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California and three other states on Friday filed the latest court challenge to new Trump administration rules blocking green cards for many immigrants who use public assistance including Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. Nearly half of Americans would be considered a burden if the same standards were applied to U.S. citizens, said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. (Thompson, 8/16)

The lawsuit is the fourth legal challenge filed this week since administration officials rolled out a new rule on Monday that seeks to redefine who will be eligible for permanent residency and a path to full U.S. citizenship. The rule, set to take effect in mid-October, will give preference to wealthier, educated immigrants who can support themselves, and it will make it more difficult for immigrants who rely on public help or are determined to be likely to need federal assistance. Opponents of the rule argue that punishing legal immigrants who need financial help endangers the health and safety of immigrant families — including U.S. citizen children — and will foist potentially millions of dollars in emergency health care and other costs onto local and state governments, businesses, hospitals and food banks. (Sacchetti, 8/16)

If it survives legal challenges and takes effect Oct. 15, 2019 as planned, the change could put a legal path to citizenship out of reach for many immigrants in California. It’s also expected to discourage people in immigrant families from accessing government food assistance and medical programs. That, in turn, could harm the state’s economy, Becerra warns. About 95 percent of the state’s farmworkers, 42 percent of construction workers and 39 percent of child care and early education workers in the state are immigrants, according to Becerra’s office. (Bollag, 8/16)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also took aim at the rule in a statement obtained by the paper, saying: “This latest move by the federal administration to demonize immigrants is personal for us, in a state where half of our children have at least one immigrant parent.” “This new rule, designed to create fear in immigrant families, is cruel and threatens our public health. That is not who we are in California, and not who we are as Americans,” he added. (Folley, 8/16)

Legal experts say the case could turn on whether California can demonstrate the Trump administration adopted the policy with an intent to discriminate against certain immigrants, which is part of the state’s legal strategy. “This cruel policy would force working parents and families across the nation to forgo basic necessities like food, housing and healthcare out of fear. That is simply unacceptable,” Becerra said in a statement. (McGreevy, 8/16)

California is not the first jurisdiction tochallenge the "public charge" rule. Maine, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and the District of Columbia joined the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court on Friday, seeking to stop enactment of the new rule. The complaint asserts that the rule unfairly targets "marginalized populations, such as children, students, individuals with disabilities, older adults, and low-wage working families." (Canon, 8/16)

Diabetics skipping regular checkups. Young asthmatics not getting preventive care. A surge in expensive emergency room visits. Doctors and public health experts warn of poor health and rising costs they say will come from sweeping Trump administration changes that would deny green cards to many immigrants who use Medicaid, as well as food stamps and other forms of public assistance. Some advocates say they're already seeing the fallout even before the complex 837-page rule takes effect in October. (8/17)

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday asked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to clarify reports that pregnant asylum-seekers have been forced to wait out their immigration cases in Mexican border cities. Merkley wrote DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, asking why six late-term pregnant women were included in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program in May. (Bernal, 8/16)

The nation's largest provider of shelters for immigrant children is looking to reopen two facilities that the state of Arizona forced it to shutter last year because of issues with employee background checks and allegations of abuse. Southwest Key filed applications to reopen a downtown Phoenix facility that can house 420 children and one in the outer suburbs that can house 139. (8/18)

A federal appeals court has rejected efforts to block the Trump administration from banning abortion referrals by federally funded family planning clinics, including affiliates of Planned Parenthood. The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling Friday night will allow the policy to take effect while lawsuits from states, medical groups and reproductive rights advocates continue. (Ollstein, 8/17)

Last month, an en banc panel of 11 judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the court's prior ruling to temporarily allow the Department of Health and Human Services rule to go into effect. The rule would prohibit taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from discussing abortion with patients or referring patients to abortion providers. The following week, HHS told Title X recipients that the new regulations would go into effect despite the pending legal challenges. Planned Parenthood then lobbied the court to reconsider its decision. (Kelly, 8/16)

