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�������ýҕ�l Health News: US Surgeon General Declares Gun Violence ‘A Public Health Crisis’

Murthy, a physician, told �������ýҕ�l Health News he hoped to convey the broader toll of gun violence on the nation and the need for an urgent public health response. He cited soaring gun deaths among children and teens and noted that “the mental health toll of firearm violence is far more profound and pervasive than many of us recognize.” “Every day that passes we lose more kids to gun violence,” Murthy said, “the more children who are witnessing episodes of gun violence, the more children who are shot and survive that are dealing with a lifetime of physical and mental health impacts.” (Pradhan and Clasen-Kelly, 6/25)

Gun violence in the United States is an urgent public health crisis that demands the “collective commitment of the nation” to stop it, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says in a new advisory released Tuesday. It’s the first time a publication from the Office of the Surgeon General has focused on firearm violence and its “profound consequences” on survivors, communities, and mental health. (Christensen, 6/25)

Youth mental health has begun to improve after major pandemic dips, new data shows. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare students' struggles as well as a fractured system to help them navigate recovery. Some of the recovery, though, trails pre-pandemic mental health metrics. (Rubin, 6/25)

For many teenagers, digital tools such as programs that use artificial intelligence, or AI,   have become a go-to option for emotional support. As they learn to navigate and cope in a world where mental health care demands are high, AI is an easy and inexpensive choice. Venkatesh, who will be a senior at American High School in Fremont in the fall, said she always ends up convincing herself she doesn’t need therapy. “I would rather take a different approach than pay that price. The cost of therapy isn’t changing any time soon.” (Kaur, 6/24)

Middle-age and older adults with long-term loneliness are at higher risk of stroke than those who do not report being lonely, according to a new study published in the journal eClinicalMedicine on Monday. Researchers found the risk of stroke among lonely adults was higher regardless of co-existing depressive symptoms or feelings of social isolation. (Kumar, 6/25)

A new ketamine pill may help hard-to-treat depression with fewer side effects than other forms of the treatment, early research suggests. Technically, no form of ketamine has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat any psychiatric disorder, including depression. A derivative of ketamine, called esketamine, was approved in 2019 to treat depression. (Goodman, 6/24)

The gut microbiome -- the ecosystem of tiny organisms inside us all -- has emerged as fertile new territory for studying a range of psychiatric conditions and neurological diseases. Research has demonstrated the brain and gut are in constant communication and that changes in the microbiome are linked to mood and mental health. Now a study published this month in Nature Mental Health finds distinct biological signatures in the microbiomes of people who are highly resilient in the face of stressful events. (Stone, 6/24)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Therapists Learn How To Help Farmers Cope With Stress Before It’s Too Late

The farmers’ co-op here is a center of hope every spring. It’s where farmers buy seed and fertilizer for the summer’s crops, and where they seek tips to maximize their harvest of corn and soybeans. But on a recent morning, a dozen mental health professionals gathered at the Key Cooperative Agronomy Center to discuss why so many farmers quietly struggle with untreated anxiety and depression. (Leys, 6/25)

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear a challenge to Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban for minors sets the stage for a potentially blockbuster case implicating transgender protections. It marks the first time the justices will weigh in on the issue, which could impact laws passed by 24 Republican-led states since 2021 that ban medications like puberty blockers and hormones for transgender children and teens. Legal challenges mounted by transgender youths, their families and medical providers have been met with mixed results. (Migdon and Schonfeld, 6/24)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether retired workers retain the ability to sue their former employers for disability discrimination after they leave their jobs, a question that has divided federal appeals courts. The justices granted a petition by Karyn Stanley, a retired firefighter for the Orlando suburb of Sanford, Florida, who is appealing a lower court ruling that said she could not sue the city for allegedly curbing benefits for disabled retirees because it no longer employed her. (Wiessner, 6/24)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a request from Home Depot and other employers to hear a challenge to policyholders’ $2.67 billion antitrust settlement with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Justices declined a petition from the home improvement retailer, design consultancy Topographic and benefits provider Employee Services alleging that the settlement does not treat self-insured customers fairly and does not go far enough to promote competition between Blue Cross companies. (Tepper, 6/24)

Hundreds of American service members and civilians, and their families, sued the defendant companies, part of five corporate families: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, GE Healthcare USA, Johnson & Johnson and F. Hoffmann-La Roche. The plaintiffs accused major U.S. and European pharmaceutical and device makers of providing corrupt payments to the Hezbollah-sponsored militia group Jaysh al-Mahdi in order to obtain medical supply contracts from Iraq's health ministry. (Scarcella, 6/24)

