Kaiser Permanente Entity Discloses Data Breach Affecting 13 Million People: Kaiser Permanente, the Oakland-based health care conglomerate, is warning millions of customers that one of its divisions may have exposed their names, symptom searches, and other data to major tech companies. Read more from SFGate, TechCrunch, and Modern Healthcare.
Los Angeles Times: Managing Miscarriages Could Revolutionize the Abortion Debate
For decades, the abortion wars have centered on whether a woman should be able to decide when and if she has a child. But with increasingly strict restrictions on reproductive rights being enacted across the United States, these debates are charting new, unfamiliar territory — medical care for women who have had miscarriages. Up to one in four women who know they are pregnant will miscarry, according to the National Library of Medicine. Although most miscarriages resolve naturally, some require medical intervention that is similar to an elective abortion. (Mehta, 4/25)
Slate: Supreme Court to Decide on Whether Doctors Can Refuse Emergency Treatment
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a dispute over whether states can decline to abide by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. EMTALA is a federal law requiring stabilizing care for all ER patients, including abortion care, even if it conflicts with a state’s own stricter abortion rules. Moyle v. United States consolidates two cases—Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. (Lithwick, 4/22)
LAist: Tips for a Fulfilling Pregnancy from Black Parents and Maternal Health Experts
We already know that the health and mortality stats about Black babies and mothers don’t look good. The statistics about racial disparities point to a long history of systemic issues, with structural racism at the root. But if you’re pregnant, how can you set yourself up for the healthy pregnancy you deserve? Sometimes it helps to hear from others who have been through it before. During Black Maternal Health Week, we asked Black parents and maternal health advocates to share wisdom and affirmations for parents-to-be. (Ritoper and Yu, 4/21)
USA Today: USDA to Introduce First-Ever Limits on Added Sugars in School Lunches
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday announced updated nutrition standards for school meals that will be gradually updated to include "less sugar and greater flexibility with menu planning" between Fall 2025 and Fall 2027. “The new standards build on the great progress that school meals have made already and address remaining challenges - including reducing sugar in school breakfasts," said USDA's Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Cindy Long in the news release. (Hauari, 4/25)
CalMatters: California Schools Urged to Improve Handling of Mental Health Issues
The mental health crisis among our young people is well documented, and young adults in California experience mental health challenges at alarming rates. These mental health concerns directly impact our students’ ability to learn, concentrate and perform academically. (Rebecca Pariso, 4/24)
KFF Health News: California Commits $500M to Therapy Apps for Youth, but Advocates Worry About Effectiveness
With little pomp, California launched two apps at the start of the year offering free behavioral health services to youths to help them cope with everything from living with anxiety to body acceptance. Through their phones, young people and some caregivers can meet BrightLife Kids and Soluna coaches, some who specialize in peer support or substance use disorders, for roughly 30-minute virtual counseling sessions that are best suited to those with more mild needs, typically those without a clinical diagnosis. (Castle Work, 4/26)
CBS News: Teen Mental Health in the Wake of School Shootings: The Power of Expression
According to TCU Psychiatrist and Professor Dr. Cheryl Hurd. "The vast majority of teenagers now in America… well over 50 percent when surveyed by a variety including the National Institute of Mental Health fear a school shooting at this point," Hurd said. "Teenagers know what is going on, but they also feel less empowered. They are minors and there are restrictions on them and they don't have in their opinion access to safe things or safe places to go." (Molestina, 4/25)
Bloomberg: DEA Warns of Adderall Abuse, Risking Another Opioid Crisis
The fast rise of prescriptions for Adderall and other stimulants, along with rampant online treatment and advertising, suggest the start of another drug crisis like the opioid epidemic, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official said Thursday. The warning is the most urgent public message yet on these types of drugs by the agency. (Swetlitz, 4/19)
Bloomberg: Report Shows Lowest U.S. Births Since 1979
US births declined in 2023 to their lowest level in more than 40 years, continuing a two-decade trend of Americans having fewer children. Total births for the year fell 2% to 3.59 million, according to preliminary data released Thursday from the US National Center for Health Statistics, a level not seen since 1979, when about 3.4 million US babies were born. The rate of US women of child-bearing age having babies is the lowest since the center began compiling statistics, said Brady Hamilton, an NCHS demographer and lead author of the report. (Nix, 4/25)
AP: Experts Say U.S. Births Declined Last Year, Ending the Late Pandemic Rebound
