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The return to in-person learning at schools in Massachusetts and across the nation has certainly been a challenging enough endeavor, with administrators juggling a host of problems, from a shortage of COVID-19 testing supplies to hotspots that temporarily shutter classrooms. But school officials have an equally difficult yet crucial task for which failure cannot be an option: providing effective mental health services in every school to give students care they need more than ever after nearly two years of upheaval caused by the pandemic. (9/17)

As millions of kids head back to school full time this fall – in many cases for the first time in 18 months – parents undoubtedly have concerns about their children’s health and well-being. As medical professionals, we have a message to share: It’s time to vaccinate your children who are eligible … and not just against COVID-19. The effects of COVID-19 go far beyond the virus itself. Not only has COVID-19 caused millions of infections and deaths over the past year and a half, there also has been a substantial reduction in routine and preventative care for both children and adults – including falling vaccination rates for other dangerous illnesses. (Drs. Nancy Y. Lee, David G. Pfister and Richard J. Wong, 9/17)

September is Sexual Health Awareness Month, and the timing marks just a year before Texas school districts and charters will be required to implement the new minimum standards for health education, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Adopted by the State Board of Education last fall, the new TEKS include content on healthy relationships and sexual health and would introduce in middle school topics such as contraception and sexually transmitted infection prevention and treatment. The sexual health content will be delivered at pacing that is both developmentally appropriate and informed by data on interventions that achieve healthy outcomes for students. (Molly Clayton, 9/17)

As the Delta variant causes COVID-19 cases to swell, resurrects mask mandates and forces hospitals back to surge capacity, a familiar pattern is emerging. Like its less transmissible predecessors, this dangerous SARS-CoV-2 variant is especially affecting vulnerable populations in minority and rural communities, where vaccinations have lagged because of a perfect storm of reduced access to care, vaccine hesitancy, targeted misinformation campaigns and historically rooted mistrust. (Joseph V. Sakran, Suhas Gondi and Ebony Hilton, 9/15)

In a misguided attempt to control drug costs, some Congressional leaders are urging the Biden administration to misapply a 40-year-old law that supports 6 million jobs, helped launch 15,000 start-up companies, and contributed $1.7 trillion to U.S economic output. The lawmakers — Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) — want the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Department of Defense, to misuse the march-in provision of the Bayh-Dole Act to set the price of federally-funded medicines — something the provision does not authorize. Such an action would undermine the intention of Bayh-Dole, while inflicting devastating damage on the U.S. (Joseph P. Allen, 9/17)

The judgment finalizing the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case is a likely bitter end to litigation stemming from the company’s role in fomenting the opioid epidemic, which has claimed half a million lives since 1999 and tethered millions of Americans to opioid painkillers and illicit narcotics. The owners of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, are paying $4.5 billion dollars in fines and the company is being shuttered, though the family has been granted immunity from any liability. While this is the largest fine ever levied on a pharmaceutical manufacturer, the Sacklers will remain one of the richest families in the world. (Haider J. Warraich, 9/17)

Gen. George Washington was a lucky man during the American Revolution. Granted, he had his battlefield challenges. He had to cope with losing Manhattan to the Redcoats, had to get across the Delaware and take the war to the British, had to assess the damage done to the American cause by the traitor Benedict Arnold. And in 1777, he had to guard against a deadly outbreak of smallpox that, if allowed to spread, would devastate his army and, arguably, result in total defeat for the new American nation. (9/16)