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Seven US government investigators briefly fell ill in early March while studying the possible health impacts of a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to CNN on Thursday. The investigators’ symptoms included sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea – consistent with what some residents experienced after the February 3 train derailment that released a cocktail of hazardous chemicals into the air, water and soil. (Goodman, 3/31)

John Fetterman has returned home after more than a month of inpatient treatment for depression, the Pennsylvania senator said Friday. “I am so happy to be home,” the Democratic senator said in a statement following his release from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near D.C. “I am extremely grateful to the incredible team at Walter Reed. The care they provided changed my life.” (Howie, 3/31)

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who was released from the hospital last week following treatment for clinical depression, detailed the “downward spiral” that led to him seeking help for his depression in February. “It’s like, you just won the biggest race in the country,” Fetterman said to CBS Sunday Morning in his first interview since checking into treatment. “And the whole thing about depression is that objectively, you may have won, but depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost. And that’s exactly what happened. And that was the start of a downward spiral.” (Neukam, 4/2)

Roughly 600 Mainers around the state are waiting a year to get an evaluation at Northern Light Acadia Hospital’s Mood and Memory Clinic. That’s the average wait time that Dr. Clifford Singer, chief of geriatric mental health and neuropsychiatry at Acadia Hospital, estimated. But the range is anywhere from six months to three years, he said Wednesday. His colleague referred a person to the clinic recently who was told the wait would be 22 months, he said. (Royzman, 4/3)

When the bank manager called Irene Loretto and told her that her 92-year-old friend Ruth Hughes, who suffered from dementia and lived in a Farmington assisted living facility, tried to cash $27,000 worth of checks and bought a $3,000 bedroom set, she knew something was amiss. Loretto, who had been granted power of attorney for her friend, immediately called Farmington police because she knew Hughes would not have spent that much money. During a seven-month investigation, Farmington police discovered that Hughes’ home care aide had not only stolen her identity but also that of another client living at a nursing home in Farmington and had cashed at least 20 of her clients’ checks, totaling nearly $40,000, according to police reports. (Altimari and Carlesso, 4/2)

An Alaska House committee advanced legislation last week to address the state’s fentanyl crisis with longer sentences for opioid convictions. The Dunleavy administration previewed the measure in October as a way to combat a staggering rise in fentanyl deaths in Alaska. Supporters said there are not harsh enough penalties for drug dealers, while recovery advocates said the bill is overly broad and that drug users would be swept up in the harsher sentences. (Maguire, 4/2)

KHN: Minnesota Overhauled Substance Use Treatment. Rural Residents Still Face Barriers. 

For nearly a decade, behavioral health providers in Minnesota pushed to increase access and reduce wait times for substance use disorder treatment for low-income residents. To do so, state officials reworked a system in place for more than 30 years — one that required low-income people seeking treatment to sometimes wait more than a month to receive state-funded care. (Saint Louis, 4/3)

A life-saving opioid overdose treatment could soon be as common as Tylenol on retail store shelves. The question is whether making it more accessible will get it to the people who need it the most. Why it matters: Wednesday's FDA approval of Narcan for over-the-counter use has a financial cost. And if insurers or governments don't step up, addiction experts fear it could widen health disparities and undercut the FDA’s goals of addressing a "dire public health need." (Moreno, 4/2)