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“I come from the smallest town in Mississippi, in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” said Gerald Gibson, outreach manager at Open Arms Healthcare Center, the only clinic created to serve gay black men in this state. “Growing up, I didn’t know anybody like me,” he added. “I come from a culture that says you’re going to hell for being homosexual and AIDS is God’s wrath.” President Trump’s plan to end America’s epidemic of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, within 10 years is not going to succeed easily in places like this. (McNeil, 3/18)

An estimated 80% of the nearly 40,000 new HIV infections that occurred in the U.S. in 2016 were transmitted from those who either did not know their diagnosis or were not receiving regular care to maintain their virus at nearly non-transmissible levels, according to health officials. In a new report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday highlighted the gaps in access to treatment and testing resources that exists within the HIV care continuum. Those gaps have led to a halt in recent years to the progress made over the past two decades in reducing HIV infections. (Johnson, 3/18)

Thirty-eight percent of people with HIV weren't receiving treatment and were linked to 81 percent of new infections of the virus, according to 2016 data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Monday. Of the 1.1 million people living with HIV in the U.S. in 2016, 15 percent were unaware they had the virus and were linked to 38 percent of new infections, according to the data. (Hellmann, 3/18)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday detailed its new initiative to reduce new human immunodeficiency virus infections in the United States by at least 90% over 10 years. President Donald Trump called for the elimination of HIV transmissions in the United States by 2030 during the State of the Union address in February. On Monday, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams highlighted four key elements of the HIV program -- diagnose, treat, protect and respond in more detail than previously outlined. (Scutti, 3/18)

Multiple bills that would provide protection and treatment for victims of sexual assault, as well as assist local law enforcement agencies with the testing and tracking of rape kits, made their way through the House and Senate, ahead of the Monday deadline for bills to crossover into the other chamber. These bills are the byproduct of a January report on sexual assault evidence kits in the state, produced by the Maryland Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Policy and Funding Committee. (Oyefusi, 3/18)

As the Trump administration prepares to launch a controversial program to expand private medical care for veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is developing a software tool to determine who’s eligible. But the tool is so flawed, according to an independent review obtained by ProPublica, that it threatens to disrupt the health care of about 75,000 veterans every day. “This degradation goes against the spirit of the Mission Act to improve the veterans experience and quality of care,” the review said, referring to the 2018 law that authorized the program to expand private care. The program is supposed to start in less than three months. (Arnsdorf, 3/18)

Many of the largest publicly traded health insurers saw their bottom lines soar in 2018. Their CEOs' paychecks were no different. Michael Neidorff, CEO of the managed Medicaid and ACA exchange insurer Centene Corp., received $26.1 million in total compensation in 2018, a figure that includes stock awards that would vest in the future, according to the insurer's definitive proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. That's a 3.4% raise from 2017. (Livingston, 3/18)

The healthcare industry is likely still several years away from assuming full risk in value-based payment models, according to a new survey. A market in which the majority of value-based relationships include both upside and downside shared risk is three to five years off, according to nearly 40% of 185 healthcare executives surveyed by the HealthCare Executive Group and Change Healthcare. About 17% said it will take five or more years and 6% said it will never happen. These new payment programs seem perpetually stuck in a state of delay, researchers said. (Kacik, 3/18)

Kaiser Health News: When Doctors Disappear Without A Word, A Noncompete Clause Could Be The Reason

When Don Cue developed a bladder infection last fall, he called his longtime urologist’s office for a urine culture and antibiotics. It was a familiar routine for the two-time prostate cancer survivor; infections were not uncommon since he began using a catheter that connects to his bladder through an incision in his abdomen. When Cue called this time, a receptionist told him that his physician, Dr. Mark Kellerman, no longer worked at the Iowa Clinic in Des Moines, a large multi-specialty group. She refused to divulge where he’d gone. (Andrews, 3/19)