For months, Planned Parenthood has been battling a new Trump administration rule that bars taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from talking with their patients about abortion, or referring them to abortion providers. Planned Parenthood deemed the measure a “gag rule” and said it would pull out of Title X—the program that administers the funds—rather than comply with the new regulations. (Shugerman, 8/17)

Patients could face new challenges accessing birth control and other reproductive health care services, particularly in rural areas, under changes made by the Trump administration to a federal family planning program. Planned Parenthood, government agencies in blue states and other health providers are expected to tell the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Monday that they will not comply with its new rules banning recipients of Title X family planning funds from referring women for abortions. (Hellmann, 8/18)

President Trump donated his salary from the second quarter of 2019 to the Surgeon General's office, the White House announced Friday. The Surgeon General's office falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. The White House said the donation will help address the opioid epidemic and the growing use of e-cigarettes by teenagers and children. (Samuels, 8/16)

It's his third salary donation to the Department of Health and Human Services. "The President recognizes the important mission of the Surgeon General to protect and improve the health of all Americans, including helping to tackle the opioid epidemic and raise awareness of the dangers of e-cigarette usage among teenagers and children," the White House said in a statement. (O'Donnell, 8/16)

Since taking office, Trump has donated his salary to a variety of government agencies and efforts. He tweeted in March that he had donated a quarter of his annual salary to the Department of Homeland Security, posting a photo of a signed check for $100,000 made out to the department. Federal regulations prohibit agencies from accepting donated funds without congressional authorization. Unauthorized funds would instead be deposited into the Treasury Department's general fund. (Carvajal, Vazquez and Kelly, 8/16)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating a "cluster" of lung illnesses that it believes may be linked to e-cigarette use after such cases were reported in 14 states. The CDC said there was no evidence that an infectious disease was behind the illnesses and that more information was needed to determine whether they were in fact caused by e-cigarette use. (8/18)

Officials are warning clinicians and the public to be on alert for what they describe as a severe and potentially dangerous lung injury. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath or chest pain before hospitalization. Health officials said patients have also reported fever, cough, vomiting and diarrhea. (Sun and Bever, 8/16)

States with the most cases include Wisconsin, with 15 confirmed cases and 15 more under investigation. Illinois has 10 confirmed cases, while 12 more are under investigation. California is looking into 19 such cases. The New York State Department of Health said Friday it was "actively investigating" 11 cases. Indiana and New Jersey both reported nine cases, of which Indiana has confirmed six. Health officials in Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah also said they were aware of confirmed or potential cases. A total of 42 states and Washington, DC, provided CNN with a response. (Nedelman, 8/17)

Tobacco companies such as Philip Morris International Inc. and Altria Group Inc. are seeking to offer alternatives to traditional cigarettes. Philip Morris’ tobacco-heating IQOS device was approved for sale in the U.S. in April while Altria has taken a large stake in popular vaping start-up Juul Labs Inc. (Tong, 8/17)

When Dylan Nelson was admitted to the ICU in July with difficulty breathing, his mother, Kim Barnes. figured it was his asthma acting up. But when she got to the hospital in Burlington, Wis., he couldn't speak. He was intubated. His blood oxygen level was only 10%. He was put into a medically induced coma. Barnes told the nurse she worried she wouldn't see her 26-year-old son again. The nurse reassured her. (Sable-Smith, 8/16)

Like the jump in vaping’s popularity, state taxes and regulations have ratcheted up recently. Of the 17 states and the District of Columbia that have specific taxes on vaping products, half implemented them in 2019, according to the Public Health Law Center at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, which researches the links between public policy and health. The District of Columbia and 17 states (not all of the states are the ones that have raised taxes) have the 21-year-old vaping age limit. (Povich, 8/19)

When is it wrong to show cigarette smoking on television, but OK to depict people smoking cannabis products, particularly in programming popular among young teenagers? Netflix recently announced it would curb depictions of cigarette smoking in original programming intended for general audiences, after a Truth Initiative study showed its monster summer hit, Stranger Things, featured more tobacco use than any other program on streaming, broadcast or cable. There's tobacco in every single episode. (Ulaby, 8/17)

