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Arizona's near total ban on abortions won't be enforced until at least 2023 after the state's attorney general reached an agreement with Planned Parenthood, prompting the group to resume abortion services there Thursday, per Bloomberg Law. (Falconer, 10/28)

House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., will introduce a bill Friday aimed at improving access to abortion services, as well as accurate information on the procedure, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, NBC News has learned. (Atkins, 10/27)

Many medical residency programs that are educating the next generation of obstetricians and gynecologists are facing a treacherous choice. If they continue to provide abortion training in states where the procedure is now outlawed, they could be prosecuted. If they don’t offer it, they risk losing their accreditation, which in turn would render their residents ineligible to receive specialty board certification and imperil recruitment of faculty and medical students. (Hoffman, 10/27)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Voters Will Get Their Say On Multiple Health Issues 

Voters in several states will be asked to vote on ballot questions related to abortion, but it’s not the only health issue that will be decided on Election Day. Other ballot proposals will ask voters whether they want to curb interest on medical debt (Arizona), expand Medicaid (South Dakota), or make health care a right under the state constitution (Oregon). (10/27)

In recent months the brand has signed deals with Walmart, Target and a majority of CVS drugstores, the company said. ... Its three biggest competitors — Durex, Trojan and Lifestyles — are owned by companies that are worth billions; B Condoms is independently owned. the brand is predominantly focused on appealing to Black Americans, with Instagram posts that discuss sexuality and sexual wellness in frank terms. (Josephs, 10/27)

The number of people infected with tuberculosis, including the kind resistant to drugs, rose globally for the first time in years, according to a report Thursday by the World Health Organization. The U.N. health agency said more than 10 million people worldwide were sickened by tuberculosis in 2021, a 4.5% rise from the year before. About 1.6 million people died, it said. WHO said about 450,000 cases involved people infected with drug-resistant TB, 3% more than in 2020. Dr. Mel Spigelman, president of the non-profit TB Alliance, said more than a decade of progress was lost when COVID-19 emerged in 2020. (10/27)

Mel Spigelman, president of the non-profit TB Alliance, hailed the swift and dramatic progress to rein in the COVID-19 pandemic, with a vast array of safe and effective vaccines, tests, and treatments developed in the space of two years.​ "But the juxtaposition with TB is pretty stark," he said in a recent interview.​Tuberculosis, once called consumption, was the world's biggest infectious killer before the arrival of COVID-19, with 1.5 million people dying from the disease each year. (Larson, 10/24)

Today during a Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity call, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and children who have been exposed to monkeypox be tested promptly if they show symptoms. The officials also said pregnant or breastfeeding women should be offered the Jynneos vaccine as post-exposure prophylaxis (prevention) if they have a known close exposure to the virus. (10/27)

KHN: When Monkeypox Reaches Rural Communities, It Collides With Strained Public Health Systems 

When a case of monkeypox was reported in Nevada’s Humboldt County in August, it was the state’s first detected occurrence of the virus in a rural area. Soon, cases were found in other rural counties — Nye, Lyon, and Elko — posing another hurdle for public health systems that have been worn thin by the covid-19 pandemic. Experts say the response to the monkeypox virus in rural America may be affected by the patchy resources and bitter politics that are a legacy of the pandemic, challenges that some worry could allow sporadic infections to gain a foothold. (Rodriguez, 10/28)

Besides one preventive drug that can only be prescribed in some cases, there are no FDA-approved treatments for respiratory syncytial virus — which leaves healthcare workers with limited treatment options. (Twenter, 10/27)

What kinds of respiratory infections can be treated at home — and with what treatments? Which symptoms should prompt a call to the doctor, or for parents and caregivers to bring their children to the hospital? (Hetter, 10/27)

An Ohio family is speaking out to share their son's battle with three different viruses as respiratory infections spike in children across the country, filling up hospital beds. It all started when the Jackson family, from Middletown -- about 35 miles north of Cincinnati -- returned from vacation to Walt Disney World the first week of September. (Pezenik, 10/27)

