State Highlights: Baltimore Mayor Leaves Hospital Board After Profit-Making Concerns Raised; ‘Dehumanizing’ Medical Care At N.Y. Jail Haunts Physician

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)

Texas Tribune: Advocates Warn Mental Health Legislation Not Enough To Prevent School Shootings
The newfound push among state leaders and legislators around school safety and preventing mass shootings is reinvigorating ideas around mental health care for Texas children. But mental health advocates often cringe when legislators make the argument that mental health care can prevent mass shootings, saying the rhetoric stigmatizes people with mental illness as if they’re inherently violent. (Evans, 3/19)

Houston Chronicle: Study: Lack Of Affordable Housing Affects Health
More than half of Texas' poor children live in families where 50 percent or more of household income goes to housing, leaving little money left for necessities such as healthcare, a new national study shows. That lack of affordable housing carries a ripple effect that can also lead to a lack of healthy food, an inability to fill prescriptions or seek medical care, transportation problems and it influences where children go to school, which can ultimately determine their success as adults, researchers concluded. (Deam, 3/18)

KCUR: Three Small-Town Kansas Hospitals Declare Bankruptcy After Months Of Struggling 
Three Kansas hospitals are among six hospitals once run by a North Kansas City-based company that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Two of the three, Horton Community Hospital and Oswego Community Hospital, have closed in the last few weeks. The third, Hillsboro Community Hospital, remains open under the auspices of a court-ordered receivership.  (Margolies, 3/18)

The CT Mirror: Family Members Plead For Passage Of Aid-In-Dying Bill
The bill would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to patients who have six months or less to live and who are in dire pain. Patients would have to submit two written requests for the medication, and a physician must inform them of the risks and alternatives. (Carlesso, 3/18)

Modern Healthcare: N.Y. Nurses Union Gives 10-Day Strike Notice To Major Health Systems
The New York State Nurses Association said it would give notice Monday that it intends to strike April 2. This follows months of stalled contract negotiations because of a dispute over staffing levels. The notice will be delivered to Montefiore, Mount Sinai and New York–Presbyterian health systems, where more than 10,000 NYSNA members work, according to the union. (LaMantia, 3/18)

KQED: Chevron's Richmond Refinery Flaring Incidents At Highest Level In More Than A Decade
The number of flaring incidents in 2018 at Chevron's Richmond refinery was at its highest level in 12 years, according to data the Bay Area Air Quality Management District released Monday at a board of directors committee meeting. The refinery experienced nine flaring events last year, more than any other refinery in the Bay Area. (Goldberg, 3/18)

Modern Healthcare: Jupiter Medical Center Mum On Abrupt CEO Departure
The leadership at Jupiter (Fla.) Medical Center isn't sharing much detail on the circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of its CEO, who held the position for a little over a year. Don McKenna took the helm of the 327-bed hospital in January 2018. Late last week, the hospital said in a statement that McKenna and its board of trustees had determined their visions were no longer aligned. (Bannow, 3/18)

Columbus Dispatch: Stable Housing A Key Factor In Improving Health In Ohio's Counties
Researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, who compile annual health rankings for every county in the nation, are focusing this year on where people live, whether they experience severe housing problems and how having a good, affordable home is tied to healthy living. (Viviano and Ferenchik, 3/19)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Doulas Try To Lower Black Infant And Maternal Mortality
According to the most recent data, the average infant mortality rate in Wisconsin is 4.8 per 1,000 white infants, compared to 14.2 for African American infants. And, the maternal mortality rate in Wisconsin is five times higher for black women than for white women. (Schwabe, 3/18)

The Star Tribune: DHS Inspector General Placed On Leave After State Audit Finds Fraud In State's Child Care Program
The inspector general in charge of investigating fraud in Minnesota’s health and welfare programs has been placed on leave, less than a week after the legislative auditor found high levels of fraud in the state’s child-care assistance program and “significant distrust” within the agency that administers it. Carolyn Ham remains inspector general of the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), but the agency said she is “out of the office,” as of Monday. A spokeswoman for the department declined to explain why Ham was put on leave or say for how long, citing data privacy concerns. Ham did not return multiple telephone calls and e-mails Monday. (Sterres, 3/18)

Arizona Republic: AZ Supreme Court Upholds Conviction Of Woman Who Faked Cancer To Receive State-Funded Abortion
The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the convictions and sentences of a Phoenix woman who faked having cancer to receive an abortion, the Arizona Attorney General's Office said Monday. Chalice Renee Zeitner was convicted on fraud, theft and forgery charges in 2016 and sentenced to 28 years in prison after she obtained a state-funded late-term abortion using a forged letter from a physician saying she had cancer. (Coble, 3/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: Homeless With HIV: SF General Program Aims To Help Those Most Vulnerable
San Francisco has made remarkable strides against HIV over the past half decade: New infection numbers are the lowest since the start of the epidemic. Two-thirds of people with HIV have the virus so well under control that it’s undetectable in their blood. But these health improvements in the overall population stand in stark contrast to the stubborn effect of HIV among one subset of patients: people who are homeless. (Allday, 3/18)

East Oregonian: Obesity Grows In Umatilla County According To Latest Health Report
Umatilla County fell and Morrow County improved in a national report that scrutinizes health behaviors. Umatilla County dropped from 15th to 20th of Oregon’s 36 counties in the annual County Health Rankings, released Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Morrow County rose from 19th to ninth. The report is a snapshot in time in health outcomes such as premature death, low birthweight and poor physical/mental health days. (Aney, 3/19)

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)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Dillard University Students Test Air Quality In Lower 9th Ward 
The students were there as part of an effort to use mobile air monitors to test levels of volatile organic compounds in the area, to set a baseline for comparison in the future as some worry that proposed projects nearby could affect air quality. They are testing at three sites in the Lower 9th Ward: the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi River earthen levee. They’ll be returning to the sites to get readings twice a month until the end of the year. (Sneath, 3/18)

Texas Tribune: Texas Medical Cannabis Expansion Faces Hurdle From Dan Patrick
Now, nearly four years later, a broad coalition of lawmakers plus some powerful lobbyists support expanding access to medical cannabis in Texas. But bills to do so face a major obstacle: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate's presiding officer, who can single-handedly block any legislation from coming up for a vote in the upper chamber. (Samuels, 3/19)