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President Biden on Monday signed a bill into law that directs the federal government to declassify certain information about the origin of the coronavirus, three years after the virus caused a global pandemic that has killed millions of people worldwide. “I share the Congress’s goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin” of the coronavirus, Biden said in a statement after the signing, adding, “We need to get to the bottom of COVID-19’s origins to help ensure we can better prevent future pandemics.” (Wang and Johnson, 3/20)

President Joe Biden on Monday signed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on any possible links between a lab in China and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The House and the Senate unanimously passed the legislation earlier this month. (Kimball, 3/20)

The legislation, called the Covid-19 Origin Act of 2023, which passed the Senate and House with unanimous support earlier this month, orders the Director of National Intelligence to declassify within 90 days of enactment all information relating to potential links between China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and Covid-19. The director is then to submit the information in a report to Congress. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sponsored the bill. (Paun, 3/20)

Over the weekend, the World Health Organization (WHO) detailed conversations with Chinese researchers, its advisory group, and international researchers who found previously unknown SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the animal market outbreak epicenter on the GISAID database. The new development comes against the backdrop of intense scrutiny on China, potential global impacts of its wildlife trade, and the possibility that the virus may have come from a lab in the same city where the outbreak began. (Schnirring, 3/20)

About 4,800 US lives could have been saved during the winter 2021-22 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron wave if 5% of COVID-19 patients had taken the antiviral drug Paxlovid, estimates a modeling study published late last week in JAMA Health Forum. (Van Beusekom, 3/20)

Moderna Inc expects to price its COVID-19 vaccine at around $130 per dose in the U.S. going forward as purchases move to the private sector from the government, the company’s president Stephen Hoge said in an interview on Monday. ... Moderna previously said it was considering pricing its COVID vaccine in a range of $110 to $130 per dose in the United States, similar to the range Pfizer Inc said in October it was considering for its rival COVID shots sold in partnership with BioNTech. (Wingrove, 3/20)

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel has some explaining to do. Bancel will appear alone before Sen. Bernie Sanders’ health committee on Wednesday, where he’ll have to defend his company’s suggestion it will likely quadruple the price of its Covid vaccines once sales transition from bulk federal purchases to the open market. The Senate hearing will be a watershed moment for Bancel, a biotech superstar forged during the pandemic. (Branswell, Cohrs and Garde, 3/21)

The US Supreme Court refused to consider forcing New York to give more children medical exemptions from the state’s school vaccine requirements. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal by parents who claimed the state violated their constitutional rights when it put in place stricter rules for medical exemptions in 2019. (Stohr, 3/20)

There’s a moment in the new PBS documentary about Dr. Anthony Fauci when a protester holds up a handmade sign reading, “Dr. Fauci, You Are Killing Us.” It says something about Fauci that it’s not initially clear when that sign was waved in anger — in the 1980s as AIDS made its deadly rise or in the 2020s with COVID-19 vaccine opponents. “American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci,” offers a portrait of an unlikely lightning rod: A government infectious disease scientist who advised seven presidents. Fauci hopes it can inspire more public servants like him. (Kennedy, 3/21)

Three quarters of US high school students didn't get enough sleep, and two-thirds had difficulty completing schoolwork, in 2021 amid the pandemic, according to a survey study published late last week in Preventing Chronic Disease. ... Most respondents (76.5%) reported sleeping for an average of less than 8 hours per school night, and 66.6% said they struggled more with schoolwork than they did before the pandemic. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adolescents aged 13 to 18 sleep 8 to 10 hours a night. "Short sleep duration among adolescents is linked to higher risk of injury, worse metabolic and mental health, and difficulty focusing," the researchers wrote. (Van Beusekom, 3/20)

Americans took fewer steps during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and they still haven’t gotten their mojo back, a new study found. “On average, people are taking about 600 fewer steps per day than before the pandemic began,” said study author Dr. Evan Brittain, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “To me, the main message is really a public health message — raising awareness that Covid-19 appears to have had a lasting impact on people’s behavioral choices when it comes to activity,” he said. (LaMotte, 3/20)

Clinical cases of Candida auris, an emerging fungus considered an urgent threat, nearly doubled in 2021, according to new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There was also a tripling of the number of cases resistant to echinocandins, the first-line treatment for Candida auris infections. (Chavez, 3/20)