People of color – especially Black and Hispanic people – were less likely to receive Paxlovid and other Covid-19 treatments, according to a study published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Throughout the pandemic, Black and Hispanic people have been about two times more likely than White people to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19.The new study showed Black Covid-19 patients were 36% less likely than White patients to be treated with Paxlovid, and Hispanic patients were 30% less likely than non-Hispanic patients to receive the antiviral pill. (McPhillips, 10/27)

Duke University researchers will explore the effectiveness of the Pfizer antiviral drug Paxlovid against the complex medical condition known as long COVID. The details of the randomized trial, posted on clinicaltrials.gov, show a plan to test the treatment against a placebo control in 1,700 adult volunteers. (Vaziri, Buchmann and Ravani, 10/27)

The White House's top COVID-19 official says he still expects the protection against the Omicron BA.5 variant offered by the new COVID vaccine boosters will be better than their predecessors, despite two studies that appear to question that assumption. In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Ashish Jha also said he does not think another imminent change to the COVID boosters will be needed. (Tin, 10/27)

Among a sample of 107 households with pets and at least one COVID-19–infected adult in Idaho and Washington state, 21% of dogs and 39% of cats had signs of infection, 40% of dogs and 43% of cats had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, and 5% and 8%, respectively, tested positive on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, finds a new study in Emerging Infectious Diseases. (10/27)

In October, the White House held its first-ever summit on indoor air quality, encouraging businesses, organizations and especially schools to improve their buildings’ ventilation and filtration systems. The summit, which came in response to the pandemic, underscored that buildings are a first line of defense against infectious diseases and a key to public health. (Poon, 10/27)

As it attempts to combat health disinformation, YouTube is allowing certain healthcare professionals to apply for verification. Starting Thursday, licensed healthcare providers such as doctors, nurses and mental health professionals can apply to make their channels eligible for YouTube’s health product features, which labels them as an authoritative source on a medical topic. It also will promote their videos at the top of someone’s search. (Perna, 10/27)

Twitter will soon roll out prompts in users' timelines reminding them final results may not come on Election Day. They're all examples of a strategy known as "prebunking" that's become an important pillar of how tech companies, nonprofits, and government agencies respond to misleading and false claims about elections, public health, and other hot-button issues. (Bond, 10/28)

The Instagram headline was pithy and alarming: “Head of Pfizer Research: Covid Vaccine is Female Sterilization.” And the report, from a murky source, could have had real-world consequences, coming in 2020, just as the U.S. rolled out the first vaccines to combat the coronavirus pandemic. That made the story a perfect tool for an educator trying to teach high school students how to separate fact from fiction — a survival skill in a culture drowning in a tsunami of information. (Rainey, 10/26)

A new study in PLoS One conducted by Ohio State and University of Kent researchers suggests that people who believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories are at a greater risk of believing in other conspiracies. The authors of the study said believing COVID-19 was a "hoax" was a gateway to other conspiracies, including the belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election. (10/27)

The top Republican on the Senate health committee said in a report on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic was most likely caused by a laboratory incident in China. The report offered little new evidence, however, and was disputed by many scientists, including those whose research suggests that the outbreak originated instead at a live animal market. The report, released by Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, grew out of a joint inquiry with the committee’s Democratic chairwoman that proponents of the effort hoped would add a measure of bipartisan credibility to a highly charged debate. (Mueller and Zimmer, 10/27)

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a osteopathic doctor from Northeast Ohio who went viral for saying that vaccines cause magnetism, is under investigation by the Ohio State Medical Board. (Wu, 10/27)

Overall U.S. cancer death rates continue to drop among men, women, children, teens and young adults, according to a report released Thursday. The American Cancer Society’s Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer showed a decline in every major ethnic and racial group from 2015 to 2019. The findings are based on pre-COVID-19 pandemic data. (Williams, 10/27)

Amid sporadic shortages of a drug that is essential in preparing patients for lifesaving, cancer-fighting treatments, one manufacturer has returned to the market — but is selling its medicine for 10 to 20 times the prices offered by the only other companies with available supplies. (Silverman, 10/27)

