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President Biden is set to welcome Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other top congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday for a pivotal round of discussions about the nation’s taxes, spending and debt as a potentially catastrophic government default rapidly approaches. The talks come just weeks before the United States is expected to run out of cash to pay its bills unless the nation’s borrowing cap is lifted. (5/8)

Top political figures are swirling the possibility that President Biden could use the powers of a clause in the 14th Amendment as a last-ditch effort to ward off the looming threat that the U.S. could default on its debt as soon as next month.  ... The amendment chiefly extended the Bill of Rights liberties to formerly enslaved people, but also includes a section saying “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” (Mueller, 5/7)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen struck an increasingly troubled tone Sunday as President Joe Biden gears up to meet with congressional leadership Tuesday to discuss raising the debt ceiling.The negotiations “should not take place with a gun really to the head of the American people,” Yellen cautioned Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” With the June 1 “X-date” quickly approaching, Yellen called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling, warning of the economic disaster that will follow should the government fail to come to an agreement. Once that date hits, “really that’s it,” Yellen said on “This Week.” “We have been using extraordinary measures for several months now, and our ability to do that is running out.” (Garrity, 5/7)

Lawmakers will need to reach a bipartisan agreement to lift the debt limit. The longer it takes, the more turmoil there could be for the United States and the global economy. (Smialek and Wu, 5/8)

If the federal government breaches the debt ceiling, Medicare wouldn't be able to pay providers — and states wouldn't get their federal Medicaid funding, experts tell Axios. Losing out on those payments, even for a short time, could be disastrous for providers’ bottom lines — and the effects could trickle down to patients. (Goldman and Knight, 5/5)

Once we breach the debt ceiling, the federal government will not be able to pay its bills, or for things like Social Security checks, payroll for service members and other federal employees, and Medicare reimbursements. Interest payments on past debt could go unpaid, which would mean the US government would default on its debts. In 2011, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department planned on prioritizing interest payments, acknowledging that they would miss payments of other things like Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, etc. (Zhou and Matthews, 5/6)

Gov. Roy Cooper said Sunday that the proposed 12-week abortion ban in his state would largely put an end to abortion in North Carolina. The legislation, approved last week and sent to Cooper, would restrict abortion to within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (down from 20) but also apply other restrictions as well. “They’ve dressed this up as a 12-week ban, but it’s really not,” Cooper, a Democrat, told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” (Cohen, 5/7)

A coalition of abortion rights advocates in Florida is set to push a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion protections into the state’s constitution, with the launch of a public campaign to get the issue on the Florida 2024 ballot expected next week. The coalition has already filed necessary paperwork with the state to begin collecting signatures and fundraising for the effort, said Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, who first pitched the ballot measure last August. (Barclay, 5/5)

In the days since state Sen. Merv Riepe cast the lone vote that blocked a near-total abortion ban in his conservative state, he’s faced protests at his office, the cold shoulder from irate colleagues and calls for his resignation. A stranger left an angry note inside his home mailbox. Yet the 80-year-old Republican has also raked in accolades, becoming an unlikely hero for those fighting to protect abortion access in Nebraska and around the country in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion advocates wept in the Capitol after Riepe’s April 27 vote. A downtown Omaha novelty store is now selling blue T-shirts and tank tops that say “Hot Merv Summer” in bold white type. (Itkowitz and Rodriguez, 5/7)

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, advocates on either side presumed that the country would divide along the bright color lines: red states completely banning abortion, blue states protecting it. That prediction failed to anticipate the Sister Senators. The Sisters, as they call themselves, are the women in the South Carolina State Senate — the only women, three Republicans, one Independent and one Democrat, in a legislature that ranks 47th among states in the proportion of women. As a block, they are refusing to allow the legislature to pass a near-total ban on abortion, despite a Republican supermajority. (Zernike, 5/7)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: In Idaho, Taking A Minor Out Of State For An Abortion Is Now A Crime: ‘Abortion Trafficking’ 

