First Edition: Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024

KFF Health News: Happening In Springfield: New Immigrants Offer Economic Promise, Health System Challenges
When Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance claimed Haitian immigrants had caused infectious-disease rates to “skyrocket” in Springfield, Ohio, local health commissioner Chris Cook checked the records. They showed that in 2023, for example, there were four active tuberculosis cases in Clark County, which includes Springfield, up from three in 2022. HIV cases had risen, but sexually transmitted illnesses overall were decreasing. (Armour, 10/10)

KFF Health News: Older Men’s Connections Often Wither When They’re On Their Own
At age 66, South Carolina physician Paul Rousseau decided to retire after tending for decades to the suffering of people who were seriously ill or dying. It was a difficult and emotionally fraught transition. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” he told me, describing a period of crisis that began in 2017. Seeking a change of venue, Rousseau moved to the mountains of North Carolina, the start of an extended period of wandering. Soon, a sense of emptiness enveloped him. (Graham, 10/10)

KFF Health News: Montana Looks To Fast-Track Medicaid Access For Older Applicants
Montana is looking to fast-track Medicaid access for older adults who need help to stay in their homes or towns. Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program for low-income Americans, opens the door to services such as paying for help to prepare meals or shower safely. But applying for and obtaining that coverage can take weeks or months, leaving aging people in a dangerous limbo: too vulnerable to live at home without assistance, but too healthy to merit a hospital or nursing home bed. (Houghton, 10/10)

KFF Health News: Watch: ‘Breaking The Silence Is A Step’ — Beyond The Lens Of ‘Silence In Sikeston’
KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony discusses her reporting for the “Silence in Sikeston” multimedia project, which explores the impact of a 1942 lynching and a 2020 police killing on a rural Missouri community — and what it led her to learn about her own family’s past. (Anthony, 10/10)

AP: Nobel Prize In Chemistry Honors 3 Scientists Who Used AI To Design Proteins — Life's Building Blocks
Three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins — the building blocks of life — were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and holds the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made. The prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London. (Chan, Larson anf Valdes, 10/10)

The Washington Post: Nobel Prize In Physics Awarded To John Hopfield, Geoffrey Hinton For Machine Learning
The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to two pioneering scientists who laid the groundwork for the revolutionary advances in artificial intelligence, and one of the new laureates wasted no time in warning that those advances potentially pose risks to society. “We have no experience with what it’s like to have things smarter than us,” Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto said minutes after the announcement that he and John Hopfield of Princeton University had been awarded the physics prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. (Achenbach, Ortega and Tiku, 10/8)

USA Today: Most High School Students Say They've Had A Traumatic Experience As A Kid
A new study found that 3 in 4 high school students experienced at least one potentially traumatic event involving violence, abuse or exposure to mental health or substance use problems. And, notably, 1 in 5 high school students said they experienced at least four of these potentially traumatic events. Health experts call these events adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, and they've been shown to increase the risk of developing chronic health problems and mental health issues in adulthood. (Rodriguez, 10/9)

The Texas Tribune: Mental Wellness For Young Children Gains Support In Texas
It had only been a year since Estelle Sievert and her wife, Jane, joined the foster care program at SAFE Alliance in Austin when they were introduced to 3-week-old Noah in 2022. The couple immediately fell in love with their soon-to-be adopted son but knew the future might contain some challenges. The infant’s biological parent had a lifetime of severe mental illness compounded by years of using methamphetamines and PCP that went unaddressed, and studies show that trauma and mental illness can be passed down through generations. (Simpson, 10/9)

Roll Call: Survey: Most Adults Affected By Suicide, Want More Prevention
Nearly all U.S. adults agree that more action can be taken to reduce suicide deaths, with about three-fifths also reporting they have been personally affected by suicide, according to national survey data released Wednesday. Sixty-one percent of adults said they know someone who has considered, attempted or died by suicide, according to the 2024 Public Perception of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Poll, conducted by The Harris Poll. The biennial survey found that number has consistently risen, from 53 percent in 2018 to 55 percent in 2020 and 59 percent in 2022. (Raman, 10/9)