The people being sued arrived at the courthouse carrying their hospital bills, and they followed signs upstairs to a small courtroom labeled “Debt and Collections.” A 68-year-old wheeled her portable oxygen tank toward the first row. A nurse’s aide came in wearing scrubs after working a night shift. A teenager with an injured leg stood near the back wall and leaned against crutches. By 9 a.m., more than two-dozen people were crowded into the room for what has become the busiest legal docket in rural Butler County. (Saslow, 8/17)

There was wide variation in the facility fees Colorado hospitals and freestanding emergency rooms tacked onto emergency visit bills in 2018, new data from the state's All Payer Claims Database show. In addition to charges for things like lab tests, imaging and surgical procedures, emergency visit bills almost always include an evaluation and management fee, also known as the facility fee, that corresponds to the patient's severity level. But a new report from Colorado's Center for Improving Value in Health Care, the not-for-profit organization that analyzes all payer data, shows huge variation in those facility fees. (Bannow, 8/16)

Adopting a single-payer government health care program that covers all Americans would force more rural hospitals to close, according to hospital administrators from Texas to Maine. Universal health care — also known as “Medicare for All” — is a long way from becoming law. But the issue is already dividing Democrats trying to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. (O'Dowd, 8/16)

It took a shooter all of 32 seconds to spray 41 rounds outside a popular bar in Dayton, Ohio, this month, an attack that killed nine people and injured 27. A lightning-fast response from nearby officers prevented a far higher toll: When police shot him dead, the killer still had dozens of bullets to go in his double-drum, 100-round magazine. The use of such high-capacity magazines was banned in Ohio up until 2015, when a little-noticed change in state law legalized the devices, part of an overall rollback in gun-control measures that has been mirrored in states nationwide. (Witte, 8/18)

Following the news has grown stressful for Angela Tetschner, a 39-year-old nurse raising four children in this sprawling Phoenix suburb of tile roofs, desert yards, young families and voters who are increasingly up for grabs. “Sometimes I do think about the school shootings,” said Tetschner, who doesn’t pay much attention to politics but has been disappointed in President Donald Trump, days after sending her 5-year-old boy to kindergarten. She’d like to see Congress tighten gun laws, but her expectations for action are low. (Cooper, 8/19)

Authorities this weekend announced they had foiled three potential mass shootings after arresting three men in different states who expressed interest in or threatened to carry them out. All three cases were brought to authorities' attention thanks to tips from the public. Here's what we know about them. (Andone, Kaur and Holcombe, 8/19)

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke said Sunday the mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso was a "consequence and cost" of President Donald Trump. “It wasn't until that moment that I truly understood how critical this moment is and the real consequence and cost of Donald Trump,” O’Rourke said on NBC's “Meet the Press.“ (Kullgren, 8/18)

Before the slaughter of dozens of people in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso this year, the accused gunmen took pains to explain their fury, including their hatred of immigrants. The statements that authorities think the men posted online share another obsession: overpopulation and environmental degradation. The alleged Christchurch shooter, who is charged with targeting Muslims and killing 51 people in March, declared himself an “eco-fascist” and railed about immigrants’ birthrates. The statement linked to the El Paso shooter, who is charged with killing 22 people in a shopping area this month, bemoans water pollution, plastic waste and an American consumer culture that is “creating a massive burden for future generations.” (Achenbach, 8/18)

Virginia’s Crime Commission will devote two days this week to mass shootings and other gun violence, issues vexing a state where 32 died in a university massacre a dozen years ago, where another 12 were cut down at a municipal complex in May and where an average of three more were lost to less sensational shootings every day in between. Over day-long hearings Monday and Tuesday, the commission will hear from law enforcement officials, academics and activists. State delegates and senators will be there, too, presenting about 60 bills proposed for a special legislative session on guns that Republicans ended abruptly in July. (Vozzella, 8/18)

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, enacted after a gunman killed 17 students and faculty, enabled local sheriffs — at the discretion of school districts — to establish a program to train school employees as armed guards. The legislation also mandated that the state implement new incident-reporting tools and security risk assessment programs, while a law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis this year removed a provision from the first piece of legislation that barred classroom teachers from serving as armed guards.But last month a statewide grand jury report said some districts have yet to fully comply. (Gross, 8/19)

