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�������ýҕ�l Health News: No One Wants To Talk About Racial Trauma. Why My Family Broke Our Silence
I wasn’t sure if visiting a cotton field was a good idea. Almost everyone in my family was antsy when we pulled up to the sea of white. The cotton was beautiful but soggy. An autumn rain had drenched the dirt before we arrived, our shoes sinking into the ground with each step. I felt like a stranger to the soil. (Anthony, 9/13)

→ Catch up on Episode 1 of the “Silence in Sikeston” podcast: “Racism Can Make You Sick”

→ Coming Monday, the companion premieres on WORLD’s “Local, USA” 8 p.m. ET on , , and the .

→ Click here for more details on the multimedia project from �������ýҕ�l Health News, Retro Report, and GBH's WORLD.

A North Dakota judge struck down the state’s near-total ban on abortion Thursday, saying the state constitution gives women a “fundamental right to choose abortion” before fetal viability. Restrictions on the right is “a violation on medical freedom,” he ruled. State District Judge Bruce Romanick declared the law, enacted by the legislature last year, “unconstitutionally void for vagueness.” The statute made the procedure illegal in all cases except rape or incest when the woman has been pregnant for less than six weeks or when the pregnancy poses a serious physical health threat. Doctors and other health care professionals found to be in violation of the law could be charged with a felony — and then face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000 fine. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 9/12)

A resolution introduced by Congressional Democrats would make clear that U.S. emergency rooms need to provide emergency abortions when a woman’s health or life is at risk, despite strict state abortion bans. The resolution has little chance of passing a Republican-controlled House in an election year. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington announced on social media that she would introduce a Senate version of the resolution next week. (Seitz, 9/12)

Less than eight weeks before Floridians will vote on an abortion-rights amendment to the state Constitution, a bitter standoff is escalating between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the amendment’s backers over whether a string of state actions directed at the measure amount to a taxpayer-funded effort to defeat it at the polls. The debate first erupted last week after the state Agency for Health Care Administration posted a 30-second video on social media that casts current Florida law — which bans almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — as proof that “Florida cares about women and families.” The post links to an agency website that claims that the abortion rights measure, known as Amendment 4, “threatens women’s safety.” It adds: “Don’t let the fear-mongers lie to you.” (Wines, 9/12)

An unprecedented number of abortion initiatives are on state ballots this November, nearly all seeking to protect reproductive rights, but opponents are trying to defeat them even before the start of voting through legal challenges, administrative maneuvers and, critics say, outright intimidation. (Hennessy-Fiske, Rozsa and Gowen, 9/12)

Hadley Duvall helped a Democratic governor win in a red state. The vice president is counting on her to deliver votes in multiple battlegrounds. (Gilsinan, 9/12)

In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, countless people have shared their personal experiences with reproductive health – including accessing abortion, seeking fertility services, experiencing miscarriages and giving birth. (Raman, 9/12)

On IVF —

The Senate is expected to take another vote on legislation next week that would expand access to and coverage of in vitro fertilization as Democrats look to pressure Republicans to take a stand on IVF policies former President Donald Trump has called for on the campaign trail. (Raman, 9/12)

Donald Trump pitched himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. His plans are angering swaths of the Republican Party. “Though we share his desire for Americans to have more babies, Trump’s plan to fund in vitro fertilization for all American women is in direct contradiction with that hope,” said Pro-Life Action League President Ann Scheidler. “Hundreds of thousands of embryos — each of them as fully human as you or me — are created and then destroyed or frozen in IVF procedures.” (Ollstein and Messerly, 9/12)

U.S. employers expect health insurance costs to rise an average 5.8% in 2025, largely due to increased cost of medical services as well as higher use, according to a survey released by consulting firm Mercer on Thursday. The year 2025 is projected to be the third consecutive year in which healthcare costs for employers rise by more than 5%. Costs increased an average 3% during the decade prior, the report said. In part, the higher cost of each medical service is driven by a continued shortage of healthcare workers, linked to providers raising prices, Mercer said. Spending on behavioral health and popular but pricey GLP-1 weight loss drugs are also contributors. (Niasse, 9/12)

In other health insurance updates —

For years, health insurers battled to gain market share in the lucrative privatized Medicare program. Now, the opposite is true. Some of the companies say they designed their 2025 plans with an eye toward ditching members. (Bannow, 9/13)