North Carolina Health News: Mental Health Providers Want To Help WNC After Helene Disaster
After weathering the storm at home in the town of Marion, A.C. was without power and water and decided to make the 30 mile-trip to Asheville to get supplies. A.C. is the manager of a local restaurant and also wanted to check on her business and make sure her employees were okay. (NC Health News is using initials to shield this woman’s identity because of the online bullying and threats she received after posting and sharing video about her experience on social media.) Similar to many western North Carolina residents, A.C. had been cut off from the world by Hurricane Helene — not knowing the full extent of the damage until she ventured out four days after the storm. (Knopf, 10/10)

Politico: ‘This Is The Worst-Case Scenario’: Hurricane Milton Could Clobber Florida’s Insurance Market
The long-dreaded big one is about to reach Florida. And the expected billions in damage from Hurricane Milton could also wreck the state’s still fragile insurance market and potentially disrupt the state’s economy. The storm-prone state has been reeling from insurance problems for years, including spiking premiums for homeowners and insurers retreating completely from the state. Despite some fixes that lawmakers and the industry hoped will stabilize the market, a major storm hitting a heavily populated area — like Milton is projected to do — could erase any progress and send the market into a tailspin. (Fineout, 10/9)

AP: Severe Solar Storm Could Stress Power Grids Even More As US Deals With Major Back-To-Back Hurricanes
A severe solar storm is headed to Earth that could stress power grids even more as the U.S. deals with major back-to-back hurricanes, space weather forecasters said Wednesday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday into Friday after an outburst from the sun was detected earlier this week. Such a storm could temporarily disrupt power and radio signals. (Dunn, 10/10)

Politico: Florida Prepares To Lose Power — Again
Utility workers just finished restoring power to barrier islands in Florida by rebuilding infrastructure destroyed in Hurricane Helene. Now they’re preparing to do it all over again, write Shelby Webb and Peter Behr. Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on Florida’s west coast as soon as tonight, bringing maximum sustained winds of nearly 120 mph and up to 13 feet of storm surge. Tropical storm-force winds, heavy rains and tornado warnings are already spreading across the state. (Skibell, 10/9)

Axios: Hospitals Scramble As Storms Worsen IV Fluid Shortages
Hospitals are giving some patients Gatorade and using other workarounds to conserve IV fluids. (Goldman, Bettelheim, 10/10)

The New York Times: U.S. Races To Replace IV Fluid Supplies After Hurricane Helene
U.S. officials approved airlifts of IV fluids from overseas manufacturing plants on Wednesday to ease shortages caused by Hurricane Helene that have forced hospitals to begin postponing surgeries as a way to ration supplies for the most fragile patients. ... On Tuesday, workers at B. Braun, makers of a fourth of the nation’s IV fluids, loaded trucks at the company’s plant in Daytona Beach with the medical bags and drove them north through the night to what they hoped would be a safer location. (Jewett, 10/9)

AP: Officials Work To Protect IV Supplies In Florida After Disruptions At North Carolina Plant 
Federal officials are working to move critical hospital supplies out of the path of Hurricane Milton, which is threatening another manufacturer of IV fluids even as hospitals nationwide are still reeling from disruptions caused by flooding at a large factory in North Carolina. Medical manufacturer B. Braun Medical said Wednesday it is working with U.S. health authorities to move its inventory of IV bags to a secure facility away from its plant in Daytona Beach, Florida, which it closed ahead of the storm. (Perrone, 10/9)