As the National Rifle Association flounders, some upstart pro-gun groups see an opportunity to become the nation’s most influential gun rights organization. The groups say they’re attracting new members and raking in donations. They’re hiring additional staff to work on grassroots advocacy and lobbying. One is going so far as to discuss at a conference in September how to fill the void left by the NRA, which has struggled to address internal squabbles and accusations of financial mismanagement. (Levine and Arkin, 8/18)

Years before there was an opioid epidemic in America, Sister Beth Davies knew it was coming. In the late 1990s, patient after patient addicted to a new prescription painkiller called OxyContin began walking into the substance abuse clinic she ran in this worn Appalachian town. A local physician, Dr. Art Van Zee, sensed the gathering storm, too, as teenagers overdosed on the drug. His wife, Sue Ella Kobak, a lawyer, saw the danger signs in a growing wave of robberies and other crimes that all had links to OxyContin. (Meier, 8/18)

By 2009, evidence of an epidemic in Washington was already widespread. More than 5,400 people had died of opioid overdoses since the beginning of the decade. Another 7,500 had been hospitalized for their addictions, and the phrase “opioid crisis” was beginning to creep into everyday conversation. But legislators that year were focused on a different crisis. The Great Recession had decimated government budgets, and over the next few sessions lawmakers were forced to trim state funding across the board. Among the more significant cuts: $35 million for addiction treatment and prevention. At the height of the opioid wave, at least four drug-treatment centers closed. (Rowe, 8/17)

Naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses, can save lives. Also known as Narcan, it reverses the effects of opioids such as oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine and heroin. Naloxone prescriptions have risen dramatically in recent years — the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows a 106 percent increase in prescriptions dispensed from 2017 to 2018 — but the drug is still new to many. That should change, public health officials say. In a recent news conference, CDC officials encouraged naloxone use. And U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams emphasized the overdose reversal drug’s importance in an advisory last year. (Blakemore, 8/17)

Two New Hampshire recovery advocates are organizing statewide vigils on Aug. 29 to remember and honor those lost to the state’s drug epidemic and to suicide, calling the event 10,000 Candles for New Hampshire. But T.J. Murphy and Matt Conway say what they really want to do is to build connections among people as a bulwark against the forces that lead to such troubles in the first place. Murphy and Conway are the co-founders of RecoverYdia, an organization that showcases video narratives of people who have found recovery from challenges in their lives. “The opposite of addiction is connection; the opposite of suicide is connection,” Murphy said. “And when people have meaningful human interactions, there are better mental health outcomes.” (Wickham, 8/18)

On Thursday night, Roche (RHHBY) announced that it would price Rozlytrek, its newly approved pill to treat cancer related to specific, rare genetic alterations, at $17,050 a month, about half the cost of a competing drug, Vitrakvi, sold by Eli Lilly and Bayer (BAYRY). Umer Raffat, an analyst at ISI Evercore, sent a note to clients asking if this is a “pricing war in cancer.” He noted that there are safety and efficacy differences between the drugs. “But with all the caveats, this will be a very interesting competitive dynamic to track in coming weeks,” he wrote. (Herper, 8/16)

Novartis AG Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan has spent part of his 18 months at the helm of the drug giant cleaning up issues that emerged before his watch. Now, he is facing a storm of his own making. Dr. Narasimhan said on a call with analysts earlier this month that the company kept a data-manipulation issue under wraps while the Food and Drug Administration completed its review of Novartis’s Zolgensma, the world’s most expensive drug. The Swiss company has said it wanted to finish its own review before alerting the FDA, which it eventually did. (Roland and Burton, 8/18)

The economic odds facing Avigail Rodriguez a few years ago couldn’t have been much worse. An undocumented immigrant and a single mother, she lived in a cramped apartment in a tough neighborhood in San Antonio and earned just $9 an hour working as a nurse’s assistant. Today, Ms. Rodriguez, 26, owns her own home in a safer area, earns nearly three times as much as she did before and has secured legal residency. The key to her turnaround was a training program called Project Quest, whose own ability to beat the odds is no less striking than that of Ms. Rodriguez. (Schwartz, 8/19)