The American Civil Liberties Union and a group of abortion providers argued on Monday that a federal court should allow a trial on whether to strike down a 40-year-old Maine law that prevents non-doctors from performing abortions. The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Maine Family Planning and four clinicians brought their case to U.S. District Court in Portland, where a judge is expected to make a ruling in the coming weeks about whether to let the case go forward. (Whittle, 3/18)

Abortion rights activists chanted “shame” as Republicans on a Georgia Senate committee moved Monday to ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The Senate Science and Technology Committee approved the bill on a party-line vote of 3 to 2. The legislation, backed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, has passed the House and now could go quickly to the floor of the GOP-controlled Senate. (Mansoor and Nadler, 3/18)

Chanting “shame” and “no safe seats” as Capitol police escorted Republican lawmakers to an elevator, abortion rights advocates vowed to continue to fight House Bill 481, which would outlaw most abortions once a doctor detects a heartbeat in the womb.If it passes, it would be among the strictest abortion laws in the country. Current Georgia law allows abortions to be performed until 20 weeks into a pregnancy. (Prabhu, 3/18)

A student at a Catholic school in Kentucky has sued the Northern Kentucky Health Department, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights by barring him from playing basketball because he refused to be vaccinated against chickenpox. The lawsuit, filed last week in Boone County Circuit Court on behalf of the student, Jerome Kunkel, an 18-year-old senior, argues that the action violates his right to freedom of religion. Being vaccinated, it contends, would go against Mr. Kunkel’s religious beliefs as a practicing Catholic, because the vaccine contains “aborted fetal cells.” (de Leon, 3/18)

YouTube said it was banning anti-vaccination channels from running online advertisements. Facebook announced it was hiding certain content and turning away ads that contain misinformation about vaccines, and Pinterest said it was blocking “polluted” search terms, memes and pins from particular sites prompting anti-vaccine propaganda, according to news reports. Amazon has now joined other companies navigating the line between doing business and censoring it, in an age when, experts say, misleading claims about health and science have a real impact on public health. (Bever, 3/18)

A second measles case has been reported in Collin County, where the contagious person visited a grocery store, health officials said Monday. The contagious person spent a "limited amount of time" between 9 and 10 a.m. Friday at a Kroger on North Preston Road in Prosper, Collin County Health Care Services said. The person did not report going to any other public locations, and the health department said it is working to contact people at private locations. (Cardona, 3/18)

Connecticut children are still vaccinated at a higher rate than the national average, but the number has dropped in recent years — with most of the state’s unvaccinated children avoiding immunizations by claiming a religious exemption. The drop off in immunizations follows a national trend that concerns doctors, health insurers and school administrators and is prompting states like Connecticut to weigh taking action. (Radelat, 3/18)

A new fertility tracking app, Dot, is billing itself as form of contraception — and touting the results of a new efficacy study that shows the app may be up to 99 percent effective as a form of birth control. With statistics like that, Dot — part of a surge in fertility and contraception apps — would appear to be one of the most effective birth control tools available. But there’s also significant debate over how to measure the effectiveness of these tools, as well as questions about which apps should be available in the first place. (Sheridan, 3/18)

After a high-profile clinical failure in 2016, investor interest in the much-hyped field of microbiome science chilled almost instantly. Now, however, the small but growing industry is starting to rebound. Several key companies in the field, which focuses on manipulating microbes that are or ought to be in a person’s body, expect to report Phase 2 data by the end of this year, including the Somerville, Mass.-based Finch Therapeutics and a privately held French microbiome biotech, MaaT. Even bigger players in the field, Rebiotix and Seres Therapeutics, are currently running pivotal studies — at least one of which should be fully enrolled by the middle of next year. (Sheridan, 3/19)

Poets and politicians have long known that hearts and minds are linked. Now neuroscientists and cardiologists have shown again, in a study published this month in The European Heart Journal, that the connection is more than metaphorical. It turns out that those afflicted by a rare, serious condition known as “broken-heart syndrome” have brains that work differently from those of healthy people, suggesting that what happens in the head can hurt the heart. The condition, known medically as Takotsubo syndrome, usually follows the experience of extreme stress, such as that felt after the loss of a loved one. (Reynolds, 3/19)