Crain's Chicago Business: Baxter IV Plant Partly Active After Helene, Shortages May Persist
Following Hurricane Helene-related damage to a key manufacturing site in North Carolina, Baxter International is slowly resuming shipments of intravenous therapy products to hospitals and other customers, but says fully restoring production at the site could take until the end of the year. The Deerfield-based medical equipment manufacturer said today that while it has instituted limits on how many products customers can order at once, it is increasing allocation levels of high-demand IV fluids from 40% to 60% for direct customers, effective immediately. For distributors, Baxter has increased levels from 10% to 60%. (Davis, 10/9)

Modern Healthcare: Hurricane Milton Challenges Home-Based Care's Adaptability
Hurricane Milton is set to test the resilience of home-based care providers along the west coast of Florida. While hundreds of healthcare sites reported evacuations ahead of the hurricane, some companies that provide care to patients where they live, including CenterWell and Medically Home, continued to send staff into patients’ homes in the hours before the storm hit. Many home-based care companies are ready to activate contingency plans to keep providing care to patients during and after the hurricane. (Eastabrook, 10/9)

Stat: STAT's Who To Know: 10 People Shaping Kamala Harris's Health Care Policy
Vice President Kamala Harris could usher in a new era of prioritizing women’s health if she’s elected president. While Harris has generally toed the Democratic party line on health care policy issues, she has distinguished herself by advocating for reproductive health access and addressing maternal mortality disparities. (Zhang, 10/10)

The New York Times: With Medicare, Harris Sees A Potential Last-Minute Appeal To Voters
In a presidential campaign cycle unusually light on health care proposals, Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious — and expensive — Medicare strategy that would introduce a new category of coverage for home health care. The proposal would involve Medicare paying for home health aides to assist older Americans with daily tasks such as eating and using the bathroom. It amounted to a last-minute bet by the Harris campaign that major domestic policy reforms could break through to undecided voters. (Weiland, 10/9)

Stat: Telehealth Providers Blame DEA For Putting Their Businesses In Peril
Telehealth providers treating opioid use disorder, ADHD, and women’s health issues say the sector is in a state of frustration and chaos as the pandemic-era flexibilities that allowed their businesses to thrive are set to end with no new rules in sight. With just months to go before the ability to prescribe controlled substances online dramatically changes overnight, the vacuum of information is forcing them to devote significant energy preparing for the unknown. Companies have hired former regulatory officials to understand how hypothetical policies might impact them, and made backup plans based on speculative, third-hand sketches of proposed rules that might replace virtual prescribing flexibilities that began during the pandemic. (Palmer, Ravindranath and Aguilar, 10/10)

The Wall Street Journal: How Health Insurance Costs Outpace Inflation, In Charts
Inflation is easing across much of the economy. For healthcare? Not yet. The cost of employer health insurance rose 7% for a second straight year, maintaining a growth rate not seen in more than a decade, according to an annual survey by the healthcare nonprofit KFF. The back-to-back years of rapid increases have added more than $3,000 to the average family premium, which reached roughly $25,500 this year. (Evans, 10/9)

Reuters: Lead Testing Device Company Magellan Sentenced For Concealing Defects
A federal judge on Wednesday signed-off on a plea agreement resolving charges against Magellan Diagnostics that it concealed a malfunction in its lead-testing devices that led to thousands of patients receiving inaccurately low results. U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston accepted the plea agreement and imposed a sentence requiring Magellan to pay $32.7 million, a portion of the overall $42 million it agreed to pay as part a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice whose "unusual" terms Saris had previously questioned. (Raymond, 10/9)

Reuters: One In Eight Girls And Women Raped Or Sexually Assaulted Before Age 18, UNICEF Says
More than 370 million girls and women alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, the United Nations children's agency said on Wednesday. The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account "non-contact" forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, UNICEF reported, in what it called the first global survey of the problem. (10/10)