The federal government will pay less in quality bonuses to Medicare Advantage insurers this year compared with last year, according to a new report. Medicare Advantage insurers will receive an estimated $11.8 billion in bonus payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this year linked to their star rating performance during the 2023 plan year, according to a report released by healthcare research institution KFF on Wednesday. That’s down about 8% from the total CMS distributed to health insurers last year. (Berryman, 9/12)

Aetna is leaning into technology it believes will alleviate patient and provider headaches from burdensome utilization management rules, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Cathy Moffitt said. To expedite care and reduce administrative obstacles, the health insurance company intends to automate about one-third of preapproval requests from providers this year, Moffitt, also a senior vice president at parent company CVS Health, said in an interview. But Aetna is walking a fine line as health insurers face backlash over how they incorporate technologies such as algorithms and artificial intelligence into the preapproval process. (Berryman, 9/11)

Health systems have a lower risk of patient mortality, fewer hospital acquired infections, and are performing more cancer screenings in 2024 than prior to the pandemic, according to a new report from the American Hospital Association and Vizient, a group purchasing and consulting organization. The study, which uses data from Vizient’s clinical database, found that acute care hospitals have made significant improvements on their safety and quality measure performance over the past several years — despite dealing with sicker, more complex patient populations. (Devereaux, 9/12)

More health industry news —

HonorHealth will assume operations of several Steward Health Care facilities in Arizona as a Senate committee weighs whether to hold Steward CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre in contempt. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based health system agreed to operate the locations during an interim transition period starting Wednesday. It anticipates taking full operational ownership in October, pending regulatory approval, a spokesperson for HonorHealth said. (DeSilva, 9/12)

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., moved to punish Steward Health Care chief executive Ralph de la Torre on Thursday after he skipped a Senate hearing on the struggles of his bankrupt hospital chain. At the same time, a bipartisan chorus of senators signaled support for legislation to prevent a repeat of the Steward collapse at another health care system. Senators had hoped to grill de la Torre at a high-profile hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Capitol, but had to make do verbally attacking an empty chair. (Pressman and Kopan, 9/12)

Urgent care company CityMD, which operates in two Northeastern states, is expanding into Connecticut. CityMD will open a location in Norwalk on Sept. 30, followed by another site in Fairfield next year, according to a Thursday news release. (Hudson, 9/12)

One hundred and twelve years after Henry Ford broke ground for a new hospital on the then outskirts of the city of Detroit, the region’s largest health system broke ground again for a new hospital tower. Henry Ford Heath and community leaders celebrated the groundbreaking Thursday for the $2.2 billion tower set to open in the city in 2029. (Walsh, 9/12)

Mark Wallace, who served as Texas Children’s Hospital’s top executive for more than three decades and helped build the system into a dominant force in pediatric care, announced his retirement Thursday. His last day is Oct. 4. Debra Feigin Sukin, who replaced Wallace as president last year while the latter remained CEO, will step into Wallace’s role. In a news release, Wallace said he had been mulling his retirement since Sukin’s appointment and was “happy with how everything has fallen into place.” (Gill and MacDonald, 9/12)

Multiple bills in California targeting artificial intelligence could have significant implications for providers and digital health companies operating in and out of the state. The three bills, all of which passed the state's Assembly and Senate earlier this year, have not yet been signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The bills would require providers to disclose when AI is used for patient communication, instruct organizations to test models for bias and provide a structure on how developers may be held liable for harm. (Turner, 9/12)

The surgeon general has a new public health warning. And this time, the hazard isn’t tobacco or alcohol: it’s parenting. Two-fifths of parents say that on most days, “they are so stressed they cannot function,” the Office of the Surgeon General reports in an advisory titled Parents Under Pressure. Roughly half of parents term that stress “completely overwhelming.” Those dire findings anchor a 35-page report, released in late August, that posits parental stress as “an urgent public health issue.” (De Visé, 9/13)

Psychologists and parenting experts who spoke with The Hill said many other societal factors are also contributing to parents’ emotional exhaustion — including decreasing access to child care and changing expectations of what it means to be a good parent.  Experts who spoke with The Hill said the surgeon general was right in naming social media as one of the biggest parental stressors of the modern era. (O'Connell-Domenech, 9/11)

In related news about transgender youth —

A culture of masculinity marked by anti-LGBTQ and other harmful language pervades youth sports environments, according to a study led by Fordham University researchers – signaling a public health concern whose implications, experts say, are both wide-ranging and long-lasting. While sports generally offer great benefits for youth, the study found those benefits are increasingly eroded the more that youth are exposed to such language ― even if they aren't the targets of it. (Ramirez, 9/13)

