First Edition: March 19, 2019

Kaiser Health News: When Doctors Disappear Without A Word, A Noncompete Clause Could Be The Reason
When Don Cue developed a bladder infection last fall, he called his longtime urologist’s office for a urine culture and antibiotics. It was a familiar routine for the two-time prostate cancer survivor; infections were not uncommon since he began using a catheter that connects to his bladder through an incision in his abdomen. When Cue called this time, a receptionist told him that his physician, Dr. Mark Kellerman, no longer worked at the Iowa Clinic in Des Moines, a large multi-specialty group. She refused to divulge where he’d gone. (Andrews, 3/19)

The Hill: Dem Group Launches Ads Attacking Trump's 'Hypocrisy On Medicare And Medicaid Cuts' 
A leading Democratic health group is launching a national ad campaign against vulnerable 2020 lawmakers for supporting what the group calls President Trump's "blatant hypocrisy on Medicare and Medicaid cuts." The five-figure ad from Protect Our Care targets four senators and six House members and calls Trump a hypocrite for proposing massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, despite his repeated promises on the campaign trail to save those programs. (Weixel, 3/18)

The New York Times: Trump Plans To End The AIDS Epidemic. In Places Like Mississippi, Obstacles Are Everywhere.
“I come from the smallest town in Mississippi, in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” said Gerald Gibson, outreach manager at Open Arms Healthcare Center, the only clinic created to serve gay black men in this state. “Growing up, I didn’t know anybody like me,” he added. “I come from a culture that says you’re going to hell for being homosexual and AIDS is God’s wrath.” President Trump’s plan to end America’s epidemic of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, within 10 years is not going to succeed easily in places like this. (McNeil, 3/18)

CNN: New Program Aims To Reduce New HIV Infections In US By At Least 90% Over 10 Years
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday detailed its new initiative to reduce new human immunodeficiency virus infections in the United States by at least 90% over 10 years. President Donald Trump called for the elimination of HIV transmissions in the United States by 2030 during the State of the Union address in February. On Monday, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams highlighted four key elements of the HIV program -- diagnose, treat, protect and respond in more detail than previously outlined. (Scutti, 3/18)

The Hill: CDC: Most New HIV Infections Come From Those Not Receiving Treatment
Thirty-eight percent of people with HIV weren't receiving treatment and were linked to 81 percent of new infections of the virus, according to 2016 data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Monday. Of the 1.1 million people living with HIV in the U.S. in 2016, 15 percent were unaware they had the virus and were linked to 38 percent of new infections, according to the data. (Hellmann, 3/18)

The Associated Press: Bills Would Fund HIV Prevention, Tracking, Testing Rape Kits
Multiple bills that would provide protection and treatment for victims of sexual assault, as well as assist local law enforcement agencies with the testing and tracking of rape kits, made their way through the House and Senate, ahead of the Monday deadline for bills to crossover into the other chamber. These bills are the byproduct of a January report on sexual assault evidence kits in the state, produced by the Maryland Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Policy and Funding Committee. (Oyefusi, 3/18)

Modern Healthcare: Fighting HIV: Gaps In Treatment, Testing Drive New Infections
An estimated 80% of the nearly 40,000 new HIV infections that occurred in the U.S. in 2016 were transmitted from those who either did not know their diagnosis or were not receiving regular care to maintain their virus at nearly non-transmissible levels, according to health officials. In a new report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday highlighted the gaps in access to treatment and testing resources that exists within the HIV care continuum. Those gaps have led to a halt in recent years to the progress made over the past two decades in reducing HIV infections. (Johnson, 3/18)

ProPublica: VA’s Private Care Program Headed For Tech Trouble, Review Finds
As the Trump administration prepares to launch a controversial program to expand private medical care for veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is developing a software tool to determine who’s eligible. But the tool is so flawed, according to an independent review obtained by ProPublica, that it threatens to disrupt the health care of about 75,000 veterans every day. “This degradation goes against the spirit of the Mission Act to improve the veterans experience and quality of care,” the review said, referring to the 2018 law that authorized the program to expand private care. The program is supposed to start in less than three months. (Arnsdorf, 3/18)

Reuters: Ohio Accuses UnitedHealth's OptumRx Of Drug Overcharges In Lawsuit
Ohio's attorney general on Monday said he had filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group Inc's OptumRx unit, saying the pharmacy benefit manager had overcharged the state nearly $16 million for prescription drugs. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's lawsuit followed a probe into the extent pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) like OptumRx had engaged in pricing practices that resulted in the state overpaying for drugs for people covered by state health programs. (3/18)

