AP: Severe Obesity Is On The Rise In The US 
Obesity is high and holding steady in the U.S., but the proportion of those with severe obesity — especially women — has climbed since a decade ago, according to new government research. The U.S. obesity rate is about 40%, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. Nearly 1 in 10 of those surveyed reported severe obesity, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report severe obesity. (Aleccia, 9/24)

On weight loss drugs —

Roll Call: Analysts Say Market Forces Will Lower Cost Of Obesity Drugs 
The CEO of Novo Nordisk is set to appear before a Senate panel Tuesday to be grilled on the high cost of Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular drugs used to treat diabetes and obesity. But health economists say it’s unlikely that congressional pressure will be the driving force to get the prices down. (DeGroot, 9/23)

Reuters: Novo Says Ozempic To Be Eligible For US Price Negotiations In Less Than A Year
Novo Nordisk's blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic will be eligible for U.S. government's price negotiations in less than a year based on current criteria, the Danish drugmaker's CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen said in his written testimony on Monday. Jorgensen is set to testify before a Senate committee on Tuesday in a hearing focused on U.S. prices for its widely popular Ozempic and weight-loss drug Wegovy. (9/23)

The Washington Post: Weight-Loss Drugs Are Supposed To Be Forever. Until They Run Out. 
Recurrent shortages, shifting insurance coverage, patient whims and a lack of longer-term guidance about side effects and dosing have forced doctors and patients to make up as they go what quantity of drugs to take and when. It amounts to a human experiment of trial and error. (Cha, 9/24)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Patients Are Turning To Med Spas To Address ‘Ozempic Face’
Those who use drugs like Ozempic — either for medical reasons or aesthetic ones — often find the weight loss leads to something now called “Ozempic face.” The result: medical spas are seeing an uptick in requests from clients using medicines like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. (Wellington, 9/23)

Axios: Scoop: Senate Democrats To Dare GOP To Block Emergency Abortion Care Measure
Top Senate Democrats will force Republicans to vote on access to emergency abortion care this week, in one of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)'s final pre-election messaging pushes, Axios has learned. ... Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), will seek unanimous consent Tuesday to pass a resolution she introduced last week affirming that every person has a right to emergency health care, including abortion care. (Neukam, 9/23)

The Hill: Sen. Ron Wyden Presses Hospitals About Delayed, Denied Emergency Abortion Care
A top Senate Democrat is pressing hospitals in states with abortion bans about how they are complying with a federal emergency care law, following reports about women who need emergency reproductive care being turned away. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent letters Monday to eight hospitals in Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina asking about specific policies and procedures to enforce the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). (Weixel, 9/23)

The New York Times: Trump Tells Women That They Won’t ‘Be Thinking About Abortion’ 
Former President Donald J. Trump claimed at a rally on Monday that he would protect women voters by making their communities safer and that they won’t “be thinking about abortion.” “You will be protected, and I will be your protector,” said Mr. Trump, who polls have shown is struggling to cultivate support among women, for whom abortion rights remain a top issue. (Vigdor and Levien, 9/23)

Abortion news from Florida —

News Service of Florida: Judge Will Hear A Request To Block AHCA's Website On Florida's Abortion Amendment
A Leon County circuit judge is slated Wednesday to hear arguments in a political committee’s request for a temporary injunction to block the state Agency for Health Care Administration from disseminating what the committee calls “misinformation” about a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion rights through a website and ads. (Saunders, 9/23)

The New York Times: Network Of Florida Maternity Homes Growing Amid Abortion Restrictions 
In many parts of Florida, where housing costs are soaring and lawmakers have sharply curtailed abortion access, pregnant women and teens who need a safe, stable place to live are increasingly turning to one of their few options: charity-run maternity homes. The homes, most of which are affiliated with churches or Christian nonprofits, often help women and teens as they flee abuse, age out of foster care or leave drug rehabilitation. (Morel, 9/24)

Stat: Epic Systems Sued Over Dominance In EHR Software Market
The health data company Particle Health has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Epic Systems, alleging that the electronic health record vendor has used its control of patient data to thwart competition and undermine its business. (Ross, 9/23)

Becker's Hospital Review: 2 Hospitals Abruptly Close
Over the last 10 days, one acute-care hospital in Alabama suspended operations indefinitely, with another physician-owned hospital in California following suit. (Condon, 9/23)