Over the course of 2021, state and local health departments around the country reported 1,474 clinical cases, about a 200 percent increase from the nearly 500 cases in 2019. The surge represents a “dramatic increase” in caseload and transmission of C. auris, according to a research paper published Monday in the Annals of Medicine and compiled by researchers at the C.D.C. The fungus is now in half the 50 states, many with just a handful of cases, but with higher concentrations in California, Nevada, Texas and Florida. (Richtel, 3/20)

About 30% to 60% of infected people have died from the yeast, though that is "based on information from a limited number of patients," the CDC said. "The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control," CDC epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Lyman said. (Archie, 3/21)

Candida auris (C. auris) was first described in Japan in 2009, with the earliest known infections in the US dating back to 2013. Cases grew exponentially through the end of 2021, according to a paper published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which says it poses a serious global health threat — noted that a further 2,377 clinical diagnoses and 5,754 cases identified through screening were reported last year. (De Wei, 3/21)

The Minnesota House of Representatives voted 68-62 Monday for a bill that would offer legal protections to patients who travel to Minnesota for an abortion and the providers that treat them. State leaders have said they are taking steps to offer those legal defenses now but DFL lawmakers at the Capitol said it was important to guarantee the protections in law. (Ferguson, 3/20)

Like Planned Parenthood and other providers, Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota in Bloomington has also seen a sharp increase in patients from out-of-state, more than doubling from 2019 to 26% in 2022. “The most remarkable change has come from Texas, where we only saw 2 patients from that state in 2019 to 96 from February 2022 to March of 2023,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, said in an email. (Karnowski, 3/20)

Tennessee’s GOP-dominant House on Monday advanced legislation that would add a narrow exemption to the state’s strict abortion ban, despite concerns raised by Democrats and medical experts that the bill does not go far enough to protect doctors and pregnant patients. The legislation was drastically reworked from its original version that was introduced just last month after Tennessee’s influential anti-abortion lobbying group came out in opposition. Tennessee Right to Life warned that could face political retribution for voting on a bill that would have allowed doctors to provide abortions based on their “good-faith judgment.” (Kruesi and Mattise, 3/21)

Abortion opponents say the Ohio Ballot Board should have divided the proposed abortion amendment into multiple ballot issues, according to a lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court Monday. The lawsuit, filed by former Cincinnati Right to Life executive director Meg DeBlase and member John Giroux, asks the Ohio Supreme Court to order the five-member Ohio Ballot Board to reconvene and split the proposed abortion amendment into multiple issues. (Balmert, 3/20)

A near-total abortion ban took effect in Wyoming over the weekend. Dr. Giovannina Anthony, an OB-GYN, is one of two abortion providers in the state. Both are at her clinic in Jackson. Anthony said she already had to cancel three appointments. She serves patients from Wyoming, and Idaho, which also passed some of the harshest restrictions on abortions last year. (Merzbach, 3/20)

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, service members struggled to get abortions. Navigating different state laws, trying to obtain leave, and figuring out travel arrangements wasn’t easy. “Having it be so difficult, the barriers I had to overcome and jump over, it reset where I thought I fit into the military,” said Air Force Major Sharon Arana. (Frame, 3/20)

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal court ruling upholding the right for a minor to go to court to get permission to undergo an abortion, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penning a solo dissent in the case. The ruling from the court on Monday vacated a lower court ruling that a state court clerk could be sued for telling a pregnant teenager that the court must notify her parents of her attempt to get a court order to allow her to obtain an abortion without the consent of her parents. (Neukam, 3/20)

One of President Joe Biden’s nominees to a federal appeals court has generated rare concern from some Democrats and outside groups over his signature on a legal brief defending a parental notification law in New Hampshire, injecting the issue of abortion into his confirmation fight from an unexpected flank. Michael Delaney, nominated for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, said in written testimony to senators that he did not write the 2005 brief and otherwise had “extremely limited involvement” in the case that was brought while he was deputy attorney general in New Hampshire. (Kim, 3/20)

The US Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert Monday about the widespread threat of fentanyl mixed with xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer also commonly known as “tranq” or “tranq dope.” “Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has every faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the alert. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.” (Chavez, 3/20)