Mackenzie Davidson grew up in a Mormon household and sheepishly admits she knew little about pregnancy. “This is embarrassing,” she said, sitting outside a café along a street thronged with students in this college town. “But I didn’t know that you had to have sex to have kids until I was 13 or 14.”She’s a writer for the University of Idaho student newspaper, The Argonaut, and was asked recently to report on a new law. (Varney, 5/8)

The burden falls most heavily on economically vulnerable, non-Latinx Black people, who nationwide have a maternal mortality rate three times that of white people. In 2019, Black patients accounted for over 38% of U.S. abortions, even though Black people represent only about 12% of the U.S. population. In a Guttmacher Institute survey of more than 6,600 individuals who obtained an abortion at a health care facility in the U.S. from June 2021 to June 2022, three-quarters of respondents had incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line. (Sonnenberg, 5/5)

Food and Drug Administration scientists on Friday expressed skepticism about whether the birth control pill can be switched from prescription to over-the-counter. The assessment by FDA staff, included in briefing documents published Friday, comes ahead of a two-day meeting scheduled for next week, when the agency’s advisers will vote on whether to recommend that the agency allow a birth control pill called Opill to be sold over-the-counter. (Lovelace Jr., 5/5)

Opill may not be effective as a nonprescription pill given Americans’ increasing body weight, regulators said in briefing documents. Staff also cited major limitations in crucial data submitted by the company in support of an over-the-counter switch. (Rutherford, 5/5)

A million U.S. women a year suffer miscarriages, which occur in at least 15% of known pregnancies. Mifepristone was approved in 2000 for early abortions but it is often used “off label” to treat early pregnancy loss or to speed up delivery when a fetus dies later in pregnancy. These uses are so common that U.S. senators urged manufacturer Danco to apply to the FDA to add miscarriage to the label of its drug, Mifeprex. Denise Harle, an attorney for the group that filed the Texas lawsuit on behalf of anti-abortion doctors and health care organizations, said they aren’t challenging uses of the drug beyond abortion. But legal experts say if it’s taken off the market for its approved use, it wouldn’t be available for pregnancy loss. (Ungar, 5/6)

The Bronx auditorium was bustling with pregnant people, and Detective Fred Washington of the police department’s community affairs bureau had a promise. “If anyone goes into labor, NYPD is here to help!” he shouted to the hundreds of people who had come from around the Bronx to the community baby shower to receive donated diapers, pacifiers, and children’s clothing. Along with the items, the showers have provided hundreds of expectant families with education on safe sleep, domestic violence, the importance of car seats, prenatal care, and more. (Jaques, 5/8)

Emergency responses—being, well, emergency responses—aren’t designed to last forever, and this morning, the World Health Organization declared the one that’s been in place for the COVID-19 pandemic since January 2020 officially done. “This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it’s still changing,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said at a press conference; although the coronavirus will continue to pose a threat, the time had simply come, he and his colleagues said, for countries to move away from treating it as a global crisis. (Wu, 8/5)

If you have been looking for a sense of pandemic closure, the World Health Organization’s declaration Friday that it was ending the Covid global health emergency was about as close to it as you are likely to get. The reality is that although battlefield metaphors are often employed to describe humankind’s struggle with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, there will be no 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month-like moment signaling that an armistice has been achieved. (Branswell, 5/8)

“Being in hospitals during the early days of COVID-19 was terrifying, like I was going to war. But as far as I’m concerned, those days are done,” Danielle King, a nurse working in Luling, Louisiana, told VOA.“I think it’s pretty obvious that the pandemic was over a year ago,” she added. “The government’s lagging behind that reality, so maybe they’ll finally catch up.” The U.S. government will take a big step in that direction Thursday as Washington officially declares an end to the coronavirus pandemic by allowing the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) to expire. (Haines, 5/7)

Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford, said the time is right for the transition. “At a certain point, you can’t live in an emergency mode any longer,” she said. “You need to start incorporating best practices into daily life — into international, national, and local policies, into public health, into virtually every aspect of our life that we found this virus affected. And, no, the virus is clearly not gone.” (Vaziri, 5/5)