Los Angeles Times: Pharmacy Workers At CVS In Redlands To Hold Union Election
Dozens of employees at a CVS specialty pharmacy in Redlands filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to hold a union election. The decision last week to organize by 135 workers at the pharmacy that provides medications to patients with complex and chronic conditions is the largest such move in a broader campaign to unionize pharmacy workers across the U.S. by the Pharmacy Guild, a labor group that was launched in March. The Redlands CVS is also the first workplace in California to join the campaign. (Hussain, 9/23)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital Readmission Penalties Stabilized In Fiscal 2025: CMS
Fewer hospitals will face high readmissions penalties in 2025 as rates of reimbursement cuts stabilize for providers. It is the third consecutive year in which the percentage of hospitals assessed penalties of 1% or more moderated, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Penalties reduce the Medicare fee-for-service payments CMS makes to hospitals. (Devereaux, 9/23)

Texas Community Health News: Edinburg Finally Gets A Children’s Hospital, But Access Issues Remain 
Before the opening of Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Edinburg last May, if you lived in Starr County and had a child who needed to see a pediatric specialist, the visit would involve a 160-mile drive to the nearest pediatric hospital in Corpus Christi. That drive isn’t uncommon. According to researchers at Texas State University, before the new hospital opened more than 75% of Texas children lived at least an hour from the nearest facility offering emergency services or specialized care to children. (Kalinina, 9/24)

Axios: Doctors Of Color More Likely To Serve Medicaid Patients
Doctors of color may be bearing a disproportionate burden caring for patients most in need, with Black and Latino physicians far likelier to accept Medicaid than their white peers, new research shows. (Reed, 9/24)

Houston Chronicle: Baylor College Of Medicine Receives $51 Million For Cullen Tower
Ever since Baylor College of Medicine unveiled plans for the Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower in 2023, multimillion dollar gifts from pillars of Houston's philanthropic community have poured in. Now, the private medical school is just $1 million short of its $150 million goal for the project. Baylor announced a trio of charitable contributions on Monday including $25 million the Brown Foundation, $16 million from the DeBakey Medical Foundation and $10 million from the Sarofim Foundation. (Elliott, 9/23)

Stat: As Medicare Spending On Remote Patient Monitoring Jumps, HHS Watchdog Warns Of Fraud, Misuse
The federal watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report on Tuesday calling for more oversight of remote patient monitoring in Medicare. The Office of Inspector General’s report called out the potential for fraud and misuse of tools like at-home blood pressure cuffs, connected scales, and continuous glucose monitors that can feed data directly to a patient’s doctor. (Palmer, 9/24)

Stat: Lawmakers Move To Preserve Telehealth Addiction Treatment Options 
Two Democratic lawmakers are working to preserve health providers’ right to prescribe controlled substances via telehealth, including stimulants for ADHD and buprenorphine for opioid addiction. A new bill being drafted by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) comes months before the expiration of temporary waivers first enacted by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s during the Covid-19 pandemic. Though the DEA is currently contemplating new regulations that would roll back many of the pandemic-era flexibilities, the lawmakers’ new bill would likely extend the current rules through 2026, according to two lobbyists familiar with the effort. (Facher and Aguilar, 9/23)

More health news from the federal government —

Fierce Healthcare: HRSA Unveils Organ Transplant Network Overhaul Contracts
As promised, the Biden administration is moving on from the national organ transplant system’s nearly 40-year “contract monopoly” by awarding new modernization contracts to multiple vendors. The awards follow last year’s congressional mandate to shift the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) away from nonprofit contractor the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) amid allegations of inefficiencies and, as of recently, misconduct. ... Though lawmakers criticized the administrator for slow progress, the Department for Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) on Thursday announced five new organizations it tapped to work on the overhaul. (Muoio, 9/23)

The Hill: Brett Favre To Testify At House Hearing Amid Mississippi Scandal
Brett Favre is set to testify Tuesday at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee examining welfare reform, the panel confirmed to The Hill, an appearance that comes after the former NFL star faced allegations of using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) state funds for corporate gains. Favre was accused of encouraging local officials to use welfare money to build an athletic facility and support the manufacture of a concussion drug. A Mississippi state audit found that some $5 million in TANF resources was reallocated to pay for the construction of a volleyball facility at Favre’s alma mater — the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter was then playing volleyball — and that $1.7 million was directed toward a company named Prevacus, which is working to develop the concussion medication and where he is an investor. (Fields, 9/23)

