First Edition: Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025

KFF Health News: Climate Change Threatens The Mental Well-Being Of Youths. Here’s How To Help Them Cope. 
We’ve all read the stories and seen the images: The life-threatening heat waves. The wildfires of unprecedented ferocity. The record-breaking storms washing away entire neighborhoods. The melting glaciers, the rising sea levels, the coastal flooding. As California wildfires stretch into the colder months and hurricane survivors sort through the ruins left by floodwaters, let’s talk about an underreported victim of climate change: the emotional well-being of young people. (Wolfson, 1/9)

NPR: LA Wildfires Bring Another Health Hazard: Smoke
On a normal day in LA, the air quality index, or AQI, might be 50 or 60. But near the wildfires, readings reached 400 or even above 500, "which is absolutely huge," says Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate and health scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. (Borunda, 1/8)

The New York Times: Water Outage In Richmond, Va., Is Expected To Last Until Friday 
When officials in Richmond, Va., announced a citywide boil water advisory on Monday, residents buckled down for an unpleasant day or two. They are still buckled down. On Wednesday, officials said that people would most likely need to keep boiling their water until at least Friday, as a disruption that began with a brief power outage at the water plant amid a winter storm has led to a dayslong engineering challenge and a citywide relief operation. (Robertson, 1/8)

Newsweek: Doctor Says UnitedHealthcare Stopped Cancer Surgery To Ask If Necessary 
A doctor has shared a shocking story of how UnitedHealthcare stopped a cancer surgery to ask if it was medically necessary in a new Instagram video. Elisabeth Potter, a doctor based in Austin, Texas, created a video on Instagram detailing her experience treating a cancer patient and the roadblocks UnitedHealthcare put up during a surgery procedure. ... Potter said she was performing a bilateral DIEP flap surgery, which is a reconstruction surgery that takes place after a mastectomy when she was interrupted by a call from United Healthcare. The patient was already asleep on the operating table. "They demanded information about her diagnosis and inpatient stay justification," Potter said in a post on Instagram. "I had to scrub out mid-surgery to call United." (Blake, 1/8)

Boston.com: 3 UnitedHealthcare-Affiliated Insurers Ordered To Pay $165 Million For Misleading Consumers
Three insurance companies owned by UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, will have to pay a collective $165 million in damages to consumers and the state of Massachusetts, the the state attorney general’s office announced Monday. Believed to comprise the highest total of civil penalties in any action brought by the office under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, it will have to pay over $50 million in restitution to consumers and an additional $115 million in civil penalties. (Aitken, 1/7)

Modern Healthcare: JP Morgan Increases Security For 2025 Conference Amid UnitedHealthcare Shooting, Other Attacks 
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is working to increase security at its healthcare conference next week in San Francisco, according to a source familiar with the planning. The 43rd annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference kicks off Monday at the Westin St. Francis. The conference attracts thousands of attendees each year from the provider, insurance, digital health and pharmaceutical sectors, including top executives from hundreds of companies and health systems such as Mayo Clinic, Walgreens, Centene and Pfizer. (Hudson and Kacik, 1/8)

Stat: Biden Administration Allows Larger Incentives For People Who Reduce Meth Use
The Biden administration on Wednesday eliminated a major barrier for health providers seeking to offer contingency management, a form of addiction treatment increasingly used to help reduce the use of stimulants, particularly methamphetamine. (Facher, 1/8)

AP: Biden's Top Health Official Has Advice For RFK Jr. 
Thousands of people were dying from COVID-19 every day. Americans were still being ordered to stay-at-home or mask in public. Millions of people were eager to line up for jabs of the newly-released COVID-19 vaccines. That’s the scene the nation’s top health official, Xavier Becerra, wants Americans to remember as he readies to leave the office, possibly to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy is a vehement critic of the vaccine that government officials — Becerra included — promoted to combat the deadly virus. (Seitz, 1/8)

AP: Biden Is A Great-Grandfather
With the new addition, President Joe Biden, 82, is believed to be the first sitting president to become a great-grandfather while in office. His granddaughter, Naomi Biden Neal, gave birth to her first child, a boy, with husband Peter Neal at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. (Superville and Long, 1/8)

The Hill: Senators Introduce Measure Making Daylight Saving Time Year-Round Standard
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) reintroduced legislation to make daylight saving time year-round on Tuesday, touting bipartisan support for the measure. “I hear from Americans constantly that they are sick and tired of changing their clocks twice a year – it’s an unnecessary, decades-old practice that’s more of an annoyance to families than benefit to them,” Scott said in a statement. (Fields, 1/8)

The 19th: What A GOP-Controlled Congress Means For Trans People
For two years, as states pushed anti-trans laws, Republicans in Congress filed dozens upon dozens of bills that would restrict transgender rights on a national scale — but most of those bills never advanced. Now, as a new GOP-controlled Congress signals that anti-trans legislation is a top priority and President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a wave of federal anti-trans laws and executive orders is on the horizon. (Rummler, 1/8)