AP: Bimbo Bakeries Pushes Back On FDA Sesame Allergy Warning
A top U.S. commercial bakery is pushing back on a Food and Drug Administration warning to stop using labels that say its products contain sesame — a potentially dangerous allergen — when they don’t. Bimbo Bakeries USA, which includes brands such as Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Ball Park buns and rolls, appears to be defying an FDA warning sent in June that said the several of the company’s products are “misbranded” because the labels list sesame or tree nuts even though those ingredients aren’t in the foods. (Aleccia, 10/9)

USA Today: Deadly Listeria Outbreak Forces California Cheese Factory To Shut Down, Feds Say
California-based cheese and dairy company Rizo-Lopez Foods has been ordered to cease production after a years-long listeria outbreak killed two people and made dozens of others sick, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday. The company has now stopped all of its operations related to the preparing and processing of food according to a press release from the Department of Justice. An injunction approved by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District also said the company must notify the FDA before advancing any future operations of the same kind. (Cervantes Jr., 10/9)

CIDRAP: Phase 3 Data Support Use Of Combination Antibiotic For Multidrug-Resistant Infections
An international team of investigators this week published phase 3 clinical trial data supporting aztreonam-avibactam as a potential therapeutic option for patients with serious gram-negative bacterial infections with limited treatment options. ... It was approved in April by the European Medicines Agency based on the results of two phase 3 clinical trials that evaluated its efficacy in treating several types of multidrug-resistant infections. (Dall, 10/9)

CIDRAP: Penicillin Allergies Pose Problem For Nursing Home Residents, Study Suggests
A study of long-term care (LTC) facilities in Massachusetts found that residents with a documented penicillin allergy were 95% less likely to receive beta-lactam antibiotics, researchers reported yesterday in Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare Epidemiology. ... Previous research has shown that penicillin allergy labels are frequently inaccurate and can result in the selection of broader-spectrum antibiotics, which contribute to antimicrobial resistance and have an increased risk of side effects. (Dall, 10/9)

CIDRAP: Data: COVID Reinfection In Unvaccinated More Severe Than Breakthrough Infections
The rate of hospitalization and death is significantly higher after COVID-19 reinfection among unvaccinated US veterans than after breakthrough infection among never-infected vaccine recipients, according to an analysis published yesterday in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. ... The median age was 56 years, 91% were men, and 80% were White. (Van Beusekom, 10/9)

The Hill: COVID-19 Linked To Increased Risk Of Cardiac Events: Study
COVID-19 could increase the risk of major cardiac events, like strokes and heart attacks, according to a study from the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Cleveland Clinic released Wednesday. The findings revealed individuals with A, B and AB blood types that contracted a severe version of COVID-19 are more likely to have future heart problems than people with an O blood type who had a severe version of COVID-19. (Fields, 10/9)

Reuters: Illumina Launches Compact, Low-Cost Gene Sequencing Devices
Medical equipment maker Illumina (ILMN.O) announced on Wednesday its new series of smaller, low-cost benchtop gene sequencers, to make sequencing accessible to more research and testing labs. New generation sequencers, like Illumina's MiSeq devices, help determine the sequence of DNA or RNA to study genetic variation associated with diseases and diagnose rare genetic conditions. ... The new MiSeq i100 systems can be placed on benchtops, allowing smaller labs, which typically outsource gene sequencing, to have these capabilities in-house. (Singh and Satija, 10/9)

Stat: Decade-Long Exodus From Academia To Biotech Slowed In 2023
Over the past decade, there has been a clear and unprecedented exodus of young life scientists from academia and into lucrative industry jobs. But new data provide evidence that this trend is slowing, at least for now. The latest numbers from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual National Science Foundation census of freshly minted Ph.D. graduates, show that 61.6% of biomedical scientists who had a job lined up were bound for industry in 2023. That’s a sizable dip from 66.5% in 2022, breaking a decade-long trend of nearly continuous annual increases in the share of graduates headed for the private sector. (Wosen, 10/10)