A potential new treatment for one of the most serious forms of skin cancer has been found in a rather unlikely place: octopus venom. A team of researchers from Spain and Australia studying the venom of the Australian southern sand octopus has identified a compound that may significantly slow cancer growth and help fight drug resistance in patients with BRAF-mutated melanoma, one of the most serious forms of skin cancer. The findings were published in the October issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology. (Dewan, 10/27)

Sure, you’ve heard of CRISPR. But it’s 2022. The acronym you need to know now is ADARs. That stands for “adenosine deaminases acting on RNA.” Catchy it may not be. But this RNA-editing class of proteins, made by all multicellular organisms, is starting to have its moment in the bioengineering sun. (Molteni, 10/27)

Aurobindo Pharma USA is recalling two lots of quinapril and hydrochlorothiazide tablets due to levels of nitrosamine. The tablets are commonly prescribed for the treatment of hypertension to lower blood pressure. (Neysa Alund, 10/27)

KHN: Despite Katie Couric’s Advice, Doctors Say Ultrasound Breast Exams May Not Be Needed

When Katie Couric shared the news of her breast cancer diagnosis, the former co-host of NBC’s “Today” show said she considered this new health challenge to be a teachable moment to encourage people to get needed cancer screenings. “Please get your annual mammogram,” she wrote on her website in September. “But just as importantly, please find out if you need additional screening.” (Andrews, 10/28)

Walgreens, the country’s second-largest pharmacy chain, announced Wednesday that it is eliminating “task-based metrics” from performance evaluations to allow its pharmacy staffers to “place even greater focus on patient care.” They will now be evaluated “solely on the behaviors that best support patient care and enhance the patient experience,” Walgreens said in a news release. (Kaplan, 10/27)

The experimental Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab, hailed after it slowed patients’ cognitive decline in a clinical trial, may have contributed to the death in June of a patient in the study, STAT has learned. (Mast, 10/28)

Leading consulting firm McKinsey & Co has agreed to settle claims by hundreds of U.S. local governments and school districts around the country that it fueled an epidemic of opioid addiction through its work for bankrupt OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug companies. The deal was disclosed in a court filing Wednesday evening in San Francisco federal court. Its terms were not made public, and McKinsey and a lawyer for the settling plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Pierson, 10/27)

A bill named after a 22-year-old Alaskan who died of a fentanyl overdose took a step forward this week, with companion legislation to a U.S. Senate proposal now introduced in the House. Robert “Bruce” Snodgrass of Anchorage died in October 2021. In the year since, his mother helped advocate for legislation to spread awareness about deadly synthetic opioids like fentanyl. (Rogerson, 10/27)

Dana and John Pope had never heard of kratom before their 23-year-old son, Ethan, was found dead on the kitchen floor in his apartment last December with his puppy by his side. Extracted from the leaves of a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom is used to make capsules, powders and liquids and is marketed as an aid for pain, anxiety and drug dependence. In Georgia and some other states, it’s often sold at gas stations and smoke shops. ... The lawsuit was originally filed in May and an expanded version was filed earlier this week. The lawyers who filed the suit said they want to send a message that kratom is unsafe for human consumption. (Brumback, 10/27)

Operating costs in healthcare centers and hospitals across the country are rising amid inflationary pressures, staffing shortages and supply chain disruption, and such locations are going to have to continue implementing measures to help mitigate the highly challenging situation, according to a report from the Medical Group Management Association. (Thomas, 10/27)

Staffing challenges continue to weigh on financial results at for-profit health systems, with leaders fighting to reduce contract labor and navigate wage inflation. (Hudson, 10/27)

Hospitals are pleading with Congress to postpone looming Medicare pay cuts, citing what they say has been an extraordinarily difficult year. But that unified message belies the fact that hospitals' financial situations vary significantly, and experts say some facilities would be just fine without lawmakers' help. (Owens and Dreher, 10/28)