The Washington Post: Meta’s Fact-Checking Overhaul Widens Global Rift On Disinformation
While Meta said the plan would be rolled out “first” in the United States, spokesman Andy Stone said the company has no immediate plans to extend the policies to other regions, such as Europe, where social platforms have come under increased legal pressure to increase rather than diminish content moderation. The company declined to comment on whether or when it would apply changes globally. (Lima-Strong, 1/8)

The Washington Post: Meta Embraces Fact-Checking ‘Community Notes.’ X Users Say It Has Problems. 
Before the November election, Walt Wang said he spent 10 to 20 hours a week debunking falsehoods on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk. As election-related lies and propaganda spread throughout the site, he carefully crafted responses, backed by reputable sources, to counter the false claims before they reached millions of users. But often, he said, his efforts felt “similar to a game of whack-a-mole.” He spent hours debunking one conspiracy theory, only to watch another crop up moments later. (Thadani and Oremus, 1/8)

The Guardian: Meta Is Ushering In A ‘World Without Facts’, Says Nobel Peace Prize Winner 
The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta’s decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means “extremely dangerous times” lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg’s move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a “world without facts” and that was “a world that’s right for a dictator”. (Milmo, 1/8)

Crain's Detroit Business: UM Health-Sparrow Nurses, Healthcare Workers Plan Strike 
The roughly 2,000 nurses and other healthcare workers at University of Michigan Health-Sparrow in mid-Michigan plan to strike the health system later this month. The members of the Professional Employee Council of Sparrow Hospital-Michigan Nurses Association notified the healthcare system that its workers will strike for five days starting at 7 a.m. Jan. 20 after failing to reach a labor contract despite five months of negotiating. (Walsh, 1/7)

Modern Healthcare: Blue Shield Of California Is Latest Blues Plan To Restructure
Blue Shield of California is following in the footsteps of other Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers by reorganizing its corporate structure and rearranging its leadership team. The company created Ascendiun at the start of the year to serve as the nonprofit parent of its insurance arms, its clinical services division Altais and its healthcare startup studio Stellarus, Blue Shield of California announced in a news release Wednesday. (Tepper, 1/8)

Modern Healthcare: Molina, Innovive Health Take On High-Risk Medicaid Patients 
Molina Healthcare of Iowa is teaming up with Innovive Health to provide in-home healthcare services for Medicaid patients with serious medical and behavioral health issues. The partnership with Molina marks Innovive Health’s entry into the state. The company coordinates medical and behavioral health services with primary care providers and specialists. It also sends nurses, home health aides, physical therapists and occupational therapists into patients’ homes to provide supplemental care. (Eastabrook, 1/8)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital-At-Home Programs In Limbo With Waiver Uncertainty
Uncertainty over the future of Medicare's hospital-at-home waiver is hampering some health systems' plans to launch or expand those programs. A waiver that reimburses health systems for hospital-level care at home was extended through March 31 under a short-term spending bill President Joe Biden signed last month. That is a drastic reduction from the five-year extension included in an earlier spending deal that was scrapped after President-elect Donald Trump opposed it. Congress could extend the waiver for five years or continue it for a shorter period of time in the next spending bill. (Eastabrook, 1/8)

Modern Healthcare: H1 Acquires Ribbon Health, Adds FDA's Stephen Hahn To Board
H1 has acquired fellow health data company Ribbon Health, kicking off what could be a flurry of merger and acquisition activity this year in the sector. H1 also named Dr. Stephen Hahn, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to its board of directors. (Perna, 1/8)

Stat: FDA Calls On Makers Of AI Devices To Disclose More Details
The Food and Drug Administration wants the developers of medical devices that rely on artificial intelligence to disclose much more detail about how their devices were developed and tested, and what must be done to guard against safety risks in medical settings. (Ross, 1/9)

CIDRAP: FDA Requires Guillain-Barre Label Warnings For 2 RSV Vaccines 
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday that it has required and approved labeling changes for two respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines owing to the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurologic disorder. The new labeling warnings apply to Pfizer's Abrysvo vaccine and GSK's Arexvy vaccine. (Schnirring, 1/8)

The Wall Street Journal: AMD Invests In Drug-Discovery Company Absci In Push To Sell AI Chips
Advanced Micro Devices is investing $20 million in Absci, a drug-discovery company based in Washington state, in a move aimed at selling its artificial intelligence chips in the healthcare sector. The deal is structured as a private investment in a public equity and includes an equity stake in Absci. AMD didn’t disclose the amount of its stake. (Lin, 1/8)