Modern Healthcare: Epic-Particle Lawsuit To Proceed Amid Carequality Dispute Results
Electronic health record giant Epic and startup Particle Health have agreed to a resolution put forward by a national interoperability nonprofit caught in the middle, but the dispute will continue playing out in a federal court. Both sides expressed satisfaction with the resolution developed by Carequality, an industry stakeholder group aiming to increase interoperability between vendors, clinics, hospitals and third-party health tech companies. (Turner, 10/9)

Reuters: GSK Surges 6.5% After $2.2 Bln Zantac Lawsuits Settlement
Shares of GSK (GSK.L) rose as much as 6.5% on Thursday after the British drugmaker agreed to pay up to $2.2 billion to settle lawsuits in the United States that claimed its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer. The agreement, announced on Wednesday, was far lower than some analyst estimates, including JP Morgan's projection of $3.5 billion. The settlement resolves 80,000 or 93% of the pending cases against the company in the U.S. (10/10)

Reuters: Former Pfizer CEO, CFO Say They Will Not Be Involved In Starboard's Campaign Against Drugmaker
Former Pfizer (PFE.N) CEO Ian Read and ex-CFO Frank D'Amelio said they will not be involved with activist investor Starboard Value, which reportedly wants the U.S. drug giant to make changes to turn its performance around. "We have decided not to be involved in the efforts of Starboard Value regarding Pfizer," the executives said in a statement on Wednesday, which was issued by Guggenheim Partners, an advisor to Pfizer. (10/10)

CIDRAP: California Reports Two More Likely Avian Flu Infections In Dairy Workers
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today announced two more presumptive H5 avian flu positives in dairy workers, which if confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), would raise the state’s total to five over the past few weeks. The two new possible cases were reported from the Central Valley, and so far there are no known links among the human cases, suggesting that only animal-to-human transmission is occurring in the state, the CDPH said in a statement. (Schnirring, 10/9)

The New York Times: The Life-Or-Death Consequences Of Killing Congestion Pricing
Two weeks ago, as the Adams administration was beginning its implosion, New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, announced that he would step down in January. ... Among his accomplishments, Dr. Vasan established HealthyNYC, an initiative to extend the life expectancy of New Yorkers to 83 by the end of the decade. ... While, on the face of it, a modest goal, it inevitably bumps up against the realities of an overburdened emergency-care system that further reveals the deficiencies of the city’s transportation policy in all of its life-or-death consequence. (Bellafante, 10/10)

The Wall Street Journal: New York State Denies Sale Of Bankrupt Retirement Home Harborside
New York officials denied a bankruptcy-court-authorized buyer’s application to acquire the Harborside on Long Island, upending the sale and again leaving hundreds of residents at the three-time-bankrupt retirement community at risk of losing their homes. The New York State Department of Health denied the application filed by the Harborside’s court-authorized new manager, an affiliate of major retirement-home operator Life Care Services Communities, according to a letter dated Oct. 3 obtained by The Wall Street Journal. (Matsuda, 10/9)

The Hill: Florida Voters Split On Amendment 4 To Legalize Abortion
Less than half of the likely electorate in Florida say they would vote for an amendment that would legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability, according to a New York Times and Siena College poll published Tuesday. The survey, conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6, found that among likely voters in the state, 46 percent said they would vote for Amendment 4, which would legalize abortions up to what is about the 24th week of pregnancy, while 38 percent they wouldn’t vote for it. (Ventura, 10/9)

STLPR: Some Midwestern Homeless Students Don't Get School Services
For students experiencing homelessness, the start of a new academic year can be fraught with anxiety. Unstable housing, food insecurity and lack of transportation to and from school are just a few of the challenges they and their families may face. Federal law requires school districts to meet these challenges. But, as The Midwest Newsroom’s investigative series Unhoused/Unschooled found, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska school districts are undercounting students who are homeless, which means thousands are not getting the support they need. In many cases, school districts don’t even apply for available grants. (Mansouri and Wheaton, 10/9)