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 sickened a third of the world’s population and killed 1 in every 36 people — 50 million in all. But in the outbreak’s aftermath, history shows those who survived generally didn’t want to talk about it. One hundred years later, after another deadly virus ravaged the globe, the country is again settling back to a version of life as it existed before. The national public health emergency that started in January 2020 as the coronavirus struck will come to an end Thursday. (Roberts, 5/5)

It’s time to say RIP to Exposure Notifications, that thing on your phone that, if you enabled it, would sometimes buzz and tell you that you had been near someone who later tested positive for COVID-19. The service is ending in Colorado on Thursday, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. Users will receive a notice on their phones saying that the service is no longer operational and a prompt to delete their app data. (Ingold, 5/8)

If your medicine cabinet is low on COVID tests, you only have a few days left to stock up for free from the federal government. And starting Friday, the feds also will no longer protect patients from being billed for their COVID testing. But there’s good news for Californians: The state legislature has given Golden State residents an extra six months of guaranteed coverage of COVID tests and reimbursements from their insurance. (Blair Rowan, 5/6)

A survey of 898 parents found that more were very likely to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 after reading messages indicating that other trusted parents have done so or that the vaccine is safe, but not when the messages said the vaccine is well-tolerated. The results were published today in Pediatrics. (Van Beusekom, 5/5)

Rochelle Walensky gave no specific reason for the decision to resign, writing that “at this pivotal moment for our nation and public health, having worked together to accomplish so much over the last two-plus years, it is with mixed emotions that I will step down.” Walensky touted the administration’s Covid response, the CDC’s decision to declare racism a serious public health threat and its efforts to contain mpox among the accomplishments on her watch. (Mahr and Cancryn, 5/5)

“I took on this role, at your request, with the goal of leaving behind the dark days of the pandemic and moving CDC — and public health — forward into a much better and more trusted place,” Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. (Choi, 5/5)

Dr. Nirav Shah, who was Maine CDC Director throughout the pandemic, is second in command at the U.S. CDC. Shah left Maine for that position earlier this year. (Bourgault, 5/5)

The ending of the public health emergency for Covid-19 will force the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cut back on the data it collects to analyze how much illness the SARS-CoV-2 virus is causing in the future, the CDC announced Friday. But some of the data metrics the CDC will no longer be able to collect are of lesser value now than they were at earlier points in the pandemic, agency officials explained in a press briefing Thursday in advance of Friday’s release of two articles in the CDC’s online journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that detailed the changes. (Branswell, 5/5)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [on Friday] spelled out its plan for collecting and reporting COVID-19 data once the national public health emergency (PHE) expires on May 11, which will focus less on case rates and lean more heavily on hospital and death data. At a media briefing yesterday, Nirav Shah, MD, JD, the CDC's principal deputy director, said, "We have the right data for this phase of COVID-19." (Schnirring, 5/5)

Gov. Greg Abbott rejected the need for gun control and instead emphasized the importance of mental health funding in an interview on Sunday about the mass shooting at an Allen shopping mall. Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream presented the governor with a recent poll that found overwhelming support for expanding gun buyer background checks, raising the age to buy a firearm and flagging people who are a danger to themselves. (Morris, 5/7)

U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican who represents Allen, also emphasized mental health as a solution to gun violence. In an interview with CNN, Self said “many of these situations are based on” the closures of mental health institutions. (Dey and Fechter, 5/7)

After months of pleading for more gun control measures, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children died in a mass shooting, was told by the Republican leader of the State Senate to stop bringing up gun legislation or be barred from speaking at all. In the State House, Republican members talked and joked among themselves as another Democrat, Representative Jarvis Johnson of Houston, rose to discuss gun control. “This is not a joke — this is real,” he shouted from the lectern at his colleagues on Friday. “Children every day are dying.” (Goodman, Goldman, Sandoval and Montgomery, 5/7)