U.S. births fell last year, resuming a long national slide. A little under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, according to provisional statistics released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 76,000 fewer than the year before and the lowest one-year tally since 1979.U.S. births were slipping for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then dropped 4% from 2019 to 2020. They ticked up for two straight years after that, an increase experts attributed, in part, to pregnancies that couples had put off amid the pandemic’s early days. (Stobbe, 4/25)
San Francisco Chronicle: Hospitals in California Sue Anthem Insurer Over Delayed Patient Discharges
When a 77-year-old woman was nearly ready to be discharged recently from Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia after being treated for a femur fracture following a fall, her doctors recommended that she go to a skilled nursing facility to recover. They were told by the woman’s health insurer that it could take up to two weeks to authorize the move, said Vicki White, the hospital’s chief nursing officer. Four days later, they tried contacting the insurer again, only to be told to continue waiting. (Ho, 4/23)
CalMatters: California Hospitals File Lawsuit Against Anthem Insurance, Citing Treatment Delays
Medical insurance delays can keep someone in a hospital bed much longer than they need to be waiting for after-care services like home health care. Those delays can also block hospitals from using beds needed for new patients. California hospitals have long complained about those delays, and in a new lawsuit, they’re suing one of the state’s largest health insurers to force it to speed its approvals of secondary treatment. (Hwang, 4/23)
Los Angeles Blade: States Restricting Rights for 90% of Trans Youth
According to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, 93% of transgender youth aged 13 to 17 in the U.S. — approximately 280,300 youth — live in states that have proposed or passed laws restricting their access to health care, sports, school bathrooms and facilities, or the use of gender-affirming pronouns. In some regions, a large percentage of transgender youth live in a state that has already enacted one of these laws. About 85% of transgender youth in the South and 40% of transgender youth in the Midwest live in one of these states. (4/23)
The New York Times: Study Supports Notion of Athletic Differences Between Men and Trans Women
A new study financed by the International Olympic Committee found that transgender female athletes showed greater handgrip strength — an indicator of overall muscle strength — but lower jumping ability, lung function and relative cardiovascular fitness compared with women whose gender was assigned female at birth. That data, which also compared trans women with men, contradicted a broad claim often made by proponents of rules that bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports. It also led the study’s authors to caution against a rush to expand such policies, which already bar transgender athletes from a handful of Olympic sports. (Longman, 4/23)
Modern Healthcare: One Year After Medicaid Unwinding, Providers Feel Impact of 20M Enrollee Drop
Over the past year, states have removed more than 20 million beneficiaries from Medicaid after suspending eligibility redeterminations during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Thousands of those people are Clinica Family Health patients. The Lafayette, Colorado-based community health center felt the pain of lost reimbursements when patients went from having Medicaid coverage to being uninsured, a fate that has befallen almost one-fourth of these former Medicaid enrollees nationwide, according to KFF. (Tepper, 4/23)
San Francisco Chronicle: Research Shows Improved Outcomes for Male and Female Patients Treated by Female Doctors
Patients who have a female doctor are less likely to die in the days after being admitted to the hospital and less likely to be readmitted to the hospital than patients who have a male doctor — and the benefit is especially noticeable for female patients, according to a UCLA study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Female patients treated by female doctors had a lower mortality rate than female patients treated by male doctors, 8.15% compared with 8.38% — a clinically significant difference that, when taking into account the millions of Americans hospitalized each year, amounts to one death averted for each 420 patients. (Ho, 4/22)
NPR: Research Shows Drug Representative Meetings With Doctors Do Not Enhance Cancer Patient Survival
When drug company reps visit doctors, it usually includes lunch or dinner and a conversation about a new drug. These direct-to-physician marketing interactions are tracked as payments in a public database, and a new study shows the meetings work. That is, doctors prescribe about five percent more oncology drugs following a visit from a pharmaceutical representative, according to the new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month. But the researchers also found that the practice doesn't make cancer patients live longer. (Lupkin, 4/22)
Southern California News Group: Group Alleges Discriminatory Policy Excludes Disabled Individuals from Disneyland
A group representing the disabled community is urging Disneyland and Disney World to reconsider recent “discriminatory” changes to the Disability Access Service program that exclude people with a wide array of disabilities. (MacDonald, 4/23)
The Washington Post: ADHD Diagnoses Reported in 11 Percent of U.S. Children
More than 1 in 10 children in the United States — about 11 percent of those ages 5 to 17 — have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics. The report data was drawn from interviews, conducted in person and by phone from 2020 through 2022, with members of a representative sample of U.S. households. (Searing, 4/22)