KFF Health News: Vance Rewrites History About Trump And Obamacare
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Sept. 15 told viewers of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that former President Donald Trump built up the Affordable Care Act, even though Trump could have chosen to do the opposite. “Donald Trump had two choices,” Vance, Trump’s running mate, said. “He could have destroyed the program, or he could actually build upon it and make it better so that Americans didn’t lose a lot of health care. He chose to build upon a plan, even though it came from his Democratic predecessor.” (Appleby, 9/24)

The New York Times: New York Resident Dies Of Eastern Equine Encephalitis Infection 
The first person to be diagnosed with Eastern equine encephalitis in New York in nearly a decade has died, prompting Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare the rare, mosquito-borne viral illness an imminent public health threat on Monday. Ms. Hochul announced the death, in Ulster County, in a news release outlining the steps that state officials are taking to reduce New Yorkers’ risk of exposure to the disease, also known as E.E.E. The death in New York appears to be the second linked to E.E.E. this year in the United States. The first involved a 41-year-old New Hampshire man who died in August. (Shanahan, 9/23)

VTDigger: Testing Shows EEE-Positive Mosquitoes On The Decline In Vermont, But Officials Still Advise Caution
The number of mosquitoes testing positive for eastern equine encephalitis dropped to zero in the latest testing data released by the Vermont Department of Health. But the health department plans to keep its guidance for high-risk communities in place “until the first local hard frost, as there are likely still mosquitoes that are carrying the EEE virus,” said State Epidemiologist Patsy Kelso. (Petenko, 9/23)

WUSF: The Effort To Contain Mosquitoes And Mosquito-Borne Illnesses In Florida
This year, the Florida Department of Health has issued mosquito-borne illness advisories in several counties for diseases like West Nile virus and dengue. With mosquitoes abundant in Florida, some counties have been practicing mitigation strategies against the bugs. (Pinos, 9/23)

The New York Times: Was It Really A Hot Zone Summer? 
Bird flu. Mpox, formerly monkeypox. Eastern equine encephalitis. West Nile. Listeria. Dengue. Oropouche. And, of course, Covid. Have the past few months felt like an unending parade of infectious disease? A plethora of pathogens dominated headlines all summer, and some of that attention may have been warranted: Oropouche, a tropical infection, and dengue devastated South America; mpox is ravaging parts of Africa; and bird flu holds the potential to flare into a dangerous pandemic. But in the United States, the threat to public health was much less alarming than it may have seemed. (Mandavilli, 9/23)

On mpox —

Reuters: India Reports First Case Of Mpox From Fast-Spreading Clade 1b Variety
India said on Monday that an mpox case involving a man in the southern state of Kerala was from the fast-spreading clade 1b variety, marking South Asia's first recorded case from the new strain. The patient is a 38-year-old man who had traveled from the United Arab Emirates and had been admitted to the government medical college hospital in the district, Kerala authorities said last week. (Arif, 9/23)

Reuters: Countries With Confirmed Cases Of New Mpox Strain 
Here are the countries with confirmed cases of clade Ib mpox. (9/23)

Reuters: Almost 30,000 Suspected Mpox Cases In Africa This Year, WHO Says 
Nearly 30,000 suspected mpox cases have been reported in Africa so far this year, most of them in Democratic Republic of Congo where tests have run out, the World Health Organization said on Monday. (9/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: New HIV Infections Fall Sharply In SF After Years Of Slowing Progress
The number of people newly diagnosed with HIV in San Francisco dropped by 20% in 2023 to 133 — the lowest in decades and a significant decline compared to an adjusted total of 167 in 2022, according to an annual HIV epidemiology report released Monday from the Department of Public Health. It marks an improvement from recent years, when new infections were flat or declined less than they had in previous years, signaling a slowdown in progress. (Ho, 9/23)

In other public health news —

CBS News: Popular Diabetes Drug Metformin May Slow Aging, Study Finds
A new study finds metformin, a popular diabetes drug that's taken by millions of Americans, may slow aging. Metformin is taken by mouth and is often the first medication chosen to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes. Previous studies on "lower order" species have found that it can delay the onset of age-related diseases. Now a new study, performed on primates, reaffirms that the drug can slow organ aging, including aging of the brain. (Marshall, 9/23)