It has become a mournful pattern. Following mass shootings, lawmakers in many states have taken stock of what happened and voted to approve gun control legislation to try to prevent additional bloodshed. In Colorado, the Legislature passed universal background checks in 2013 after a shooter at an Aurora movie theater killed 12 people. After 58 people were shot dead during a 2017 concert in Las Vegas, the Nevada Legislature passed a red flag law that allows a judge to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat. And in Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 after a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a Parkland high school, killing 17 people. But not in Texas. (Priest and Trevizo, 2/16)

President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Congress to pass new gun control legislation and said he would “sign it immediately,” in the wake of a shooting in Allen, Texas, that left at least eight dead and seven injured. “Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables. Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said in a statement. “Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers.” (Garrity, 5/7)

Republican mayors rejected progressive criminal justice reforms embraced by their Democratic counterparts, but factors such as inequality and guns are still driving crime in larger conservative cities, experts told Newsweek. ... However, a city's partisan lean generally does not necessarily correlate with its crime rate, according to data compiled by Newsweek. While cities like Chicago and Philadelphia indeed have higher crime rates than other cities, places like New York City or Los Angeles, frequently cast as crime-ridden by Republicans, have crime rates on par or lower than many cities led by Republicans. (Stanton, 5/8)

Generous anti-poverty programs may help narrow gaps in mental health and brain development between children living in low- versus high-income households, a new study finds. The analysis, published in Nature Communications, used data on 10,000 children ages 9 to 11 across 17 states and measured associations between cash assistance programs, Medicaid expansion, and hippocampal volume of children living in high- and low-income families. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that plays a crucial role in memory, learning and emotion. Lower volume, or smaller size of the hippocampus, is linked to cognitive problems. (Hassanein, 5/8)

Which states in the U.S. are safest? U.S. News and World Report recently revealed the 10 states that are safest in regards to occurrences of both violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents using data from the FBI.As explained by the FBI, violent crimes include murder, robbery, aggravated assault and sexual assault. Property crime includes events like burglary and motor vehicle theft. U.S. News explains the data shows that while violent crime rose 4.6% between 2019 and 2020, property crime dropped 8.1%. (Falcon, 5/7)

Healthcare industry officials and state leaders are voicing growing concern over violence in medical facilities, highlighted by last week’s deadly shooting here. On May 3, a man opened fire with a handgun in the waiting room on the 11th floor of Northside Medical Midtown, a medical office building, according to Atlanta police. The day before, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had signed a new law, which partially took effect May 2, allowing hospital systems to establish their own campus police forces. Other states have also passed bills aimed at preventing attacks and increasing penalties for assaults, and more are in the works. (Kamp and McWhirter, 5/7)

After sustaining big losses last year, Kaiser Permanente swung back into the black in the first quarter with an added boost from financial markets. Oakland, California-based Kaiser on Friday reported net income of $1.21 billion in the first quarter, compared with a net loss of $961 million in the year-ago period. Revenue grew 4.2% to $25.22 billion. Expenses, including elevated labor costs and higher prices for goods and services, rose 3% overall to $24.99 billion. (Hudson, 8/5)

A long-running flurry of hospital and medical group acquisitions in Pennsylvania — especially among the giants UPMC and Highmark Health — forced Geisinger to make a bigger move of its own and to sell to Kaiser Permanente. That’s according to Gail Wilensky, who has been on the board of Geisinger since 2010. (Herman, 5/8)

Congressional, state and university leaders gathered Friday to celebrate a recertification of OU Health's Stephenson Cancer Center as a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center. Stephenson's recertification "absolutely is cause for celebration," University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz Jr. told hundreds of guests who attended. (Money, 5/6)

It was October 2021 and the staff at Johnson Memorial Health were hoping they could finally catch their breaths. They were just coming out of a weeks-long surge of COVID hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the Delta variant. But on Friday, October 1, at 3 a.m., the hospital CEO's phone rang with an urgent call. (Yousry, 5/8)