The DEA has seized mixtures of fentanyl and xylazine in 48 of 50 U.S. states, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said. Nearly a quarter of fentanyl powder tested by DEA labs in 2022 had xylazine, also known as tranq, mixed into it.  "Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier," Milgram said. (Chasan, 3/20)

Prescription opioid use could have a negative effect on cognitive function in older adults, according to a recent Mayo Clinic study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The population-based observational study used data from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, a research initiative examining the cognitive decline in older people for nearly 20 years. (Jacobbi, 3/21)

Patients beginning treatment for opioid addiction often face excruciating withdrawal symptoms. But for people struggling to transition from ultra-potent illicit fentanyl to comparatively weaker addiction medications, help may be on the way. A new federal regulation would make it easier for some patients to begin treatment on significantly higher doses of methadone, a key medicine used to treat opioid use disorder. (Facher, 3/21)

But the strategy is alarming recovery advocates who say focusing on the criminal angle of drugs has historically backfired, including when lawmakers elevated crack cocaine penalties in the 1980s. “Every time we treat drugs as a law enforcement problem and push stricter laws, we find that we punish people in ways that destroy their lives and make it harder for them to recover later on,” said Adam Wandt, an assistant professor of public policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He said people behind bars often continue getting drugs — often without receiving quality addiction treatment — then emerge to find it’s harder to get work. (Stern, Pollard and Mulvihill, 3/20)

KHN and WBUR: Some Roadblocks To Lifesaving Addiction Treatment Are Gone. Now What? 

For two decades — as opioid overdose deaths rose steadily — the federal government limited access to buprenorphine, a medication that addiction experts consider the gold standard for treating patients with opioid use disorder. Study after study shows it helps people continue addiction treatment while reducing the risk of overdose and death. Clinicians who wanted to prescribe the medicine had to complete an eight-hour training. They could treat only a limited number of patients and had to keep special records. They were given a Drug Enforcement Administration registration number starting with X, a designation many doctors say made them a target for drug-enforcement audits. (Bebinger, 3/21)

Last year, James, which is not his real name because he spoke with Insider on the condition of anonymity for privacy reasons, bet over $200,000 on sports across legal gambling platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel, according to documents viewed by Insider, often wagering as much as $5,000 per day. At his peak, he turned roughly $2,500 into over $30,000 in winnings. While the highs were "exhilarating," James said, gambling began to take over his life. His mood soared and plummeted based on the outcomes of bets, and his addiction began to influence his relationships with his friends and family. He recalled not being able to even read his child a book without actively monitoring a bet. (Zinkula, 3/18)

A U.S. lawmaker wants the federal government to probe potential conflicts of interest held by members of a panel created to set dietary guidelines after learning one panelist was a paid consultant to a drug company that sells weight loss treatments. (Silverman, 3/20)

A top Food and Drug Administration official said Monday that the agency needs to start using accelerated approval, a much-debated path commonly used for advancing cancer drugs, to advance gene therapies for rare disease. (Mast, 3/20)

U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff on Monday said Biogen’s investigational ALS drug may have a “clinical benefit” on a rare and aggressive form of the disease, despite failing a broader late-stage clinical trial last year. (Constantino, 3/20)

The U.S. health regulator's staff said on Monday safety issues with Biogen Inc's drug to treat an ultra-rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, should not prevent its accelerated approval. (Satija, 3/20)

Karuna Therapeutics said Monday that its treatment for schizophrenia reduced psychosis reported by patients — achieving the main goal of a large clinical trial and supporting similarly positive results from previously conducted studies. (Feuerstein, 3/20)

Ivelisse Page already had 15 inches of her colon and 28 lymph nodes removed to treat her colon cancer, but in the winter of 2008 she received more devastating news. The cancer had spread to her liver. Page’s doctor, Dr. Luis Diaz – an oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine — gave her an 8% chance of living for more than two years. Since chemotherapy and radiation wouldn’t increase her chances of survival, Page decided not to undergo either of the intensive treatments. Instead, she and her husband considered another treatment suggested by an integrative practitioner at Baltimore’s Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center: mistletoe therapy. (Roberts, 3/21)

A study to be presented at next month's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) suggests the sharing of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) between pets and their owners can occur but is rare. In a case-control study conducted at Charite University Hospital Berlin in Germany, researchers collected and analyzed nasal and rectal swabs from 2,891 hospital patients, including 1,184 patients with previous MDRO colonization and 1,707 newly admitted control patients. (Dall, 3/20)