Nomad Health, the Manhattan-based company focused on bringing transparency to healthcare staffing, said it had raised $34 million from venture capital firms in equity and debt funding. It declined to break down how much money was provided in return for equity compared to debt. The company, which allows healthcare employers to post job openings for temporary doctors and travel nurses, plans to use the money to increase its 50-employee workforce to 90 by the end of the year, said Dr. Alexi Nazem, the company's co-founder and CEO. It recently opened a second office in Charlotte, N.C. (LaMantia, 8/16)

The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world. Thousands of women — especially black women — experience pregnancy-related complications just before or in the year after childbirth, and about 700 women die every year from them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tech startup Mahmee wants to change that. Founded in 2014, the company works to help women during the weeks and months after they've given birth, via a mobile app that's designed to better connect new moms with health care and support, offering tools like surveys to assess their postpartum emotional and physical health. (Tobias and Neilson, 8/18)

Virtual reality is not new. But, as people search for alternative ways to manage pain — and reduce reliance on pills — VR is attracting renewed attention. Imagine, for a moment you've been transported to a sunlit lagoon. And, suddenly, it's as if you're immersed in the warm water and swimming. That's what Tom Norris experiences when he straps on his VR headset. (Aubrey, 8/19)

Kaiser Health News: DIY Tech Gives People More Freedom In Managing Diabetes

When Sam Mazaheri was 9, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. That means Sam’s body makes little or no insulin, a hormone that turns food into energy. “All of a sudden I had to manage everything he was going to take, including the insulin,” said Sam’s mom, Nasim Mazaheri. It was frightening, she said, and it felt like bringing home a newborn all over again. (de Marco, 8/19)

It can be hard to keep smiles healthy in rural areas, where dentists are few and far between and residents often are poor and lack dental coverage. Efforts to remedy the problem have produced varying degrees of success. The biggest obstacle? Dentists. Dozens of countries, such as New Zealand, use "dental therapists" — a step below a dentist, similar to a physician's assistant or a nurse practitioner — to bring basic dental care to remote areas, often tribal reservations. (Villeneuve, 8/18)

When Joann Alfonzo, a pediatrician in Freehold, N.J., walked into her office recently she mentally rolled her eyes when she saw her next patient: a 26-year-old car salesman in a suit and tie. “That’s no longer a kid. That’s a man,” she recalls thinking. Yet, Alfonzo wasn’t that surprised. In the past five years, she has seen the age of her patients rise, as more young adults remain at home and, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. (Chesler, 8/18)

Amy Martin’s 3-year-old twins were sick yet again — and the Anacortes, Wash., mom was fed up. “We were just getting cold after cold,” she says. Her solution: Dietary supplements. She searched online for ideas, then picked up a bottle of elderberry gummies. She wasn’t alone. Google logged over a half-million searches for “elderberry for colds” in the past year, and the market for elderberry products is growing. (Blakemore, 8/18)

When the juice boxes are served at children’s birthday parties, Gabrielle Gard hands her son his own box—of flavored water. The 28-year-old accountant in Lakeland, Fla., doesn’t want her son Asa, almost 2, drinking real juice. To help limit sugar, she digs into her bag for a juice-box alternative: Hint brand “fruity water,” whose label promises it has “no juice, no sugar” but is “fun, delicious, parent approved.” (Chaker, 8/18)

When the Environmental Protection Agency approved the spraying of certain antibiotics three years ago to fight a deadly bacterial infection decimating Florida’s orange groves, growers thought they might have found a silver bullet. But public health advocates reacted with alarm, warning that the large-scale use of medically important drugs in agriculture could help fuel antibiotic resistance in humans. Now a new study by citrus researchers at the University of Florida suggests the spraying of one of the recommended drugs could be for naught. (Jacobs, 8/16)

At Roots, the goal is to ensure mothers have autonomy over their pregnancy and delivery. In part, that means prenatal and postnatal visits are longer in an effort to tailor care to the individual. Deliveries in such birth centers have skyrocketed in Minnesota in recent years. (Richert, 8/19)