Since April 6, 2018, Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Ryan Carter has been unable to dress himself, eat alone or walk from one room to another. On that day, Carter was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, for back surgery to address chronic pain; he left 19 days later, a paraplegic and victim, he says, of medical malpractice. At the time of the surgery, Carter was not on active-duty orders or medical orders -- an inactive status his attorneys argue made him eligible to file a malpractice claim against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act. (Kime, 6/24)

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away two Covid-related appeals brought by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The decision by the justices not to hear the cases leaves in place lower court rulings against the group. (Hurley, 6/24)

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case Monday challenging Connecticut legislation that repealed religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements in 2021. (Harkay, 6/24)

Since Texas’ ban on abortion went into effect, infant deaths in the state increased by nearly 13%, according to a new analysis published on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. In the rest of the country, infant mortality increased less than 2% over the same period. (Merelli, 6/24)

The number of women on probation or parole who must seek permission to travel for an abortion more than doubled to 635,000 in two years since the supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion, a new report finds. Fourteen states have near-total abortion bans and 21 restrict the procedure. Together with near ubiquitous travel restrictions imposed by probation and parole, more than half of women on probation or parole in the US must seek permission to travel before obtaining an abortion. (Glenza, 6/24)

Nearly 28 million women of reproductive age live in states with partial or total bans on abortion, according to Planned Parenthood Action Fund data provided to NBC News. Several states with partial bans could prove decisive for presidential contenders in November, including Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Democrats have watched abortion-rights candidates and positions win again and again in purple and even red states. Now, with less than five months before voters cast their ballots, abortion-rights advocates are looking to replicate those successes nationally. (Lebowitz, 6/24)

Two years after the Supreme Court delivered the religious right their long-sought goal of repealing nationwide abortion rights, state-level initiatives to curb access are faltering. Deadlines are rapidly approaching ahead of November’s general election, but in state after state, Republican activists are falling short of the signatures necessary to put anti-abortion initiatives in front of voters. (Lowenkron, 6/24)

Voters in half of U.S. states aren't able to support abortion access in direct-democracy ballot measures because their states lack the process for citizen-led initiatives. (Rubin, 6/24)

Massachusetts won’t spend “one dime” enforcing a national abortion ban if such a ban ever becomes law, Governor Maura Healey pledged Monday. ... “Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Healey replied when asked by a reporter if she would enforce a national abortion ban were it to become law. “I won’t put one dime or any energy or effort or personnel into enforcing laws that are a direct violation of a woman’s freedom and autonomy.” (Piore, 6/24)

Senator Elizabeth Warren sat in front of dozens of voters at a campaign office plastered with posters waiting for her turn to speak on a panel about abortion access. When she did, Warren at times grew so impassioned that she nearly left her seat. But it wasn’t her event, or her campaign. It wasn’t even her home state. She was in the battleground of Wisconsin, to make the case for President Biden in the hopes of firing up the Democrats who had taken time out of their Monday to listen. (Villa de Petrzelka, 6/24)

Healthcare providers that prevent authorized users from accessing electronic health records data face new consequences under a final rule the Health and Human Services Department published Monday. The regulation to discourage so-called information blocking emerged from the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 and applies to providers including hospitals, physicians and accountable care organizations. (Early, 6/24)

Because EHRs lack structured fields for symptom data, they are often not recorded in a consistent or shareable manner. (Robeznieks, 6/18)

Remote therapeutic monitoring company PatchRx can now integrate its medication adherence insights into existing care management platforms through PatchRx Connect. It aims to eventually do so with electronic medical records, but fees and bureaucracy can make the path to integration thorny for new technologies. (Beavins, 6/24)  

Oracle Health is rolling out an artificial intelligence clinical documentation tool for its ambulatory customers, the electronic health record company said Monday. Oracle said the tool will transcribe patient-clinician conversations and create draft notes within the EHR. The company had 13 of its ambulatory clinic customers test the tool beginning in October 2023, a month after it was first announced at its user conference. It is available for primary care, internal medicine and family medicine clinics. (Turner, 6/24)

AliveCor has spent years battling with Apple over the market for consumer heart monitoring technology. Now it’s hoping to make its imprint on professional health care with its new device, which recently received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration. (Aguilar, 6/25)

A groundbreaking implantable device has significantly reduced the frequency and severity of seizures in children with severe epilepsy, according to a new UK clinical trial. The rechargeable device, attached to the skull, delivers constant electrical stimulation to the brain, allowing patients like Oran to experience dramatic improvements in quality of life. (6/24)

