State Highlights: Anti-Vaccine Groups Gear Up In Texas; 73% View Crisis in Iowa’s Mental Health System

Politico: Houston District Becomes Unlikely Battleground For Vaccine Policy Fight
Texas House District 134 in southwest Houston, with its teeming 50 million-square-foot medical complex that includes Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center and 100,000 health workers, seems an improbable battleground for a political fight over vaccines. Yet it's the latest front in the war over vaccination requirements — and a proxy for the broader struggle between social conservatives and moderates for the soul of the Texas Republican Party. (Rayasam, 2/9)

Des Moines Register: 73% Of Iowans See Mental-Health System As In Crisis Or A Big Problem
Nearly three-quarters of Iowans believe the state’s mental-health system is in crisis or is a big problem, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. The mental-health system is by far the leading area of concern for Iowans among nine possibilities tested, according to the poll. Thirty-five percent of Iowans say the lack of mental-health services is a crisis, and 38 percent believe it's a big problem. (Leys, 2/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Department Of Insurance Opens Investigation Into Aetna
The California Department of Insurance opened an investigation into Aetna after a doctor formerly employed by the insurer made an admission under oath: He never looked at patients’ records before deciding to approve or deny care as a medical director. (Thadani, 2/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Hawaii’s Cesspools Threaten Drinking Water, Tourism
Paradise has a sewage problem. Cesspools—holes in the ground where untreated human waste is deposited—have become a crisis in Hawaii, threatening the state’s drinking water, its coral reefs and the famous beaches that are the lifeblood of its tourist economy. (Lovett, 2/11)

Seattle Times: After Talia’s Death At Swedish In Seattle, Her Parents Seek Overhaul Of Hospital Cultures
In the days after a Seattle Times story last year chronicled the death of Talia Goldenberg, her parents were inundated with messages from around the country. Some of them came from other medical patients who felt their voices were sometimes ignored by doctors. They could relate to the troubles Talia faced at Swedish Health’s Cherry Hill facility in Seattle, where, shortly before a deadly turn of events, she had expressed frustration that her breathing troubles weren’t taken seriously after spinal surgery. Others came from nurses who longed to see improvements in how hospitals deliver care to patients. (Baker, 2/10)

The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Recovers $81 Million From Medicaid Technology Contractor 
The state of Maryland recovered $81 million from a contractor that officials said botched efforts to rebuild the state’s Medicaid computer system, Attorney General Brian Frosh announced Friday. The state terminated its $170 million contract with Computer Sciences Corp. in 2015 after complaining for a year about the company’s work. The state had already paid about $27 million to the company, much of it coming from federal funds. (Cohn, 2/9)

The Star Tribune: Insurance Plans Push Healthier Choices At Grocery Store
Sandy Brezinski savored the savings last week when her preferred brand of organic tortilla chips went on sale. Not only did her grocery store discount the item to $2.99, a program offered through her employer’s health insurance knocked another $2 off the price. “You get that for 99 cents,” Brezinski said. “How good is that?” (2/10)

Dallas Morning News: More Children Die From Abuse In Texas Than In Any Other State  
A report released this month by the Department of Health and Human Services shows that Leiliana [Wright] was just one of 217 Texas children killed by child abuse that year — a 34 percent increase from 2015. Texas reported more child fatalities than any other state in 2016, a sobering distinction it is has held since 2012, according to the report. Nationally, the number of fatalities resulting from child maltreatment rose 7 percent from 1,589 to 1,700 in 2016. In almost 30 percent of those deadly cases, child protection agencies had contact with the child or someone in their lives at least once within three years of the child's death, the report found. (Ballor and Garrett, 2/11)

Georgia Health News: Videos Are New State Tactic Against Teen Suicides
The Public Service Announcements, released by the GBI’s Child Fatality Review Panel, feature teens talking about depression and hopelessness – and ways to overcome them. ...Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 in Georgia and the third-leading cause of death for people ages 15-24, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. (Miller, 2/11)