This week, the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton made news when he left Google and aired his concerns about how powerful artificial intelligence has become. In the last few months alone, ChatGPT has fueled frenzied efforts to use AI in nearly every industry — including health care. “In the last 10 years we’ve seen very steady acceleration of the technology,” said Suchi Saria, CEO and founder of Bayesian Health, at the STAT Breakthrough Summit in San Francisco on Thursday. “And what I find very exciting right now, especially with health care and biotech in mind, is the maturity of the ecosystem to absorb this technology.” (Trang, 5/5)

A Department of Veterans Affairs doctor in Georgia has been indicted over allegations that he sexually assaulted at least four female patients, prosecutors announced this week. Rajesh Motibhai Patel, a primary care physician at the Atlanta VA Medical Center in Decatur, was charged with multiple counts of violating his patients' constitutional right to bodily integrity while acting under color of law and for engaging in unwanted sexual contact, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia said in a news release Thursday. (Kheel, 5/5)

Texas Children’s Hospital announced Friday that it will search for a new president to succeed Mark Wallace, who will remain CEO of the health care system. Wallace, 70, was named president and CEO of Texas Children’s in 1989 when he was 36 years old. During his tenure, the health care system has grown from a single building in the Texas Medical Center to the largest pediatric and women's health care system in the world. (MacDonald, 5/5)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: On The Night Shift With A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner

Jacqueline Towarnicki got a text as she finished her day shift at a local clinic. She had a new case, a patient covered in bruises who couldn’t remember how the injuries got there. Towarnicki’s breath caught, a familiar feeling after four years of working night shifts as a sexual assault nurse examiner in this northwestern Montana city. “You almost want to curse,” Towarnicki, 38, said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, no, it’s happening.’” (Houghton, 5/8)

Authorities continued their investigation Sunday into the cause of an explosion at a pharmaceutical plant in Newburyport last week which killed one worker, sent four other employees to the hospital, and triggered a massive response by state and federal agencies. The early morning blast Thursday at the PCI Synthesis facility was powerful enough to shake nearby homes, and blow a large industrial vat through the building’s roof and land about 30 feet away in a parking lot, officials have said. (Hilliard, 5/7)

Cigna is prepared to weather a government crackdown on pharmacy benefit managers despite its Express Scripts subsidiary's reliance on spread pricing and drugmaker rebates, CEO David Cordani said Friday. Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are scheduled to consider a legislative package next week that would ban spread pricing and force PBMs to pass through all rebates to employer clients. The Senate Finance Committee and two House panels also are eying legislation to rein in PBMs. (Tepper, 8/5)

The GOP-controlled Florida Senate on Thursday confirmed Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo for another term as the state’s top doctor, though all Democrats in the Senate voted against Ladapo. State Sen. Tina Polsky, of South Florida, pleaded to her colleagues to oppose the confirmation because of serious concerns about Ladapo’s “scientific integrity.” But the confirmation went through with a party-line vote of 27-12.“This isn’t about how you feel about COVID,” she told colleagues on Thursday before the confirmation vote. “This isn’t about how you feel about masks. This isn’t about how you feel about me. This isn’t about how you feel about the vaccines, the COVID vaccine or any other vaccines. This is about how you feel about scientific integrity and what the role is of a top doctor of our state.” (Perry, 5/4)

Fear is one word often cited by patients, doctors, public health experts, vaccine advocates and abortion providers when asked about the prospects of the second term of Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was hand-picked by DeSantis 19 months ago during a coronavirus pandemic wave and reconfirmed Thursday by the state Senate in a 27-12 vote along party lines. Yet Ladapo’s mantra is “freedom from fear in the free state of Florida.” His memoir, “Transcend Fear,” is endorsed by anti-vaccination activists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Simone Gold. In it he writes about an abusive childhood and how he and his wife’s profound experiences with healers just before the pandemic — she was also abused as a child — shaped his anti-mainstream views on COVID and health issues. (Robertson, 5/5)