The collapse of Steward Health Care System has Massachusetts lawmakers pointing fingers at the hospital operator’s landlord and other companies like it. Real estate experts say their proposed fixes miss the mark. A sweeping health-care oversight bill that passed the state House of Representatives with almost unanimous support includes a provision that would ban hospitals from leasing their main campuses from real estate investment trusts, known as REITs. Other types of landlords would still be allowed to own hospitals and existing leases with REITs can continue. The crackdown would be among the first of its kind in the US. (Taylor and Sutherland, 6/24)

Two health plans filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Hartford HealthCare and several of its subsidiaries earlier this month for alleged unlawful monopolization, restraint of trade and price fixing. (Golvala, 6/25)

Health insurance companies hungry for a piece of the large and lucrative employer health plan market see a recently created exchanges-based product as their way in. Although only a small — albeit growing — share of businesses offer individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRAs, to their workers, insurers such as Oscar Health, Centene and Highmark are gambling they are the wave of the future as employers strive to contain healthcare spending. (Berryman, 6/24)

The Connecticut insurance department is again considering annual rate hikes for state-regulated health plans on and off the insurance exchange. Insurers are seeking an average increase of 8.3% on 2025 individual plans and 11.9% on small group policies. The proposed hikes are lower than what was requested the last two years, but similar to those sought in 2021. (Carlesso, 6/24)

A company supplying eyewear to veterans has been accused of lowballing prices to win a contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), then making up that money on the backs of veterans through higher prices for upgrades and aggressive sales tactics – all at the expense of quality. (Betz, 6/24)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News' 'An Arm And A Leg': Meet The Middleman’s Middleman

Why are patients facing bigger bills than they expect for out-of-network care? In this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” the show explains the hidden mechanics of MultiPlan, a data firm that helps health insurers set these rates and make bigger returns. (Weissmann, 6/25)

Healthcare employment agencies are reevaluating their strategies as interest in travel nurses wanes among both hospitals and workers. It's another sign of the shifting needs of the industry since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing firms have laid off workers or folded. Telehealth companies have been challenged. (DeSilva, 6/24)

It looked like any other pro-Palestinian encampment at a college campus in the United States. The tents, the flags, the banners calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. But this was at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the nation’s pre-eminent medical schools and teaching hospitals. The protesters were medical students and doctors. And the chants of “intifada, intifada, long live intifada!” could be heard by patients in their hospital rooms at the U.C.S.F. Medical Center. (Knight, 6/24)

Surgeons at Northwestern Medicine performed a kidney transplant on an awake patient, marking a first for the Chicago-based healthcare system. The patient, 28-year-old John Nicholas of Chicago, felt no pain during the May 24 procedure and was discharged the next day. Typically a patient is hospitalized for 2-3 days following a kidney transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. (Moniuszko, 6/24)

Novo Nordisk A/S plans to invest $4.1 billion in another US factory, plowing more money into its biggest market amid rising discontent over the cost of its obesity and diabetes drugs. The project in Clayton, North Carolina, will double the company’s production footprint in the US, adding 1.4 million square feet of space for the final stages of manufacturing in which Novo’s medicines are filled into injector pens and prepared for consumers. The facility will add 1,000 jobs, the Danish drugmaker said Monday. (Kresge, 6/24)

Teva Pharmaceuticals said on Monday it had launched a generic version of Novo Nordisk's Victoza to treat patients with type 2 diabetes, making it the first generic GLP-1 drug in the United States where the drug class has seen overwhelming demand. (6/24)

Continuous positive airway pressure “is here to stay,” sleep medicine doctor Atul Malhotra declared in a May 2024 editorial published in the Lancet. But after Eli Lilly reported the full results of its obesity drug in sleep apnea patients last week, industry watchers are now debating the lasting power of CPAP machines. The trial, run by Malhotra himself, demonstrated that Zepbound reduced the number of sleep apnea episodes in patients both who were using the machines and those who were not. (Lawrence and Chen, 6/25)

Most of the 38 million people living with diabetes in the U.S. use daily injections or insulin pumps to keep glucose at safe levels — but new research suggests that a third option could be just as effective. In a study led by Dr. Irl B. Hirsch, M.D., medical director of the Diabetes Care Center of the University of Washington Medical Center, an inhaled form of insulin — similar to an asthma inhaler — worked just as well as injections or pumps to control type 1 diabetes. (Rudy, 6/25)

The New Jersey company said late on Monday that it had discontinued its Phase III TrilynX trial of Xevinapant in patients with head and neck cancer after an analysis by an independent panel concluded the drug would be unlikely to meet its primary goal of extending event-free survival in participants. (Goss, 6/25)