The Oregonian: Low Vaccination Rates Put Some Oregon Schools At High Risk For Measles
Many charter schools in Oregon have such low student vaccination rates for measles that they'd be at risk if the bug – once declared eliminated in the United States – infected anyone in their school. An analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows that nearly 65 percent of the state's public charter schools lack what scientists call herd immunity against measles, meaning not enough children are immunized to prevent the disease from sweeping through their immediate community. (Terry, 2/11)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: New Orleans, Kenner Psychiatrists Accused Of Taking Medicare Kickbacks 
Two psychiatrists, one from New Orleans and the other from Kenner, are accused of receiving kickbacks for allegedly referring patients to a home health company for services they didn't need. A marketer who worked with the doctors has also been charged. Dr. Muhammad Kaleem Arshad, 62, of New Orleans, Dr. Padmini Nagaraj, 60 of Kenner and Joseph A. Haynes, 61, of New Orleans are each charged with three counts of receiving illegal health care kickbacks and one count of conspiracy to receive, the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Louisiana announced Friday (Feb. 9). The physicians also were charged with five counts each of health care fraud and one count of conspiracy. (LaRose, 2/10)

Columbus Dispatch: OhioHealth Plans $12M Wellness Center To Help Neurological Patients 'stay Active In Mind And Body'
OhioHealth announced plans Friday to construct a first-of-its-kind neuroscience wellness center, a facility that officials say will benefit people living with Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and the after-effects of a stroke. The center will provide services to help patients manage their care on a lifelong continuum, beyond doctor’s appointments and hospital stays. (Widman Neese, 2/9)

Sacramento Bee: Demand For Hospital Chaplians Remains As Religous Belief Wanes
The demand for spiritual and religious care within hospitals hasn’t waned with the years, according to Sacramento-area chaplains and national spiritual care officials. All of the hospitals in the Sacramento area provide chaplain services, and Sutter Medical Center is building a new prayer room that is slated to open in June. (Sullivan, 2/11)

The Star Tribune: Mayo Clinic Proposes Medical Facility In Hudson
Mayo Clinic has proposed building a medical facility in Hudson, Wis., that would be part clinic and part hospital — a development that would signal increased competition among Minnesota health systems for patients east of the St. Croix River. A notice published this week by the plan commission in Hudson says Mayo Clinic is seeking a conditional use permit to develop the 100,000-square-foot medical facility on about 9 acres of vacant land near Interstate 94. (Snowbeck, 2/9)

Houston Chronicle: Houston: A City Stressed Out By Harvey 
This feeling of helplessness is common in Houston right now, said licensed professional counselor Rachel Eddins with Eddins Counseling. "It's chronic stress," she said. "People are living in dust in their houses still. They're still dealing with not knowing what insurance will cover. Their children are feeling less settled. There's financial stress. When you live in chaos for an ongoing period, it takes a toll." Couple that with the stress that comes with living in a big city day to day, and the anxiety levels can skyrocket. (Peyton, 2/9)

San Jose Mercury News: Mariah's Story: How A Bay Area Foster Child Died After Ingesting Meth Twice
Hundreds of pages of reports and records from San Joaquin Child Protective Services, the hospital, police and the coroner obtained by this news organization show a series of failures by the people tasked with protecting Mariah, from the social workers who chose not to remove her from the foster home after the first incident, to the doctors who appear to have accepted the foster mother’s suggestions that the drug poisoning occurred before the girl was in her care. But a leading toxicology expert briefed on the case said no doctor or social worker should have believed that excuse. (Gafni and DeBolt, 2/11)

Arizona Republic: Leprosy In Phoenix: Maricopa County Clinic Closing Amid Budget Cuts
Through most of the 20th century, people with the advanced disease would be sent to the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana., later renamed the Gillis W. Long Hansen’s Disease Center. Medical advancements allowed the federal government to establish a network of outpatient clinics in 1981 to care for people who lived otherwise normal lives. But Trump administration budget cuts will force the closure of all but 5 of the 17 regional Hansen's Disease clinics this year, including one in Maricopa County. (Alltucker, 2/9)

Columbus Dispatch: Will Requiring Parlors To Use Licensed Massage Therapists Shut Down Sex Trafficking Fronts?
Massage therapists and advocates for human-trafficking survivors don’t necessarily agree on the best way to shut down massage parlors in Ohio that are fronts for commercial sex operations. But they do agree it’s a rampant problem that needs addressing. (Widman Neese, 2/11)

New Hampshire Public Radio: N.H. Bill Seeks To Classify Sex Between Prisoners, Officers As Assault
A group of lawmakers from both parties are trying to fix a loophole in New Hampshire’s sexual assault law that allowed a former law enforcement official to evade charges that he raped an inmate who he was driving across the state last year. (McDermott, 2/10)