The Washington Post: Nearly 40 Percent Of Gen Z Men Don’t Have A Primary Care Provider 
About 37 percent of Gen Z men in the United States do not have an established primary care provider, according to a recent survey from the Cleveland Clinic. The survey, conducted this summer, involved 1,000 American men 18 or older living in the continental United States. ... Nearly all the respondents said living a healthy lifestyle was a top priority, and 87 percent were concerned about how their current health habits would affect their future health. Millennials and adult Gen Zers were more likely to take care of their mental health (59 percent) than Gen X and boomers (53 percent), according to the survey. (Docter-Loeb, 9/23)

North Carolina Health News: Children Handle Grief Differently From Adults, And Each Other 
When Max Binker was 10 years old, he woke up on a spring day in 2017 to a heartbreaking reality. His father had died suddenly, in the middle of the night. Max and his older brother Mason, who was 13 ½ at the time, went to therapy to help them deal with their grief. Their mother, Marla Binker, also sent the boys several times to Comfort Zone Camp, a weekend camp that works with children who have lost a loved one. (Fernandez, 9/24)

NPR: A Third Of Former NFL Players Surveyed Believe They Have CTE, Researchers Find
One-third of former professional football players reported in a new survey that they believe they have the degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The research, published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Neurology, represents one of the broadest surveys to date of former NFL players' perception of their cognitive health and how widely they report symptoms linked to CTE, which is thought to be caused by concussions and repeated hits to the head. (Sullivan, 9/23)

Reuters: Hottest US City Phoenix Smashes Heat Streak Record 
The desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, suffered a record 113 straight days with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) this year, leading to hundreds of heat-related deaths and more acres burned by wildfire across the state, officials said. Heat has killed 256 people so far this year in Phoenix's Maricopa County and is the suspected cause of 393 other deaths, according to official data. The county had a record 645 heat deaths last year. (Salgado, 9/23)

Stat: HHS' Rachel Levine On Climate Change And Health
This summer, the American Red Cross declared an emergency blood shortage in the U.S. There’s a seasonal pattern to blood donations, which often dip over the summer and during the winter holidays. But experts also say that climate change disrupts the national blood supply, with extreme heat and worsening storms in certain regions keeping people away from blood banks. (Gaffney, 9/24)

Reuters: Amneal Asks Court To Block Colorado's Free Allergy Pen Program 
Amneal Pharmaceuticals has sued Colorado in an effort to block a state law requiring it to provide free generic EpiPens to pharmacies In a complaint filed on Friday in federal court in Denver, Colorado, New Jersey-based Amneal said that the law, which was passed last year and took effect in January, was an illegal taking of its property under the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. (Pierson, 9/23)

In other legal developments —

Bloomberg: Purdue Settlement Talks With Sacklers Extended To November
Purdue Pharma LP said its making progress in settlement talks with members of the Sackler family who own the company and won another extension of a breathing spell that’s shielded the family from civil lawsuits for years. Judge Sean Lane said Monday he’d extend through Nov. 1 an injunction that has paused suits against the Sacklers in order to continue facilitating talks with states, opioid victims and other creditors. (Randles, 9/23)

Reuters: J&J Talc Opponents Decry Bankruptcy As "Deja Vu All Over Again" 
David Molton, who represents law firms opposed to the deal, said at Monday's hearing that the third bankruptcy attempt was "doomed to fail," despite the company's efforts to present the settlement as a done deal. "J&J's bankruptcy scheme buys delay, but not peace," Molton told Lopez. "It's deja vu all over again for many of us." (Knauth, 9/23)

More pharmaceutical and tech news —

Becker's Hospital Review: Smiths Medical Recalls Ventilators After Reported Death
Smiths Medical is recalling its paraPAC Plus ventilators because of the possibility that the patient outlet connector could loosen or detach, affecting active ventilation. There has been one reported death and injury with respect to recalled ventilators, the release said. (Murphy, 9/23)

Military.com: Military Medical Commands Developing Plans To Put Freeze-Dried Plasma In Hands Of Medics, Corpsmen 
Combat medics and corpsmen may soon carry a lifesaving blood product that their counterparts in the special operations community have had for more than a decade. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization in late August for a freeze-dried plasma powder made by Octapharma USA that can sustain injured personnel who are internally hemorrhaging or bleeding out from a wound. (Kime, 9/23)

Bloomberg: Diagnostic Tests Are Missing Link In Solving Superbug Deaths
Diagnostic tests are the missing link in the fight against superbugs and will be central to preventing millions of deaths, say experts ahead of a pivotal health meeting in New York this week. Testing patients to determine exactly what illness they have could help prevent the overuse of antibiotics and the spread of drug-resistant infections, which new estimates warn could lead to the deaths of more than 39 million people globally over the next 25 years. (Furlong and Pham, 9/24)