The New York Times: Unvaccinated Student In Kentucky Sues After Being Barred From Playing Basketball
A student at a Catholic school in Kentucky has sued the Northern Kentucky Health Department, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights by barring him from playing basketball because he refused to be vaccinated against chickenpox. The lawsuit, filed last week in Boone County Circuit Court on behalf of the student, Jerome Kunkel, an 18-year-old senior, argues that the action violates his right to freedom of religion. Being vaccinated, it contends, would go against Mr. Kunkel’s religious beliefs as a practicing Catholic, because the vaccine contains “aborted fetal cells.” (de Leon, 3/18)

The Washington Post: Amazon Pulls Books Promoting False Claims About Autism And Vaccines
YouTube said it was banning anti-vaccination channels from running online advertisements. Facebook announced it was hiding certain content and turning away ads that contain misinformation about vaccines, and Pinterest said it was blocking “polluted” search terms, memes and pins from particular sites prompting anti-vaccine propaganda, according to news reports. Amazon has now joined other companies navigating the line between doing business and censoring it, in an age when, experts say, misleading claims about health and science have a real impact on public health. (Bever, 3/18)

Stat: The App Dot Bills Itself As Contraception, Raising Questions About Efficacy
A new fertility tracking app, Dot, is billing itself as form of contraception — and touting the results of a new efficacy study that shows the app may be up to 99 percent effective as a form of birth control. With statistics like that, Dot — part of a surge in fertility and contraception apps — would appear to be one of the most effective birth control tools available. But there’s also significant debate over how to measure the effectiveness of these tools, as well as questions about which apps should be available in the first place. (Sheridan, 3/18)

Stat: Investors Have Been Snubbing The Microbiome. That May Be Changing
After a high-profile clinical failure in 2016, investor interest in the much-hyped field of microbiome science chilled almost instantly. Now, however, the small but growing industry is starting to rebound. Several key companies in the field, which focuses on manipulating microbes that are or ought to be in a person’s body, expect to report Phase 2 data by the end of this year, including the Somerville, Mass.-based Finch Therapeutics and a privately held French microbiome biotech, MaaT. Even bigger players in the field, Rebiotix and Seres Therapeutics, are currently running pivotal studies — at least one of which should be fully enrolled by the middle of next year. (Sheridan, 3/19)

The New York Times: Broken Heart Syndrome Is Not All In The Head
Poets and politicians have long known that hearts and minds are linked. Now neuroscientists and cardiologists have shown again, in a study published this month in The European Heart Journal, that the connection is more than metaphorical. It turns out that those afflicted by a rare, serious condition known as “broken-heart syndrome” have brains that work differently from those of healthy people, suggesting that what happens in the head can hurt the heart. The condition, known medically as Takotsubo syndrome, usually follows the experience of extreme stress, such as that felt after the loss of a loved one. (Reynolds, 3/19)

The Wall Street Journal: New Doubt On Treatment To Prevent Preterm Birth
For more than a decade, the recommended treatment for most pregnant women who previously had given birth prematurely was a weekly injection of a synthetic progestin hormone. AMAG Pharmaceuticals , which sells such a treatment, recently announced the results of a new study: It wasn’t effective. On March 8, the company said a long-term clinical trial revealed no difference in the preterm birth rates of 1,700 pregnant women who took either their treatment, named Makena, or a placebo. The trial also showed no increased risk of complications. (Reddy, 3/18)

CNN: New Study Suggests Fish Oil Derivative May Benefit Heart Health
New numbers suggest that a purified fish oil derivative, a prescription drug called Vascepa, is more effective at preventing cardiovascular events than previously thought. The drug lowered the rate of these events in high-risk patients -- including strokes, heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular causes -- by 30% overall versus placebo, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. (Nedelman, 3/18)

CNN: Sugary Drinks Linked To Higher Risk Of Premature Death, Especially For Women, Study Says
Frequent consumption of sugary drinks such as sodas, sports drinks and juice is linked to an increased risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease and, to a lesser extent, from cancer, according to new research. Compared with women who had sugary beverages less than once per month, those who had more than two servings a day -- defined as a standard glass, bottle or can -- had a 63% increased risk of premature death, according to a study published Monday in the journal Circulation. Men who did the same had a 29% increase in risk. (Bracho-Sanchez, 3/18)