The national-security and mental-health risks posed by TikTok are shared by other social media platforms, according to an advocacy group that’s urging Congress to also hold US companies accountable ahead of high-profile testimony from TikTok’s chief executive officer. (Edgerton, 3/20)

Fictional soccer coach Ted Lasso used a White House visit Monday to encourage people, even in politically divided Washington, to make it a point to check in often with friends, family and co-workers to “ask how they’re doing, and listen, sincerely,” Comedian Jason Sudeikis, who plays the title character — an American coaching a soccer team in London — and other cast members were meeting with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden to talk about how mental health contributes to overall well-being. (Superville and Miller, 3/20)

As evidence mounts that law students suffer through outsized mental health challenges, some law schools are experimenting with a new tactic to identify struggling students and get them help. At least five U.S. law schools have adopted a service first developed for medical schools, called Early Alert, that sends one text message a week to students asking them to rate how they feel about a specific topic. (Sloan, 3/20)

Pandemic hardships such as poverty, poor living and working conditions and limited health care access made evident an urgent need to address undocumented Latino immigrants’ mental health needs, according to a new Rice University study. (Romero, 3/20)

KHN: Mental Health Care By Video Fills Gaps In Rural Nursing Homes 

Bette Helm was glad to have someone to talk with about her insomnia. Helm lives in a nursing home in this central Iowa town of about 7,500 people, where mental health services are sparse. On a recent morning, she had an appointment with a psychiatric nurse practitioner about 800 miles away in Austin, Texas. They spoke via video, with Helm using an iPad she held on her lap while sitting in her bed. (Leys, 3/21)

As many as 10 sheriff’s deputies and medical staff at Virginia’s Central State Hospital can be seen piling on top of a shackled Irvo N. Otieno for approximately 11 minutes until he stops moving, according to new video showing the encounter that led to the 28-year-old Black man’s death. The hospital surveillance video, which has no sound, shows Otieno’s final moments on March 6, from the time Henrico County sheriff’s deputies drag him into a hospital admissions room in handcuffs and leg irons, to the 11 minutes in which they restrain Otieno on the ground, to the moment when they release Otieno’s limp body around 4:40 p.m. (Rizzo, Vozzella and Oakford, 3/20)

UCHealth’s team of forensic nurses cared for 2,515 children and adults in this city last year who were sexually assaulted, choked or beaten and in need of a medical exam that could become evidence in a criminal case. These exams — more than six per day on average — took place mostly in Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, a Level I trauma center punctuated by the sounds of beeping machines, shouting amongst doctors treating gunshot victims, and law officers standing guard outside of patient rooms. (Brown, 3/20)

Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday signed into law a bipartisan measure that’s meant to bolster access to health care across Kentucky by injecting additional revenue into hospitals. The infusion will help shore up financially ailing hospitals in rural Kentucky, supporters said. One hospital administrator called it “a lifesaving action” to preserve hospital services and jobs. (Schreiner, 3/20)

Iowans may soon see a new type of hospital in their rural community. The Iowa Legislature has established a new hospital designation in the state, allowing small hospitals to be licensed as a Rural Emergency Hospital. Under the federal program, hospitals would essentially become standalone emergency rooms, ceasing in-patient services but maintaining out-patient services in rural parts of the state. (Ramm, 3/20)

Four Florida health systems have been named to the PINC AI 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals, awarded for providing top-tier heart care. The list includes St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Lee Health’s HealthPark Medical Center in Fort Myers, Mayo Clinic Jacksonville and Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Pensacola. (3/20)

Hospitals in Massachusetts are asking the state for financial wiggle room as they contend with staffing challenges, including the $1.5 billion spent last year hiring temporary labor – mostly nurses – to fill in during the pandemic. These “travelers,” who come from all over the country, command wages two or three times higher than staff nurses, and their pay increased as demand grew during the pandemic. In some cases, nurses quit staff jobs to take better-paying traveler positions at their own hospital or one nearby. (Freyer and Lazar, 3/20)