In other news about social media —

A Republican congressman slammed Meta on Thursday over what the lawmaker called an inadequate response to concerns about illicit drug advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. (Vanian, 9/12)

DebunkBot, an A.I. chatbot designed by researchers to “very effectively persuade” users to stop believing unfounded conspiracy theories, made significant and long-lasting progress at changing people’s convictions, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science. Indeed, false theories are believed by up to half of the American public and can have damaging consequences, like discouraging vaccinations or fueling discrimination. The new findings challenge the widely held belief that facts and logic cannot combat conspiracy theories. (Rosenbluth, 9/12)

Silicon Valley startup founders and venture capital investors are picking a side in this year’s presidential race in a stark departure for an industry they say has historically discouraged political activism. (Ravindranath, 9/13)

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump’s administration and a Republican majority Congress attempted, repeatedly, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more colloquially known as Obamacare. But at the first presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Trump told a different story. (Luterman, 9/12)

Donald J. Trump tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Kamala Harris proposed a fundamental restructuring of U.S. health care in 2019, a move to a single- payer system. These bold ideas were no aberration. In nearly every major presidential race for decades, health care has been a central issue. Remember Bill Clinton’s (doomed) health reform plan? George W. Bush’s Medicare drug plan? Mitt Romney’s Medicare privatization proposal? Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for all? As you may have noticed, with less than two months until Election Day, big, prominent plans for health reform are nowhere to be seen. Even in an election that has been fairly light on policy proposals, health care’s absence is notable. (Sanger-Katz, 9/13)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump-Harris Debate Showcases Health Policy Differences
The much-anticipated presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted their policy differences not just on abortion, but also on other health issues, including the future of the Affordable Care Act. ... Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Stat, Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, and Riley Ray Griffin of Bloomberg News join �������ýҕ�l Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. (Rovner, 9/12)

When former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris took the debate stage Tuesday, they briefly touched on reproductive rights, health insurance access and drug prices. Left unmentioned, however, was another divisive, though less high-profile public health issue: The fate of menthol cigarettes. (DeGroot, 9/12)

If you have mild to moderate hearing loss, your AirPods could soon function as hearing aids. The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it has approved a piece of software that will transform the latest model of Apple’s AirPods Pro earbuds into over-the-counter hearing aids. The company’s hearing aid feature will be pushed to eligible devices through a software update in the coming weeks, Apple said. The move, which comes two years after the FDA first approved over-the-counter hearing aids, could help more Americans with hearing loss start getting help, the FDA said in a statement. (Hunter, 9/12)

The hotly anticipated results are in from a landmark pair of major clinical trials of a long-acting, injectable HIV-prevention drug that only requires dosing every six months. They are sensational. Thrilled over the news Thursday that lenacapavir was 89% more effective at preventing HIV than daily oral preventive medication among gay, bisexual and transgender people, plus previous news that the injectable drug was 100% effective in cisgender women, HIV advocates are looking to the future. They hope that if rolled out broadly and equitably, lenacapavir could be the game changer the nation badly needs. (Ryan, 9/12)

When Rachel Guberman found out she had brain cancer, she did so much reading and Googling about the disease that she joked she had reached the end of the internet. But she avoided digging into one particular subject: what she might have to endure with chemotherapy and radiation. (Joseph, 9/13)

After his son Michael was diagnosed with a devastating, ultra-rare disease in 2019, Terry Pirovolakis dedicated himself to eradicating it. Pirovolakis, a Canadian IT director, recruited academics and raised $3 million to design a gene therapy. He got Michael treated, an intervention that seems to have helped the 6-year-old stand on his heels for the first time and slow the course of a disease that can be severely cognitively and physically disabling. (Mast and Wilkerson, 9/12)

Also —

University of Illinois Chicago’s pharmacy school is getting a new name, after receiving a $36 million endowment gift from the estate of late Chicago pharmacy owners Herbert and Carol Retzky. The pharmacy school — which will now be called the Herbert M. and Carol H. Retzky College of Pharmacy — is the first college at UIC to be named after a donor. (Schencker, 9/12)

Southwest Minnesota EMS will receive $9.9 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of an initiative to improve and speed up care after crashes in rural communities. The money provides 54 EMS agencies in the 18-county service region with Avel eCare’s EMS services. Ambulance rigs will be outfitted with telemedicine rigs connecting crews to board-certified physicians, experienced paramedics, and nurses for virtual peer-to-peer support in the field or during transport. (Yang, 9/13)