Stat and Tradeoffs: Generic Drugs Face Three Challenges: Quality, Shortages, Biosimilars
Lisa Ann Trainor struggled to stay on top of schoolwork, hold a job or even perform basic tasks like laundry for six exhausting years. Then, in 2018, she finally found a drug that kept her ADHD in check. “It was life-changing,” Trainor recalled. “I was happy. I was functional. I had a solution to a problem I thought was never going to go away.” But just 24 months later, Trainor’s husband changed jobs. Under his new health insurance plan, she’d have to pay roughly $1,000 a month out-of-pocket for Vyvanse, a medication with no generic alternative. (Walker and Gorenstein, 9/24)

The New York Times: Gunman Convicted Of Murdering 10 At A Colorado Supermarket 
The man who fatally shot 10 people at a Boulder, Colo., grocery store in 2021 was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison on Monday. Jurors rejected his lawyers’ argument that mental illness had made him unable to distinguish right from wrong. The verdict followed about two weeks of testimony that focused on the mind-set of the gunman, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, at the time of the shooting. Mr. Alissa, now 25, was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the attack. His lawyers admitted that he had carried out the shooting, but they said he was so unwell at the time that he could not know that what he was doing was wrong. (Bogel-Burroughs, 9/23)

More health news from across the U.S. —

Health News Florida: Moody Takes DuPont Money Fight With Delaware To The Florida Supreme Court
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and representatives of a trust tied to the late industrialist Alfred I. duPont have gone to the Florida Supreme Court in a battle about whether Delaware — duPont’s native state — has been shortchanged in the distribution of money. ... The appellate ruling was part of decades of legal wrangling about a duPont charitable trust and the nonprofit Nemours Foundation, which was created with money from the trust and provides pediatric medical care in Florida and other states. (9/23)

The New York Times: 2 Plead Guilty in Drug-Related Death of Prominent Transgender Activist
Two men accused of providing the fentanyl-laced heroin that killed the transgender activist and actress Cecilia Gentili have admitted distributing the drugs that caused her death, officials said on Monday. In addition to her work as an actress, which included a role on the television show “Pose,” Ms. Gentili was known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, transgender people and people with H.I.V. (Colon, 9/23)

Health News Florida: Florida Learns About Suicide Prevention From Parents That Experienced Loss Firsthand
Chris and Martha Thomas are busy in September. It’s National Suicide Prevention Month. They lost their daughter Ella to suicide 6½ years ago. Now they teach others how to recognize the signs. It’s part of an effort to keep other families from experiencing an unimaginable loss. (Menzel, 9/23)

If you need help —

Dial 988 for 24/7 support from the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It's free and confidential.

Stat: West Nile Virus’ Most Surprising Symptom
In August my mother became the unlucky first patient of the year to suffer from West Nile virus encephalitis in Manhattan. Soon after her diagnosis, Central Park would be sprayed overnight in hopes of slowing the spread of yet another new global viral infection. (Christopher Hartnick, 9/24)

The New York Times: Trump Learned Nothing From The Obamacare Debate. Neither Did Vance. 
On Sept. 15 on “Meet the Press,” Vance — after noting that people in good health have very different needs from those with chronic conditions — called for deregulation, saying that we should “promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools.” (Paul Krugman, 9/23)

Stat: The U.S. Definition Of Disability Is Too Narrow
Many disabled people are not included in official U.S. data. This is because there is “No Box to Check” to indicate their particular disability on surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal agencies. The questions used to identify people with disabilities are missing millions. (Bonnielin Swenor, Scott Landes and Jean Hall, 9/24)

The CT Mirror: Youth Are Not Being Heard On Gun Violence
In a room surrounded by 7th graders, the overwhelming comment echoes throughout the room… “We don’t come to school to study and succeed in our education; we come to school hoping that we will survive the day!” (Ace Ricker, 9/23)

Kansas City Star: Kansas Hospitals’ Fight Drug Manufacturers For 340B Program
Kansas hospitals play an essential role in the Kansas health care delivery system. The 122 Kansas community hospitals are committed to providing compassionate health care to all Kansans. While firm on that commitment, there are many challenges testing every hospitals’ ability to maintain that promise. (Chad Austin, 9/24)