For the second time this year, Michigan Medicine has suffered a data breach. The Ann Arbor-based health system has contacted 33,850 patients in the past week after a cyberattack in August gained access to employee email accounts and potentially exposed health information of patients, Michigan Medicine said in a press release. (Walsh, 10/27)

Two decades ago, the Bush administration threw a wrench in health data privacy, making it possible for many health care organizations to share medical information without patients’ consent so long as it was being used to improve treatment or streamline business operations. (Williamson-Lee, 10/28)

If you’re disabled and White, much more public money is often spent providing you services than if you’re disabled and Latino — and precisely where you live can make that gap yawn ever wider, a new study found. “California’s developmental disability service system is plagued with racial, ethnic and geographic disparities that can dramatically and dangerously impact the essential services received by adults with developmental disabilities,” concludes Disability Voices United, a statewide organization that advocates for people with disabilities and their families, in a report released Wednesday, Oct. 26. (Sforza, 10/27)

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Thursday mocked the speaking abilities of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate who is recovering from a stroke, and President Biden, who grew up with a stutter. (Wagner, 10/27)

For stroke survivors interviewed by NBC News, the test Fetterman faced was not just political, but deeply personal. In him, they saw an avatar of their own struggles following a stroke: to recuperate physically, to communicate fluently and to coax from others an empathetic understanding that while some of their faculties may have been compromised, their intellects often remain unscathed. (Ryan, 10/28)

Famous for pushing Berkeley to install the country’s first curb cut, the center has also broken ground with This year the center celebrates its 50th anniversary as the birthplace of the modern independent living movement, which championed the right of people with disabilities to lead independent lives. (Furio, 10/24)

Before Dani Izzie became one of the few quadriplegic women known to give birth to twins, the odds were stacked against her. She was 23 when she suffered a spinal cord injury and woke up in a hospital bed in D.C., unable to move. She had been a healthy young woman, building her life and career in the nation’s capital. (Free, 10/25)

Oregon voters are being asked to decide whether the state should be the first in the nation to amend its constitution to explicitly declare that affordable health care is a fundamental human right. State Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a main sponsor of the legislation behind the ballot measure, said making health care a human right is a value statement and is not aimed at pushing Oregon to a single-payer health care system, a longtime goal of many progressives. (Selsky, 10/27)

When James Hewitt got a call from his friend to help do repairs on his house in Florida following Hurricane Ian, Hewitt jumped at the opportunity. Almost immediately after getting off the phone, he started packing his bags. “He was very excited,” Leah Delano, Hewitt’s fiancee, told The Washington Post. From their home in Jenison, Mich., Hewitt left for Naples on Oct. 4, she said, about a week after Ian made landfall. He helped his friend with house and boat repairs — and also worked with others to clear debris in the city that had experienced intense flooding during the Category 4 storm, Delano told The Post. But that Saturday, Hewitt, 56, fell off his friend’s boat into a canal, somehow scraping his leg in the process. (Mark, 10/28)

In July, the nation got a new three-digit suicide prevention number – 988. A new analysis found the hotline’s call volume jumped 45% in August compared to August 2021, with the number of callers roughly doubling in two states in the Mountain West. (Roedel, 10/27)

KHN: Knoxville’s Black Community Endured Deeply Rooted Racism. Now There Is Medical Debt

When Dr. H.M. Green opened his new medical office building on East Vine Avenue in 1922, Black residents of this city on the Tennessee River could be seen only in the basement of Knoxville General Hospital. They were barred from the city’s other three medical centers. Green, one of America’s leading Black physicians, spent his life working to end health inequities like this. He installed an X-ray machine, an operating room, and a private infirmary in his building to serve Black patients. On the first floor was a pharmacy. (Levey, 10/28)

KHN: Ambulance Company To Halt Some Rides In Southern California, Citing Low Medicaid Rates 

For 23 years, the private ambulance industry in California had gone without an increase in the base rate the state pays it to transport Medicaid enrollees. At the start of the year, it asked the state legislature to more than triple the rate, from around $110 to $350 per ride. The request went unheeded. In September, American Medical Response, the largest U.S. provider of ambulance services, announced it had “made the difficult decision” to end nonemergency transports in Los Angeles County and blamed the state for having one of the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the country. (Kwon, 10/28)