Nuance Communications, a clinical documentation software company owned by Microsoft, is adding OpenAI’s ChatGPT successor GPT-4 to its latest application. Nuance introduced its new application on Monday morning called Dragon Ambient eXperience Express. The company said this version of Dragon can summarize and enter conversations between clinicians and patients directly into electronic health record systems using OpenAI's GPT-4 generative AI capabilities. (Turner, 3/20)

For-profit companies have long sought to tap into the fears of consumers, offering pricey medical scans they can access without a doctor’s recommendation, as long as they can pay the price out of pocket. Now, some of these ventures are trumpeting scans assisted by artificial intelligence, essentially cutting-edge computer technology they say can reveal hidden health problems, from cancer to obscure bone disorders, and analyze the results more quickly than those typically ordered by doctors. (Lazar, 3/20)

Artificial intelligence is gaining popularity with the rise of ChatGPT and Bing. It also is helping save professionals’ time and improving results in healthcare and other Maine businesses. A pilot program at MaineHealth is using AI to automatically record conversations between a doctor and patient at a regular checkup or follow-up visit on a smartphone and then transcribe them, choosing the most important information. (Valigra, 3/21)

Through their 10-year Discovery Accelerator partnership, Cleveland Clinic and IBM have unveiled the IBM-managed quantum computer, billed as the first of its kind in the world dedicated to healthcare research. Installed on the Clinic's main campus, the IBM Quantum System One aims to help accelerate biomedical discoveries and is the first deployment of an onsite private sector IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States, according to a news release. (Coutré, 3/20)

Health providers are more frequently using mobile clinics to provide services including dentistry and cancer screenings to far-flung patients in rural areas. Now researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla want to see if the mobile health care model could work for radiation cancer treatment, too. (Fentem, 3/20)

Any caregivers who mistreat and abuse developmentally disabled or otherwise vulnerable people will be held accountable, New Mexico’s governor and top health officials warned Monday. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, members of her cabinet and law enforcement officials gathered at the state Capitol to provide an update on ongoing investigations into an alleged abuse and neglect case involving a developmentally disabled person that was brought to the state’s attention March 1. (Bryan, 3/21)

Federal inspectors found unsafe conditions at places in Georgia that care for adults who are elderly or disabled, according to a newly released audit. Risks at these facilities ranged from potential exposure to toxic chemicals to facilities failing to give criminal background checks to their staff who care for vulnerable adults. The findings were unearthed as part of a review done by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the summer. (Landergan, 3/20)

The Arizona Department of Corrections is promising a federal judge that it will dramatically increase the number of incarcerated people it tests and treats for hepatitis C. In a court filing Friday, the department outlined a plan to clear its backlog of incarcerated people waiting to be treated for the virus. Under the plan, Arizona promises to treat at least 110 people each month who have been awaiting treatment, as well as at least 70% of all people who newly tested positive for the virus in the last month. (Florko, 3/20)

One in five babies born in Philadelphia likely has no immunity against measles, a new study has found, raising the child’s risk of catching a disease that can lead to hospitalization and death. (Avril, 3/21)

Nia Samuels’ second pregnancy came at a time of turmoil. Her partner got laid off, forcing the family to move for work in April 2020, then Samuels’ father died of COVID-19. Samuels said she experienced depression and had a pregnancy that made her sick. Seeking help, she connected to programs that helped her with emotional support, diapers, and, more important, small cash payments from a Philadelphia Community Action Network program — no strings attached. (Conde, 3/20)

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) on Monday issued an emergency regulation claiming that state law “already prohibits” gender-affirming health care for transgender youth “in the absence of specific guardrails.” “As Attorney General, I will protect children and enforce the laws as written, which includes upholding state law on experimental gender transition interventions,” Bailey wrote Monday on Twitter. His office is investigating at least one Missouri children’s hospital that treats transgender minors. (Migdon, 3/20)

When a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia’s Houston County sought surgery as part of her gender transition, local officials refused to change the department’s health insurance plan to cover it, citing cost as the primary reason. In the years that followed, the central Georgia county paid a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight Sgt. Anna Lange in federal court — far more than it would have cost the county to offer such coverage to all of its 1,500 health plan members, according to expert analyses. (Swaby and Waldron, 3/20)

Transgender women and girls will no longer be allowed to compete in female-designated high school sports in the state of Wyoming, once a new law takes effect in July. On Friday, March 17, Gov. Mark Gordon announced he is allowing the law to go into effect without his signature. Gordon declined to veto the bill, despite writing a letter to Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray outlining how the bill is prejudiced, might lead to higher rates of teen suicide, and will likely invite lawsuits. (Victor, 3/20)