Florida lawmakers in both chambers on Thursday unanimously approved a proposal to ensure the availability of menstrual hygiene products for students in public schools. The bill (CS/HB 389) calls for tampons and sanitary napkins to be available for students at no charge. The products can be available in the school nurse's office, other health offices and restrooms, including wheelchair accessible restrooms. (Mayer, 5/5)

The Minnesota Senate on Monday is set to debate a proposal to create a statewide paid family and medical leave program and another proposal to spend $1.9 billion for capital projects could take key steps forward there – or pave the way for a more partisan path this year. With just two weeks left to wrap up their business, lawmakers will work around the clock this week to finish massive budget bills. (Ferguson, 5/8)

Texas House Democrats on Friday for a second time successfully delayed debate on a bill that would prohibit transgender minors from accessing transition care. The Democrats used a procedural tactic to force Republicans to send the bill back to committee and tweak the text of a bill analysis. On Tuesday, Democrats did the same thing, pushing back debate by two days. (Goldenstein, 5/5)

Officials have shared little about what happened leading up to Jason Rothe’s death at New Hampshire’s Secure Psychiatric Unit on April 29, except that he died after a “physical altercation” with six correctional officers, who remain on leave pending further investigation. Rothe is one of at least three people who have died at a Department of Corrections psychiatric facility in the last decade. And for some advocates, the latest incident has underscored their longstanding concerns about how the state is caring for these high-risk patients. (Cuno-Booth, 5/7)

The sounds of TV, squeaky toys and other loud noises filled the Bartz residence on a weekday morning. “A lot of moving parts — always a lot going on around here,” said Cindy Bartz. She’s the mother of Jas Bartz, a 21-year-old with intellectual disabilities. Sitting on a beanbag in his bedroom, surrounded by stuffed animals, Jas has fragile X syndrome – what Cindy describes as a mix of autism and cognitive impairment. (Merzbach, 5/5)

California’s Reparations Task Force voted on Saturday to recommend that the state issue a formal apology for slavery and potentially provide billions of dollars in cash payments, moving forward a historic effort to enact remedies and compensation for descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the U.S. The vote at a public meeting in Oakland marks the beginning of the end of the nine-member panel’s two-year process to craft a report recommending reparations for slavery, which is due to the state Legislature by July 1. (Luna, 5/6)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Medi-Cal Enrollees In California: Here’s How To Verify Your Eligibility

If you are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as more than one-third of Californians are, make sure your county knows how to reach you, or you could lose your health coverage unnecessarily. You will likely hear and see public messages over the coming weeks urging you to update your contact information. Heed them. Then, sometime between now and next spring, you’ll probably receive mail from the agency that administers Medi-Cal in your county telling you if you are still eligible for the safety-net health insurance program or asking for more information about your employment status, income, and household size. An information request would likely come in a bright-yellow envelope containing a roughly 20-page form about six weeks before the start of your renewal month. (Wolfson, 5/8)

Kansas health officials have identified elevated levels of liver cancer among people living in several historically Black neighborhoods in Wichita where groundwater was polluted by a rail yard chemical spill. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment released a study Friday that found a liver and biliary tract cancer diagnosis rate of 15.7 per 100,000 people in the contamination zone, which was more than double the statewide rate of 6.4 per 100,000, The Wichita Eagle reports. (5/6)

Most Illinois public school districts that tested sinks and fountains for tiny traces of brain-damaging lead as required by a 2017 state law had to tell parents they found the toxic metal quietly lurking in the children’s drinking water. According to a Tribune analysis of state data, more than 1,800 of the roughly 2,100 public schools that submitted test results identified some amount of lead in their drinking water. That includes more than 1,350 schools where at least one water sample had lead levels exceeding 5 parts per billion, the threshold where parental notification is required. (Hoerner, 5/7)