More than half of the states have now expanded their Medicaid postpartum coverage from the federally mandated 60 days to one year, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to Axios. (Gonzalez, 10/27)

When we asked what “aging well” looks like, more than 500 readers responded. But one idea came up again and again — aging is a lifelong process, so start thinking about aging well when you’re young. The following is a sample of what readers told us. (10/24)

Residents of a New York neighborhood recall asbestos raining from the sky. It fell on windowsills, on a Little League field and atop fresh snow. They are suing OxyChem, saying its poor pollution control at a plastics plant caused illness and death. (McGrory and Bedi, 10/25)

In the mid-1980s scientists conducted a famous experiment in which they asked participants to try to avoid thinking of a white bear. Over the course of five minutes, the experimental subjects were to ring a bell if a white bear came to mind. (Wickelgren, 10/19)

To relieve hot flashes, sleep problems and low libido, some menopausal women are choosing to seek relief with cannabis, usually in the form of a joint or an edible, new research shows. (Kim, 10/21)

When Janet Folger Porter moved back to Ohio in December 2010, she invited some of her closest friends to her new home in suburban Cleveland. Her guests sipped coffee, made small talk and shared a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Meanwhile, Porter set up a white board in front of the fireplace. On it, the hostess wrote two words: “Heartbeat Bill.” (Horn and BeMiller, 10/27)

A growing body of research is pinpointing how structural racism—the ongoing impact of discriminatory practices—affects the health of people of color, especially Black people, from infancy to old age. (McCullom, 10/3)

There’s growing recognition of the health inequities people of color experience because of racism, implicit bias, and systemic marginalization. But efforts to tackle the root causes of such inequities and ease their impact on the nation’s collective health lag behind. There is momentum to move from awareness to action, in private and public hospitals, in academic medicine, and in public health departments. (Newsome, 10/3)

Many respondents described their struggle to have their condition taken seriously by doctors, family and friends. ... Here, seven people from around the world share their experiences of living with long Covid, and the impact it has had on their physical and mental health, ability to work and relationships. (Skopeliti, 10/25)

Medical misogyny doesn’t come as a surprise to the many patients who have been disbelieved in the past. Medicine has long treated women as second-class citizens. ... The long-term impacts of Covid-19 have familiar parallels. (Lu, 10/18)

Their insatiable appetite is a clue that the hypothalamus has gone haywire and is overproducing the hunger-stimulating hormone ghrelin, dooming them to be perpetually hangry. (Berkowitz and Tan, 10/25)

Unlike many other diseases, eradicating polio is scientifically possible. The challenge is mustering the will. (10/27)

As a mom to two children under the age of 5, there’s one thing I wish more than anything I could give them this holiday season: a pediatric vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. (Alyssa Rosenberg, 10/27)

Two new, small studies are stirring up more controversy over the new Covid boosters, updated to match the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 strains. The research suggests the shots are no better than old boosters. (Lisa Jarvis, 10/27)

Since July, BA.5 has been the dominant coronavirus variant in the United States. That could soon change as several other variants are on the rise. (Leana S. Wen, 10/27)

The United States has defaulted to treating life with the coronavirus as the new normal, but this normal, sadly, is anything but new. (Celine Gounder, 10/27)

A patient’s ability to make healthy choices, to live with a chronic health condition, to follow their specific medication or therapy regimen, and to fully recover from an illness or injury depends greatly on knowing what they must do and how to do it once they leave the doctor’s office or hospital. (Teresa Canfield, Jayne Moreau, Cathy Patton and Marcie L. Rehmar, 10/26)

The National Academy of Medicine launched its National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being in early October. The report focused on seven priority areas — culture, inclusion, institutionalization, mental health, policy, research, and technology — and called upon “actors” in 10 different groups (spoiler alert: if you’re reading this, you’re likely an actor) to take immediate action to improve the well-being of the health workforce. (Sarah Smithson, 10/28)