Amid a year-long Ebola outbreak that has no end in sight, this week’s headlines were unusually upbeat: “Ebola is now curable,” one proclaimed. “Ebola has finally been cured, say scientists,” announced another. “Ebola ‘no longer incurable’ as Congo trial finds drugs boost survival,” a third promised. (Baumgaertner, 8/16)

Beth Uffner, an avid tennis player, developed an aching pain first in her legs, then in her shoulders that got progressively worse until she lacked the strength to get out of a chair unaided, let alone play tennis. Faith Sullivan, a novelist, developed a headache so devastating that she could hardly read and had to take a fistful of aspirin to get through a scheduled talk about her books. Both women were in their mid-70s when they were seized by different but related inflammatory autoimmune conditions — polymyalgia rheumatica in Ms. Uffner, temporal arteritis in Ms. Sullivan. (Brody, 8/19)

Dwayne Lawson-Brown couldn’t find a home in his hometown. He spent over a year searching the District in 2016, but everything was too pricey. Frustrated and mourning the Washington he knew as a child, Lawson-Brown, 35, decided to list all the places he’d “lost.” The list became a poem — a poem centered on the Columbia Hospital for Women. (Natanson, 8/18)

After 15 years of failed efforts, Arlington is close to starting a specialized court program to address mental illness in the criminal justice system. But advocates say they were shut out of a plan that is now moving too quickly and would help too few people. “This is an issue of national importance,” said Naomi Verdugo, an advocate who helped organize a forum Thursday night to solicit comments on a plan expected to be sent to the Virginia Supreme Court for approval this fall. Most people in the criminal justice system, she noted, start in local jails. (Weiner, 8/16)

The City Council adopted the tax in June 2017 to improve the health of Seattle residents, and address persistent health and education inequities. The measure also created the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, which makes community-informed recommendations to the city about investing tax revenues to meet the goals identified above. The board prioritizes programs that advance equity and are likely to improve community well-being. (Krieger, 8/18)

Kaiser Health News: ER Redo: As Rural Hospital Closes, Emergency Care Is On The Blink With Fate Uncertain

For more than 30 minutes, Robert Findley lay unconscious in the back of an ambulance next to Mercy Hospital Fort Scott on a frigid February morning with paramedics hand-pumping oxygen into his lungs. A helipad sat just across the icy parking lot from the hospital’s emergency department, which had recently shuttered its doors, like hundreds of rural hospitals nationwide. (Tribble, 8/19)

A Johnson County lawyer and his wife — who have never vaccinated their 4-year-old son — are suing Blue Valley schools and state officials, calling Kansas’ immunization requirements unconstitutional and archaic. Linus and Terri Baker had previously sued the Kansas Department of Children and Families, which in 2017 had notified them it would vaccinate the boy against their wishes. That never happened. (Ritter, 8/17)

Cecilia Santillano faced a difficult decision last year before the power went out in her Simi Valley neighborhood: Ignore her monthly bills and buy a generator, or hope the batteries on her husband’s ventilators would outlast the next outage. “If I didn’t have the generator and there was no power and no sign of it getting turned on, George could start passing away,” said Santillano, whose husband suffers from a rare autoimmune disease and is bound to a wheelchair. “They are expensive and I didn’t want to buy it, but I’d rather be safe.” (Luna, 8/18)

The HRC is the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, and the 12th annual Healthcare Equality Index scores health care institutions on their ability to adopt non-discrimination policies so that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation and/or gender, receives quality care. The index was specifically developed back in 2007 to create a national standard to help facilities limit discrimination, HRC Director Tari Hanneman said. Hanneman said the HRC wanted to launch its national tour in Columbus because 10 of the index’s participating area facilities scored 100%, meaning those 10 institutions offer trans-inclusive benefits, increased staff training and recording of patients’ sexual orientations, among many other comprehensive practices. (Doyle, 8/16)