Obesity is a common, chronic disease among many U.S. adults and children, but some states have higher rates than others. US News & World Report factored CDC adult obesity rates into the outlet’s annual state rankings and found that West Virginia is the most obese, with a 40.4% rate. “Obesity is a complex disease involving an excessive amount of body fat,” according to the Mayo Clinic. “Obesity isn’t just a cosmetic concern. It’s a medical problem that increases the risk of other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and certain cancers.” (Lynch, 5/7)

Newly published research suggests that the sons of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are up to twice as likely to develop obesity as their peers. The study in Cell Reports Medicine used data from cohort research following 467,275 male infants born in Sweden between July 2006 and December 2015. Of those, 9,828 were born to a mother with PCOS — and 147 of those boys were eventually diagnosed with obesity. (Blakemore, 5/7)

Colorful labels and cartoons on packaging might be a good indicator that a snack isn’t the most nutritious, according to a new study. Products with marketing that appealed to children were higher in sugars and lower in all other nutrients, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. The study looked at nearly 6,000 packaged foods to analyze their number of marketing strategies aimed at children and their nutritional information. (Holcombe, 5/4)

Endometriosis and fibroids in both Black and white women are associated with a greater risk for ovarian cancer, a new study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found. It is the first study to include enough Black women to confirm the association between fibroids — noncancerous tumors that develop in the uterus — and a modestly increased risk of ovarian cancer in this group, the study's authors said. (Dreher, 5/5)

Talking on a mobile phone even for a very short time each week can raise the risk of high blood pressure — a major cause of heart attacks and strokes. That's according to new research out of Southern Medical University, as SNWS, a British news agency, has reported. Those who spent just 30 minutes a week talking — even hands-free — on their cellphones were 12% more prone to hypertension. (Mackey, 5/6)

Passengers with disabilities have described harrowing problems during air travel, including bungled security screenings, risky transfers onto planes, and lost and damaged wheelchairs. ... The Mobility Aids on Board Improve Lives and Empower All Act, introduced Friday, would require the Transportation Department to publicly report on the type of damage that occurs to wheelchairs and other mobility aids. It would require airline carriers to provide information to passengers to ensure a mobility aid can safely fit on a plane. (Morris, 5/5)

More than six million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease — and one in three seniors dies with the disease, according to statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association. With so many different factors — genetics, lifestyle and environment — influencing a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s, many doctors are moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches and calling for more individualized treatments. (Rudy, 5/8)

When Herlda Senhouse looks back — way back — in time, she vividly remembers the smells — the sour tang of the beer she siphoned into bottles on her first job while still in grammar school in the early 1920s and the pervasive rotten egg odor from the paper mill near her childhood home in West Virginia. (Lazar, 5/6)

Twenty-two million deaths later, it’s over. On Friday, the World Health Organization declared the end of the Covid-19 global health emergency. (David Wallace Wells, 5/5)

Since Massachusetts implemented health care reform in 2006, followed by the national Affordable Care Act in 2010, access to insurance has become nearly universal. But where people are getting their coverage has changed, and fewer people are insured by small employers. That trend reflects a growing competitive concern for businesses that are the economic backbone of the state — one that also threatens to increase costs for taxpayers. (5/7)

According to the U.S. surgeon general, 84% of workers said their workplace conditions had contributed to at least one mental-health challenge. (Susan O'Mahoney Holtzman, 5/7)

A few months ago, several members of my family and I took my 88-year-old mother-in-law to Switzerland to help her end her life. At Dignitas, a clinic in Zurich that offers physician-assisted suicide, she drank a dose of pentobarbital, fell asleep almost immediately and minutes later quietly stopped breathing. (Nan Wiener, 5/7)

Long recognized as the nation’s leading public health institution and widely respected around the world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently seen its reputation shaken and its performance compromised. As a result, public trust in the institution has eroded‌. (Tom Inglesby and J. Stephen Morrison, 5/7)

The effectiveness of HIV antiretroviral treatment is unequivocal. As a result of its increased use in the US, HIV-related deaths here have been halved since 2010. (5/7)