Bloomberg: Massachusetts New Law Cracks Down On Private Equity In Healthcare 
Private equity investors in the health-care industry will face additional oversight in Massachusetts under a new law that Governor Maura Healey signed into law Wednesday. The legislation will subject private equity investors, real estate investment trusts and management service organizations to financial reporting requirements under the state’s Center for Health Information and Analysis and increases the fines for non-compliance. It will also broaden the authority of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission and allow the regulator to seek testimony from financial sponsors at its annual cost trends hearing.  (Taylor, 1/8)

The Washington Post: Virginia Hospital Indicted Over Unnecessary Surgeries On Women
A Virginia hospital is facing federal criminal charges over what prosecutors say was an extended scheme to profit from a high-billing doctor’s troubling practices, including dozens of medically unnecessary surgeries performed on unsuspecting women, which left some of them sterile. An indictment filed Wednesday in federal district court in Norfolk charges the hospital, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare, with health-care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The hospital collected about $18.5 million in reimbursements from private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid for questionable procedures performed between 2010 and 2019 by Javaid Perwaiz, prosecutors say. (Rizzo, 1/8)

Health News Florida: Tampa General Hospital Agrees To $6.8 Million Settlement In Data Breach Class Action 
Tampa General Hospital will pay $6.8 million to settle a class-action lawsuit arising from a May 2023 data breach that compromised the personal information of about 2.1 million people. According to the settlement, people who received written notification from Tampa General about the cyberattack may choose to submit claims to recover losses or receive a lump sum of $125. (Mayer, 1/8)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Medical Board Chief Tied To Planned Parenthood Retires
The medical director of the Texas Medical Board has retired, less than two weeks after conservative lawmakers publicized his employment with a Planned Parenthood laboratory. (Klibanoff, 1/8)

The New York Times: San Francisco Gets A New Mayor And An Emergency Plan For The Fentanyl Scourge 
Within minutes on Wednesday morning, San Francisco got a new mayor — and a new plan for an emergency declaration intended to combat the fentanyl scourge that has killed thousands of people in the city over the past five years and has turned some neighborhoods into sidewalk drug markets. Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, was sworn into office outside the gold-domed City Hall and began to detail his campaign promises about fighting the city’s drug crisis, which has claimed more lives in the city since 2020 than have Covid-19, car crashes and homicides combined. (Knight, 1/8)

North Carolina Health News: Addiction Treatment Programs Partner To Reduce Maternal Deaths
Overdose is a significant cause of maternal death in North Carolina, according to the state’s latest maternal mortality review. Among the 76 pregnancy-related deaths that occurred in North Carolina in 2018 and 2019, a little over one quarter — 20 deaths — were from overdoses. Nearly all of the deaths were related to opioids, with fentanyl involved in 14. (Crumpler, 1/9)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Has Yet To Opt In To $2B Summer Food Program For Kids 
Nearly 40 states have chosen to participate in a more than $2 billion grocery program that gives low-income families an extra $120 per child to help feed them during the summer break. But Texas, which has 3.8 million children eligible for the program, is not one of them. (Langford and Keemahill, 1/9)

New Hampshire Public Radio: NH Lawmakers Will Again Try To Expand School Meal Programs, As Food Insecurity Grows
There’s another push at the New Hampshire State House this year to make sure kids aren’t hungry while they’re learning — and it’s coming as advocates say families across the state are under extra strain due to inflation and rising cost of living expenses. (Richardson, 1/9)

Stat: New Scientific Names For HIV, Covid Virus Raise Hackles 
The change unfolded slowly, over the course of the last four years. But it largely escaped notice until December, when the U.S. National Library of Medicine said it would change names in its databases of genes and viruses to comply with the ICTV’s new monikers. Many new names sounded as if they’d been cooked up by a medieval monk. HIV-1 would henceforth be known as Lentivirus humimdef1. SARs-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, would be known as Betacoronavirus pandemicum. Ebola was now Orthoebolavirus zairense. (Mast, 1/9)

CIDRAP: Fifteen More States Enroll With USDA Milk Testing Program 
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that 15 more states have enrolled in its National Milk Testing Strategy (NMTS), which boosts the number of participating states to 28 and covers 65% of the nation's milk production. The USDA unveiled a national milk testing order on December 6, which began with 6 states and spelled out a broader strategy for testing milk in the wake of ongoing outbreaks on dairy farms. (Schnirring, 1/8)

CIDRAP: CIDRAP Report Highlights Gaps, Offers Guidance For Possible CWD Spillover Into People, Other Species 
The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota today published a comprehensive, state-of-the-art report aimed at improving surveillance, research, and response to a potential chronic wasting disease (CWD) spillover from cervids such as deer to people or farm animals. The report, "Chronic Wasting Disease Spillover Preparedness and Response: Charting an Uncertain Future," identifies gaps in spillover preparedness and offers recommendations to support public and animal health agencies' ability to recognize and respond to a species jump. (Van Beusekom, 1/8)