Rite Aid Corp. isn’t responsible for more than $200 million in extra costs tied to the recent acquisition of its pharmacy benefit manager Elixir by MedImpact Healthcare Systems Inc., a judge ruled MondayJudge Michael Kaplan said during a hearing in New Jersey bankruptcy court that the underlying Elixir sale agreement makes MedImpact responsible for the disputed liabilities, which include millions of dollars in unpaid reimbursements owed to CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walmart Inc. (Randles, 6/24)

Beleaguered pharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions — which, early into the pandemic, threw out coronavirus vaccine doses manufactured in East Baltimore due to lapses in quality — is selling its last major plant in the city. (Roberts, 6/21)

As chief medical officer of Moderna, Tal Zaks used to be skeptical of genome editing. Why repair a patient’s broken gene, he would ask, with all the havoc CRISPR can wreak on DNA, when a company like Moderna can just replace that gene with regular, transient doses of mRNA? (One reason: Moderna was having immense difficulty doing just that.) (Mast, 6/25)

The northeast Minnesota city of Grand Rapids took a major step this week to combat an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease traced to the city’s water supply. On Monday, Grand Rapids began permanently chlorinating its water. City officials hope the action will curb the perplexing outbreak, which started more than a year ago and has sickened nearly two dozen people. (Marohn, 6/25)

A new law coming into effect in Colorado in July is banning everyday products that intentionally contain toxic “forever chemicals”, including clothes, cookware, menstruation products, dental floss and ski wax – unless they can be made safer. Under the legislation, which takes effect on July 1, many products using per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances – or PFAS chemicals linked to cancer risk, lower fertility and developmental delays – will be prohibited starting in 2026. (Helmore, 6/24)

A newly developed paper test strip can detect different influenza types and may be able to be identify avian and swine flu strains, potentially guiding both clinical care and disease surveillance efforts, according to a study published in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. (Van Beusekom, 6/24)

Cases are most likely increasing in 39 states and aren’t declining anywhere in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — evidence that an anticipated summer wave is underway. The CDC no longer tracks Covid cases, but it estimates transmission based on emergency department visits. Both Covid deaths and ED visits have risen in the last week. Hospitalizations also climbed 25% from May 26 to June 1, the latest data available. (Bendix, 6/24)

A team of epidemiologists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have traced the H5N1 viral spread in Michigan to a single herd of dairy cattle that had been unknowingly introduced in the spring to infected cows imported from a Texas dairy operation. From there, poultry farmers in the state took the viral hit. It is unknown how the Texan dairy cow contracted the virus, though some have surmised that it was transmitted by some dead waterfowl on the property. (Wynn, 6/23)

New research shows that, in spite of recommendations discouraging use of aspirin in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease among older adults, nearly a third of adults 60 years and older are still using it for this very purpose. The study, published on Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, found that 18.5 million adults 60 and older without cardiovascular disease reported using preventative aspirin in 2021. Of those, 3.3 million were using the pills without medical advice. (Rajeev, 6/24)

In a new report published in the journal Health Communication, researchers found that a growing number of social media influencers are telling followers that hormonal contraception causes issues ranging from depression to weight gain. (Carter, 6/24)

The Supreme Court’s mifepristone decision on June 13 put a stop to one challenge to the drug used in more than half of all abortions in the United States. But antiabortion groups are already preparing their next line of attack. (Mary Ziegler, 6/24)

I have spent my career studying infectious diseases that fall under the heading of neglected tropical diseases. Now I have a neglected and incurable (for now and for me) disease — long COVID. (Rachel Hall-Clifford, 6/24)

Roughly 25 million Americans were uninsured in 2023, down from 27.6 million in 2022 and 33.2 million in 2019, according to a National Center for Health Statistics report. Unfortunately, an estimated 5 million Texans, or 16.6%, are uninsured, a percentage more than twice the national average of 7.6% in 2023. That ranks Texas dead last among the states by a large margin. (6/25)

Many people have interpreted as a setback the “no” vote by an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration on Lykos Therapeutics’ new drug application for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. We believe it is an opportunity to build upon Lykos’ success and rally support for better-funded, well-controlled clinical trials to determine the safety and efficacy of a promising PTSD treatment. (Andrew D. Forsyth, Mallory O. Johnson and Jae M. Sevelius, 6/25)

Drug discovery has quickly become the most enticing place to apply artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars are being invested in AI-driven “techbios.” In an industry where nothing changes overnight, even large biopharma companies are touting AI as key to how they’re transforming their discovery engines. (Ashu Singhal and Sajith Wickramasekara, 6/25)