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When Nimeron Mike applied to be a city police officer here last New Year’s Eve, he didn’t really expect to get the job. Mike was a registered sex offender and had served six years behind bars in Alaska jails and prisons. He’d been convicted of assault, domestic violence, vehicle theft, groping a woman, hindering prosecution, reckless driving, drunken driving and choking a woman unconscious in an attempted sexual assault. Among other crimes. “My record, I thought I had no chance of being a cop,” Mike, 43, said on a recent weekday evening, standing at his doorway in this Bering Strait village of 646 people. He was wrong. (Hopkins, 7/18)

Kansas schools will require two new vaccines come August, including one against a virus that’s hospitalized 13,000 people and killed 200 across the country since 2016. The new rules, which apply to public and private schools, will be phased in over the next several years. ...Nationally, 25 states have seen more than 20,000 cases of hepatitis A in widespread outbreaks since 2016. The liver infection often spreads through contamination in water, raw or undercooked foods or through sex. (Llopis-Jepsen, 7/18)

Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a two-year budget bill, his first since taking office in January, with both a tax cut and new money for his education, children’s health and Lake Erie priorities. In signing the budget Thursday morning, DeWine also issued 25 line-item vetoes, most of which were health-care related. Among the items he nixed were “price transparency” measures requiring hospitals to provide patients with billing estimates in advance, and “surprise billing” language that required insurers to cover to reimburse out-of-network medical services when performed at an in-network facility. (Tobias, 7/18)

The University of Maryland School of Medicine will receive $750,000 in federal funds to train more doctors for posts in rural areas, where the growing nationwide shortage of doctors is most acute. The money, announced Thursday at the Baltimore school, comes from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. It’s part of a $20 million award that will be made over a three-year period to develop rural residency programs across the country. (Cohn, 7/18)

Federal law requires California to act against nursing homes that practice “patient dumping,” the act of sending low-income patients to medical or mental hospitals and refusing to take them back, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated lawsuits by three patients — one of whom has died — and an advocacy group against state health officials. (Egelko, 7/18)

Memorial Hermann Health System appointed Dr. David Callender as its new president and CEO, the not-for-profit integrated health system announced Thursday. Callender, who is the current president of the University of Texas Medical Branch, will officially take the helm from Chuck Stokes Sept. 1. Stokes succeeded Dr. Benjamin Chu in June 2017 after Chu's brief tenure. (Kacik, 7/18)

A former prisoner who alleged that faulty treatment at the Lunenburg Correctional Center may cost him a finger was awarded a total of $1,058,671 in compensatory and punitive damages in federal court Thursday from the company providing medical care at the facility. John Kinlaw, 32, filed suit against a physician and two nurses and their employer, Florida-based Armor Correctional Health Services Inc., in November 2017, several months after his release from Lunenburg and almost a year after he injured his right hand during a fall in the prison recreation yard. (Green, 7/18)

In the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle between the Department of Correction and a woman who gave birth in her prison cell last year, lawyers for the state have opened a line of inquiry that is raising concern among her advocates. The request for admissions, a standard filing in a federal court case, began with a series of conventional, yes-or-no-style questions. (Carlesso, 7/18)

Crossover Health, a one-stop comprehensive health and wellness center for employees at nearby companies, said Thursday it will open in Spring next week. Already in 20 locations across the country, including four in Texas, the Crossover centers create a health care hub where employers can pay a direct membership fee to provide easy access for primary care, behavioral health and other services for workers and skip traditional insurance claims for such visits. (Deam, 7/18)

Florida can limit who gets to give dietary advice, a federal court ruled. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a health coach who was fined for practicing without a dietary license. Heather Del Castillo had argued Florida's law violated her First Amendment right to free speech, noting dietary advice is ubiquitous online, in books and on TV. (7/18)

The songs have been weaponized before to annoy parents, babysitters and other formerly sane adults in proximity to children. Now, “Baby Shark” and “Raining Tacos” are being used by city officials in West Palm Beach, Fla., as a property management tool. To deter people experiencing homelessness from sleeping overnight at the city’s Lake Pavilion and Great Lawn, venues that offer “million-dollar views” for special events, West Palm Beach officials began playing the catchy, obnoxious tunes three weeks ago from strategically situated speakers. (Mettler, 7/18)