CNN: To Help Fight Vaping, Schools Look To Their Own Students
Teen vaping is on the rise, and schools are searching for solutions, with some taking disciplinary action or installing vape detectors in bathrooms. Still, the problem has continued to swell. The US Food and Drug Administration announced in November that vaping had increased nearly 80% among high schoolers and 50% among middle schoolers since the year before. The resignation announcement of the agency's commissioner -- Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who vowed to crack down on what he described as an "epidemic" of teen vaping -- has only added to the uncertainty over what's to come. (Nedelman, 3/18)

The New York Times: Professional Hair Removal Catches On With The Preteen Set
At one of her 12-year-old daughter’s swim meets last year, a surgeon who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan noticed that something was off: Her daughter wasn’t lifting her arms out of the water. “A boy on her swim team had meanly told her that she shouldn’t swim so hard and lift her arms up because everyone could see her underarm hair,” she said. “I realized then that the hair was a serious issue for her and that she should have it removed.” Her daughter became one of a rising number of preteens turning to professionals for hair removal. (Vora, 3/19) [This item was updated on Aug. 20, 2020, to reflect changes made by the New York Times.]

CNN: There's New Advice To Prevent Food Allergies In Children
Giving a baby a new food to try is fun, and it should be. The only concerns parents should have: finding their phones fast enough to document the funny faces and cleaning up the mess that might follow. Yet in recent years, scientific evidence has accumulated quickly on what foods to introduce when and how to best prevent allergies -- leaving parents to keep track of it all. On Monday, based on a detailed review of all available evidence on the topic, the American Academy of Pediatrics published updated guidance on what works and what doesn't when it comes to the prevention of food allergies and other allergic conditions. (Bracho-Sanchez, 3/18)

The Associated Press: Groups Want Trial To Allow Non-Doctors To Perform Abortions
The American Civil Liberties Union and a group of abortion providers argued on Monday that a federal court should allow a trial on whether to strike down a 40-year-old Maine law that prevents non-doctors from performing abortions. The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Maine Family Planning and four clinicians brought their case to U.S. District Court in Portland, where a judge is expected to make a ruling in the coming weeks about whether to let the case go forward. (Whittle, 3/18)

The Associated Press: Anti-Abortion Bill Clears Georgia Senate Committee
Abortion rights activists chanted “shame” as Republicans on a Georgia Senate committee moved Monday to ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The Senate Science and Technology Committee approved the bill on a party-line vote of 3 to 2. The legislation, backed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, has passed the House and now could go quickly to the floor of the GOP-controlled Senate. (Mansoor and Nadler, 3/18)

The Associated Press: Minnesota House Aims To Hit Drug Companies For Opioid Crisis
The Minnesota House voted Monday night to hold drug manufacturers responsible for the state's growing costs for dealing with the opioid crisis. The bill passed 94-34 after around four hours of debate that split mostly along party lines. It would support a wide range of prevention, education, intervention, treatment and recovery strategies. The state would pay for them by sharply raising its currently low annual registration fees for pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota. (3/18)

The Associated Press: Baltimore Mayor Quits Hospital System Board Over Book Sales
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh stepped down from the University of Maryland Medical System’s board of directors on Monday, days after it came to light that the hospital network had for years purchased her self-published children’s books. Board positions are unpaid, but The Baltimore Sun reported last week that around a third of the board has received compensation through the UMMS network’s contracts with their businesses. The newspaper revealed that Pugh failed to fully disclose a $500,000 business relationship she began with the 11-hospital network in 2011. (3/18)

NPR: Rikers Island's Former Medical Chief Highlights Health Risks Of Imprisonment
As head of New York City's correctional health services, Dr. Homer Venters spent nine years overseeing the care of thousands of inmates in the jails on Rikers Island. Though he left Rikers in 2017, what he witnessed on the job has stayed with him. "What's important to consider about jail settings is that they are incredibly dehumanizing, and they dehumanize the individuals who pass through them," Venters says. "There is not really a true respect for the rights of the detained." (Davies, 3/18)

The Associated Press: Woman Sues Hospital She Says Stored Frozen Embryo For Years
A Massachusetts woman has filed a lawsuit against a Rhode Island hospital she says froze her embryo and kept it in storage for 13 years without her knowledge. The Providence Journal reports that Marisa Cloutier-Bristol says in her lawsuit against Women & Infants Hospital in Providence that its negligence took away her chance to have another child and caused her severe emotional distress. (3/18)