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The waitlist for what’s called the development disabilities Medicaid waiver — now about seven years long and still with 2,800 names — could quickly double with the latest policy changes. The people on the waiver, funded with state and federal money, have access to round-the-clock care in their homes, in host homes with a couple of other people, or in group homes with up to eight people. The cost of the residential waiver programs for adults and children pushed over $1 billion this fiscal year, with enrollment climbing to 9,451 people, up 843 people over the previous year, and compared with about 6,700 people in 2020. (Brown, 3/27)

A white Connecticut police officer who fatally shot a Black man in a mental health crisis was fired Friday as public outrage grew over videos showing he began shooting 30 seconds after arriving at the scene, where other officers had spent several minutes de-escalating the situation. The officer’s firing came a day after the Rev. Al Sharpton and noted civil rights lawyer Ben Crump spoke at the funeral of the man who was killed, Steven Jones. (Collins, 3/27)

Cahokia Heights Mayor Curtis McCall Sr. on Friday morning shared a theory about recent community-organized testing that found E. coli in residents’ kitchen tap water. During a City Hall news conference about the community’s drinking water concerns, McCall suggested residents with troubling results could have a problem with the water lines on their properties because of the age of their homes. He said he planned to reach out to county, state and federal officials about possibly gathering funding to help residents with the cost of replacing their pipes. (Cortes, 3/27)

Last week, residents of Birmingham, Alabama, were informed that their drinking water would no longer contain fluoride. Then came a twist: It turned out that their water utility had, without telling the public, actually stopped adding it years ago. John Matson, a spokesperson for Central Alabama Water, which serves Birmingham and its surrounding suburbs, confirmed to NBC News that two of the utility’s four water filtration plants had temporarily stopped fluoridating in 2023, and a third had stopped in March 2024. The changes were made under prior leadership, he said, when the utility had a different name. (Bendix, 3/27)

Fifteen years after she lost her first baby to a rare and devastating birth defect, Andrea Lopez takes comfort in knowing that other Latina mothers might finally avoid the same pain. In January, California became the first state to require food makers to add folic acid, a crucial vitamin, to corn masa flour used to make tortillas and other traditional foods widely used in her community. It’s a long-delayed move aimed at reducing Hispanic infants’ disproportionately high rates of serious conditions called neural tube defects, which claimed Lopez’s son, Gabriel Cude, when he was 10 days old. (Aleccia and Taxin, 3/29)

Andy Henard is used to doing things for himself. That’s the way to run a successful ranch and farming operation in North Texas. “I’ve always been a big strong guy. If I need to load 50 sacks of wheat seed weighing 100 pounds, I just do it,” says Henard, 76, a former Texas A&M defensive end. But for the better part of a year, it was all he could do to drag himself from the couch to his bedroom. (Hellerman, 3/29)