Gov. Ron DeSantis is pledging more money in the coming fiscal year to help grow Florida’s nursing workforce. The governor says the state has already invested nearly $400 million in two programs created by lawmakers in 2022 to help graduate more nurses from Florida schools. (Lisciandrello, 9/12)

Yorba Linda is a small, sunny city southeast of Los Angeles. It’s perhaps best known for being the birthplace of President Richard Nixon. But in the past few years, Yorba Linda has picked up another distinction: It’s home to the nation’s largest per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) water treatment plant of its kind, according to the city. “This December will be [three] years we've been running, and we’re the largest PFAS treatment plant using resin,” says J. Wayne Miller, former board president at the Yorba Linda Water District, for whom the plant is named. (Huang, 9/12)

From Georgia —

�������ýҕ�l Health News: The First Year Of Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Is Mired In Red Tape
On a recent summer evening, Raymia Taylor wandered into a recreation center in a historical downtown neighborhood, the only enrollee to attend a nearly two-hour event for people who have signed up for Georgia’s experimental Medicaid expansion. The state launched the program in July 2023, requiring participants to document that they’re working, studying, or doing other qualifying activities for 80 hours a month in exchange for health coverage. (Rayasam and Whitehead, 9/13)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: ‘What Happens Three Months From Now?’ Mental Health After Georgia High School Shooting
About an hour after gunfire erupted at Apalachee High School, ambulances started arriving at nearby Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow with two students and two adults suffering from panic attacks and extreme anxiety, not bullet wounds. A fifth patient with similar symptoms later arrived at another local facility, according to a health system spokesperson. (Whitehead, Rayasam and Miller, 9/13)

From Wyoming —

Wyoming has had in-state call centers for the 988 suicide hotline for the past two years. Those centers can now receive text messages. Since June, anyone with a 307 area code who texts 988 will get a response from someone within the state. Beforehand texts were going to national call centers. (Kudelska, 9/12)

If you need help —

Luke Sypherd stood in the ambulance bay at Cody Regional Health last summer trying to explain why emergency medical services are so important — and why it’s been so hard to communicate that idea to the public. Sypherd works with Cody Regional’s EMS wing, and is also president of the Wyoming EMS Association. He wants people to understand that “disease and death cost a lot,” but well-funded, and therefore well-functioning, EMS can help reduce those costs in the long run. There are a plethora of studies demonstrating how EMS timeliness can save lives and limit long-term disability. That includes instances of severe trauma, stroke and heart attacks.  (Beck, 9/9)

Most businesses in Wyoming would go under if they were operating more than a million dollars in the red — but Star Valley EMS, which bore that deficit last year, is no ordinary business. It saves lives.  The agency also took on some unusual expenses the last few years as it merged with two struggling volunteer EMS outfits nearby, speeding up area response times. “We saved Alpine and Thane, and now we’re covering this whole valley,” said director Bud Clark. Wyoming EMS agencies are increasingly consolidating as a way to try and stay financially viable in rural Wyoming. (Beck, 9/3)

Bondurant sits about halfway between Pinedale and Jackson along scenic Highway 191 in western Wyoming. The area is buffeted by the Gros Ventre Wilderness, Hoback River, and both the Wind River and Wyoming ranges. From the road along the valley floor, you can see abrupt pine-tree-freckled hills and the snowy peaks of nearby mountains to the northwest. The tranquil location is a draw to folks like Sam Sumrall and his wife, who retired there after moving from Mississippi. But it comes with risks. “We lived in the country [in Mississippi], but we were literally five minutes from the hospital, five minutes from Walmart,” he said. “When we moved out here, we did so with the awareness of the fact that we weren’t going to have that luxury.” (Beck, 8/26)

A report yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine details detection of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus in wastewater from 10 Texas cities during the same time period the virus was detected in Texas cattle herds. Texas was the first state this year to confirm an H5N1 case, which involved an agricultural worker on March 28. The case-patient, who presented with conjunctivitis, among other mild symptoms, was exposed to symptomatic cattle. Since that detection, 13 other human US cases have been recorded, and all patients have made recoveries. "The widespread detection of influenza A(H5N1) virus in wastewater from 10 U.S. cities is troubling," the authors concluded. (Soucheray, 9/12)

Disease investigators have not been able to determine how a person in Missouri with no known exposures to animals or poultry became infected with an H5 bird flu virus, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. But Nirav Shah said the ongoing investigation has turned up no evidence of onward spread of the virus, suggesting this case may turn out to be a one-off infection that defies explanation. (Branswell, 9/12)