The psychiatric emergency department may be obscure to anyone who doesn't live with crippling depressive, bipolar, suicidal and schizophrenic episodes. But the stakes are high for the region, the clock is ticking and there are a raft of tough decisions and delicate compromises to work out if the county wants to replace the crisis center — not least, how to pay for it. (Schmid, 8/16)

It seems like the most Boston of problems, geographically located at the intersection of two of its busiest streets in the heart of the city. But city officials are saying the growing chaos near Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, where a congregation of people struggling with homelessness and addiction have clashed with neighbors and police, is a regional crisis that demands swift action from the state and other municipalities. (Levenson, 8/16)

Community health paramedics like Price and the Travis County mental health care provider Integral Care, where Dorrier is a program manager, work with Austin police and the Downtown Austin Community Court to eliminate barriers to permanent housing that Austin’s homeless population can face. In some cases, that might mean helping someone get a new copy of their birth certificate or Social Security card. In other instances, where heath is an issue, it could be rushing someone to an emergency room. (Karacostas, 8/18)

Along a big, commercial street in L.A.'s North Hollywood area, near a row of empty storefronts, about a half dozen motor homes sat parked on a recent morning. Inside one of them, 67-year-old Edith Grays and her husband watched TV with the door open. Grays said they'd been there a few days, despite a two-hour parking limit. "Thank God they're not bothering us right now," she said. (Scott, 8/19)

Amid a proliferation of new pot shops in Massachusetts, health care officials are seeing an ominous trend: a sharp increase in calls to the state’s poison control center about toddlers getting into marijuana products — usually brownies, chocolate bars, or gummies — and ending up in the emergency room. The number of calls about children 5 and younger ingesting marijuana nearly tripled in the first seven months after recreational pot shops opened last November, compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention. (Lazar, 8/16)

Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease: Between 2007 and 2017, an estimated 94.5 million people caught tuberculosis, and more than 14 million died from it. Rising numbers are being infected by strains of the disease that are resistant to all known antibiotics. Yet until recently, no new classes of drugs for tuberculosis had been brought to market for 46 years. (Douglas M. Foster, 8/16)

Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. In 2017, the World Health Organization reported that about 10 million people globally developed active tuberculosis, which is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and that 1.6 million died from the disease. While the illness can be cured, not everyone gets treatment — the WHO has identified “large and persistent gaps in detection and treatment” — and those who do sometimes quit taking the big handful of pills prematurely. Another factor is the rise of drug-resistant strains that are more difficult to treat. (8/17)

Pretomanid’s approval is an important milestone because it illustrates the additive impact of the many systems in place to incentivize infectious disease countermeasure development. Pretomanid was subject to expedited priority review and approved using a modified criterion known as the limited population pathway (LPAD).  (Amesh A. Adalja, 8/17)

A genetically modified fungus weaponized with spider venom; using mobile phone data to track infectious disease spread; a drug that turns human beings into living “mosquito zappers.” What do these things have in common? They’re not rejected ideas for a sci-fi plot, but real-world projects that innovators are developing today to combat mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria. (Martin Edlund, 8/16)

According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression rose by more than 60 percent among those ages 14 to 17, and 47 percent among those ages 12 to 13. This isn’t just a matter of increased diagnoses. The number of children and teenagers who were seen in emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts or having attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2015. To put it simply, our kids are not O.K. (Kim Brooks, 8/17)

Many people wonder whether our society’s desire for cleanliness may have gone too far and is causing health problems. For parents, this raises an interesting question: How dirty should you let your kid get? Eating dirt might be a stretch, but it’s certainly good for them to play in it, and it’s definitely important and beneficial for children to spend time in natural areas such as farms and forests. (Cosby Stone, 8/17)

Weight Watchers — now rebranded as WW — has introduced an app called Kurbo, for children 8 to 17 years old. As a registered dietitian who specializes in helping people recover from disordered eating, I strongly recommend that parents keep this new tool — and any weight-loss program — away from their children. Our society is unfair and cruel to people who are in larger bodies, so I can empathize with parents who might believe their child needs to lose weight, and with any child who wants to. Unfortunately, attempts to shrink a child’s body are likely to be both ineffective and harmful to physical and mental health. (Christy Harrison, 8/18)