The Texas Senate will likely soon consider a bill that would bar physicians from providing transition-related treatments — like puberty blockers and hormone therapies — to transgender Texas kids. The Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday advanced Senate Bill 14 in a 7-3 party-line vote, with all Republican members supporting the measure. (Nguyen, 3/20)

The world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next 10 years, pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming — unless nations drastically transform their economies and immediately transition away from fossil fuels, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. ... Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end. (Kaplan, 3/20)

Many scientists have pointed out that surpassing the 1.5 degree threshold will not mean humanity is doomed. But every fraction of a degree of additional warming is expected to increase the severity of dangers that people around the world face, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and deadly heat waves. The difference between 1.5 degrees of warming and 2 degrees might mean that tens of millions more people worldwide experience life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. A 1.5-degree world might still have coral reefs and summer Arctic sea ice, while a 2-degree world most likely would not. (Plumer, 3/20)

Potentially toxic chemicals found in everyday products, including fast-food wrappers, makeup and carpeting, are altering hormonal and metabolic pathways needed for human growth and development, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed study samples from young children, teens and young adults, all of whom had a mixture of different synthetic compounds called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — in their blood, including PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, PFNA, PFHpS and PFDA. (LaMotte, 3/20)

"Forever chemicals" are present in Columbus' public water supply, but at levels below the restricted threshold proposed last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."Currently, we would be below the limits they have just set out," said Rod Dunn, manager of the city's Water Quality Assurance Lab. (Trombly, 3/20)

Sandra Crumby’s inhalers are scattered inside her neon green house. Crumby, a 67-year-old Joppa native, uses the small devices to spray medicine directly into her lungs to keep her heart from failing. She has emphysema, a lung condition that causes shortness of breath. She huffs, puffs and struggles to catch her breath on a sunny day in March as she attempts to say a few words between inhales and exhales. Crumby blames her illness on her surroundings. Joppa, less than 10 miles south of downtown Dallas, has been cited by some researchers as among the most air-polluted neighborhoods in the city. (Martinez, 3/21)

As someone who has worked for decades leading a healthcare technology and services company, I have seen firsthand the devastation that policies can cause when they target the ability of immigrants to get the healthcare they need — and not only on their health. They also diminish the quality of care available to everyone, whether or now a citizen. (Bill Lucia, 3/20)

A new report from the state’s Center for Health Information and Analysis found that between 2020 and 2021, total health care spending in Massachusetts grew by 9 percent to $67.9 billion, or $9,715 per resident. That reflects an unprecedented drop in health care spending in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdown, with utilization bouncing back in 2021 with patients who were sicker after deferring care. (3/20)

Much has been studied and written in the past few years about the high levels of burnout and moral injury among healthcare staff. The unfortunate reality threatens our ability to attract, train and retain the number of workers and caliber of talent needed to care for our communities and build our future. (Delvecchio Finley, 3/20)

The last time you renewed your driver’s license, you likely had the opportunity to register to vote at the same time. As former administrators at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Department of Health & Human Services, we believe Americans should have a similarly frictionless opportunity for voter registration when they submit an application for health insurance on HealthCare.gov, the federal government’s online health insurance marketplace. While no legal change is needed to make this a reality, HHS would have to make technical upgrades to the HealthCare.gov platform and workflow. (Andy Slavitt, Don Berwick and Cindy Mann, 3/21)

The Covid pandemic exacerbated fear and panic regarding the potential for a future bioterrorism agent. As the lab leak theory continues to cause debate, politicians want to be able to tell their constituents that they are solving the problem by adding more oversight to biological research. But if all they are doing is adding more burden, bureaucracy, and box-checking, is it really making anyone more secure? (Sam Weiss Evans and David Gillum, 3/21)

President Joe Biden pledged to make the toxic “forever chemicals,” also known as per- and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS, a priority during his campaign. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposed drinking water standard for six PFAS compounds last week, he delivered on his promise. As EPA Administrator Michael Reagan said while announcing the new standard, “[c]ommunities across this country have suffered far too long from the ever-present threat of PFAS pollution.” (Scott Faber, 3/20)