With the approach of fall and cooler weather across the United States, officials say the risk posed by the H5N1 bird flu virus could rise — and they’re taking steps to prevent the creation of a hybrid flu virus that could more easily infect humans. (Goodman, 9/12)

On mpox —

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has seen cases of mpox infection in pregnant women being passed on to unborn babies in central Africa, Director-General Jean Kaseya said. Africa CDC doesn’t yet have details of the total number of cases, Kaseya said at a briefing Thursday. Scientists are rushing to understand a complex mosaic of infection patterns of the disease endemic to the region that’s become a global health emergency. (Kew, 9/12)

Morocco has confirmed a case of mpox in a man in the city of Marrakech, the health ministry said. The Moroccan authorities have not said which variant the man has. (9/12)

Bavarian Nordic A/S, one of a few companies with an approved mpox vaccine, is increasing the number of jabs it could supply to deal with an outbreak in Africa. Bavarian, which has faced criticism over the high cost of its vaccines, is prioritizing supplying the inoculations to Africa with a plan to defer some other 2024 orders to next year, according to a statement on Thursday. (Wass and Kew, 9/12)

On Ebola —

Emergent BioSolutions today announced that the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has awarded the company a research and development option worth $41.9 million to its existing contract to further the development and scale-up of its monoclonal antibody treatment for Ebola virus infection. (Schnirring, 9/12)

An estimated 43 million Americans get water from wells they own. Should government require them to test and treat their water? (Foster-Frau, 9/10)

The remote Duck Valley reservation that straddles Nevada and Idaho has battled toxic contaminants on its land for decades. (Stern, 9/9)

Federal regulators are trying to block Kroger’s merger with Albertsons. In a Portland suburb, residents already know what deteriorating access to fresh food looks like. (Kaye, 9/10)

A decade ago, Louisville earned an unwanted distinction: With sparse tree cover and no ordinances protecting trees on private property, the Kentucky city had the fastest-growing urban heat island in the US. Since then, Louisville has been exploring a variety of green solutions to extreme heat and air pollution. (Baker, 9/12)

In 2016, the global health authorities removed a type of poliovirus from the oral vaccine. The virus caused a growing number of outbreaks and has now arrived in Gaza. (Mandavilli, 9/7)

It's been 23 years since the 9/11 attacks —

It took 19 years for the symptoms to emerge. Tom Beyrer, who served for six months as a police officer at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, was 65 when his memory and cognitive abilities began to crumble. Gradually, he pulled away from things that brought him joy. He no longer remembered how to open the family’s backyard pool in the spring. He stopped tinkering on his Corvette. He began sitting in his living room alone without the television on. Then one night, distraught, he called his wife, Maria. “I don’t know where I am,” he told her. (Hurley, 9/11)

Attorneys for 9/11 survivors who have died from cancers related to toxins inhaled that day are urging the federal government to be more transparent about a controversial plea deal. (Joseph, 9/12)

Around 150 people who responded in Shanksville have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program. But more than 1,000 responded to the crash site in the aftermath. Now, more people who assisted at the Flight 93 and Pentagon sites are eligible for the program, including employees of any federal agency and members of the uniformed services. (Guay, 9/12)

For the U.S. now, waiting to act until clade I cases are detected here will be too late. The best way to control an outbreak is to prevent it. (Saad B. Omer, 9/13)

I first met Jane (not her real name, of course) on a Friday afternoon in our clinic. She was referred for further evaluation of her chest pain, which, in the context of her family history of early-onset heart attacks and her morbid obesity, understandably concerned her primary care doctor. (Vishal Khetpal, 9/13)

Project 2025 was once touted as the future of conservatism. Now it’s the ultimate cautionary tale. “I cannot think of a study that has done more damage,” said Ken Weinstein, a one-time former President Donald Trump appointee and former head of the conservative Hudson Institute. “It’s the exact opposite of the [Kamala] Harris approach of don’t say anything about what you’re doing.” (Michael Schaffer, 9/13)

“Your child has cancer,” is not a diagnosis any parent wants to hear. And yet, over 15,000 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer annually, many of them in South Florida. (Matthew A. Love, 9/13)

Medical malpractice cases often involve clear, definable injuries to patients, rendering issues of causation and harm straightforward. However, in some malpractice actions, such as those involving failure to diagnose or failure to timely attend to a patient, causation and injury can be less clear because the patient's actual harm arises from the continued, untreated progression of their ailment — not the provider's conduct. (Abbye E. Alexander, Christopher J. Tellner and Henry Norwood, 9/12)