When "Mad Men's" Betty Draper puffed on a cigarette while pregnant, modern audiences cringed. Public awareness of smoking’s toll on people’s lungs and on their children has come far since the 1960s. But lung cancer and birth defects are only a couple of the severe health problems associated with tobacco use. New warning labels the Food and Drug Administration rolled out last Thursday aim to make other potential health consequences better known — with large, graphic depictions of what else long-term smokers should expect from their habit. One of the new labels shows a man with a heart surgery scar running up his chest, warning that smoking clogs arteries and causes heart disease and strokes. (8/18)

Buprenorphine saved my life. Unlike other opioids, buprenorphine is a partial opiate-agonist. Think of it as a life raft or a snorkel. You’re neither high nor drowning, but you’re still in the middle of the ocean. Any doctor can prescribe Oxycontin and fentanyl. Less than 7% of doctors have the special license required to prescribe buprenorphine as an addiction treatment, and there’s a limit to the number of patients each doctor can treat. In 2016, the Obama administration increased the number from 100 to 275 — where it stands today. (David Poses, 8/18)

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., had a run-in with the Greatest Generation on Aug. 12. Roberta Jewell, a resident at the Bickford Senior Living Center in Muscatine, Iowa, told the Democratic presidential hopeful to "leave our health care alone."Like many Americans, Jewell is reluctant to embrace the "Medicare-for-all" plans Harris and several of her Democratic colleagues have proposed. The Iowan is right to be wary. Medicare-for-all would destroy Medicare as we know it -- and make it harder for seniors to access care. (Sally Pipes, 8/18)

Upward of 15 new Ebola infections are occurring every day. In Goma, a city of 2 million people that borders Rwanda, and has an international airport, four patients have been diagnosed with the disease and two have died of it. We are at a precipice. If this epidemic is not brought under control quickly, it will spread beyond the DRC and possibly beyond Africa, as occurred during the West African Ebola epidemic in 2014 to 2016. The World Health Organization’s recent declaration of a public health emergency of international concern in the DRC is a welcome step forward and will attract sorely needed resources. But it will take more — much more — to turn around this situation. (Joel G. Breman, 8/19)

A recent article in The Guardian, painfully illustrated how residents of Greenland, the world’s largest non-continental island located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, are experiencing mental health problems as they intimately experience climate change. The ongoing increase in the Earth's average surface temperature is resulting in the disappearing beauty of Greenland, and the dissolution of their way of life. Inhabitants’ angst over this tremendous loss has been labeled ecological grief. To some, this may sound like something happening to strangers in a foreign land. What they do not yet realize is that the emotional challenge of climate change is all of ours. (Joan Cook, 8/16)

In many areas of health policy, the best of intentions can lead to more harm than good. Such is the case with America’s approach to alcohol and pregnancy. The best evidence shows that punitive policies — such as equating drinking while pregnant as child abuse and threatening to involve child protective services — can dissuade women from getting prenatal care. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders refer to a collection of problems in babies and children. (Aaron E. Carroll, 8/19)

Two men lacking the common sense God gave a garden slug strolled into a Kansas City Walmart with a rifle and a handgun on Sunday and, whew, were promptly taken into custody. But under this state’s laws, police later said they’d done nothing illegal. Which only shows how unholstered and unhinged Missouri’s gun laws and their makers really are. (Melinda Henneberger, 8/19)

People of all races have mental illnesses. But the vast majority of mass shooters in our country are white. If mental illness was the cause of mass shootings, we’d see people of all genders and all races and in countries around the world perpetrating this crime at the same rates. Since that’s not the case, it defies logic to place the blame for mass shootings on mental illness. Finally, all mass shooters do not have a mental illness, but they do all have a gun. (Elisa Hoffman, 8/16)

Shot in the Dark, Phoenix's largest needle exchange, may close because it doesn't have the resources to keep pace with demand. Yet a department spokesperson told The Arizona Republic that these programs – which the state has yet to authorize – do “not have an immediate impact on reducing deaths.” (Tony Rivero, 8/16)