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A U.S. Navy committee tasked with addressing a leak of jet fuel from a World War II-era storage facility that contaminated the water supply on a base in Hawaii won’t consider closing the site, a Navy official said. A Navy official familiar with the task-force plans said that Red Hill was a strategic asset too important to Pacific naval operations to close. ... “We are not looking to shut anything down,” the official said. “We are looking at what happened in the incident, and then will make informed decisions going forward about how to make sure we are providing a continued source of potable drinking water and keeping people safe.” (Youssef, 12/16)

Jabriel Muhammad pays up to $40 when he sees a doctor at the community health center in Jefferson County in rural southwestern Mississippi, and he goes to the center only when he is really ill. But there’s another price to pay for not having health insurance. In October, he was hit with a $1,394 hospital bill for an MRI scan to diagnose why he wasn’t breathing properly. “We’re poor folks trying to make it as best we can,” said Muhammad, a 40-year-old self-employed carpenter and plumber. “If I make $10,000 with the work that I do in a year, that’s a nice feeling to me.” In Mississippi, the poorest and blackest state in the U.S., single adults without children like Muhammad are not eligible for public health insurance, regardless of how little they earn each year. If he lived 30 miles west in Louisiana, across the Mississippi River, he could afford to see a doctor more often. (Simpson, 12/16)

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration plans again to pursue splitting the state health department into two after a similar proposal was withdrawn earlier this year for additional work. Dunleavy’s new budget proposal calls for breaking the current Department of Health and Social Services into a Department of Health and a Department of Family and Community Services. (Bohrer, 12/16)

In 2021, Massachusetts surpassed $2 billion in recreational sales for the industry's three years of operation. Connecticut legalized recreational use in June, becoming the 18th state in the country to do so, and laying the initial groundwork for its own future marketplace in late 2022. Maine's recreational sales topped $10 million in August of this year, a new record for the Pine Tree State since sales began in 2020. (Barndollar, 12/16)

The University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability is going to develop a new resource center to address behavioral health needs of children up to age 21. “We have a wonderful opportunity to create a system of supports to respond to youth and families in crisis and to help them find hope so they can move on and live their best lives,” said JoAnne Malloy, research associate professor and co-director of the Children’s Behavioral Health Resource Center. (12/17)

As the new system to handle paying for in-school mental health treatment for Montana students with serious emotional problems is “on the brink of being put into place,” school districts around the state say it’s not workable. The Comprehensive School and Community Treatment program connects licensed or supervised in-training practitioners from a mental health center and behavioral health aides with children who can get services at school, in their homes or in the community. (Michels, 12/16)

Frontline mental health workers in every state say they can’t keep up with the demand from patients struggling with the disruptions of pandemic life. (Parker-Pope, Caron and Cordero Sancho, 12/16)