)

NPR Midwest Newsroom: Missouri And Iowa Foster Homes Struggle With Space For Girls
As a child in Missouri, Anoela Martin sometimes lived in another person's garage. At other times, home was under a bridge. Occasionally, it was in an unsafe home with a parent. She bounced back and forth between her mom’s care in Kansas City and her dad’s in St. Joseph. “My dad was a raging alcoholic at that time, and my mom was a drug addict,” she said. “We didn’t really get to eat as much as we probably should have. He wasn’t home a lot. We kind of had to take care of ourselves.” (Husted, 7/11)