According to studies, 50 to 80 percent of patients with treatment-resistant depression get relief from their symptoms with ketamine infusions, and no one knows exactly why. At Actify Neurotherapies, which has a blossoming number of treatment centers around the country, including ones in Bryn Mawr and Princeton, the response rate has been an average of 70 percent, according to the founding psychiatrist and chief medical officer, Steve Levine. Now the FDA has approved esketamine, a nasal spray and a derivative of ketamine, which will go under the brand name Spravato, developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals. (Harris Bond, 3/19)

For more than a decade, the recommended treatment for most pregnant women who previously had given birth prematurely was a weekly injection of a synthetic progestin hormone. AMAG Pharmaceuticals , which sells such a treatment, recently announced the results of a new study: It wasn’t effective. On March 8, the company said a long-term clinical trial revealed no difference in the preterm birth rates of 1,700 pregnant women who took either their treatment, named Makena, or a placebo. The trial also showed no increased risk of complications. (Reddy, 3/18)

New numbers suggest that a purified fish oil derivative, a prescription drug called Vascepa, is more effective at preventing cardiovascular events than previously thought. The drug lowered the rate of these events in high-risk patients -- including strokes, heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular causes -- by 30% overall versus placebo, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. (Nedelman, 3/18)

Minorities have been largely absent from the push for medical cannabis across the South. Following the lead of Arkansas and Florida, white male conservative lawmakers are spearheading legalization drives in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. (Blau, 3/18)

Frequent consumption of sugary drinks such as sodas, sports drinks and juice is linked to an increased risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease and, to a lesser extent, from cancer, according to new research. Compared with women who had sugary beverages less than once per month, those who had more than two servings a day -- defined as a standard glass, bottle or can -- had a 63% increased risk of premature death, according to a study published Monday in the journal Circulation. Men who did the same had a 29% increase in risk. (Bracho-Sanchez, 3/18)

Teen vaping is on the rise, and schools are searching for solutions, with some taking disciplinary action or installing vape detectors in bathrooms. Still, the problem has continued to swell. The US Food and Drug Administration announced in November that vaping had increased nearly 80% among high schoolers and 50% among middle schoolers since the year before. The resignation announcement of the agency's commissioner -- Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who vowed to crack down on what he described as an "epidemic" of teen vaping -- has only added to the uncertainty over what's to come. (Nedelman, 3/18)

At one of her 12-year-old daughter’s swim meets last year, a surgeon who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan noticed that something was off: Her daughter wasn’t lifting her arms out of the water. “A boy on her swim team had meanly told her that she shouldn’t swim so hard and lift her arms up because everyone could see her underarm hair,” she said. “I realized then that the hair was a serious issue for her and that she should have it removed.” Her daughter became one of a rising number of preteens turning to professionals for hair removal. (Vora, 3/19) [This item was updated on Aug. 20, 2020, to reflect changes made by the New York Times.]

Giving a baby a new food to try is fun, and it should be. The only concerns parents should have: finding their phones fast enough to document the funny faces and cleaning up the mess that might follow. Yet in recent years, scientific evidence has accumulated quickly on what foods to introduce when and how to best prevent allergies -- leaving parents to keep track of it all. On Monday, based on a detailed review of all available evidence on the topic, the American Academy of Pediatrics published updated guidance on what works and what doesn't when it comes to the prevention of food allergies and other allergic conditions. (Bracho-Sanchez, 3/18)

The Minnesota House voted Monday night to hold drug manufacturers responsible for the state's growing costs for dealing with the opioid crisis. The bill passed 94-34 after around four hours of debate that split mostly along party lines. It would support a wide range of prevention, education, intervention, treatment and recovery strategies. The state would pay for them by sharply raising its currently low annual registration fees for pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota. (3/18)

Minnesota has the nation’s only divided Legislature with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans leading the Senate. When the legislative session began, leaders were quick to say they wanted to find common ground. Halfway through their session such agreements have been rare, until Monday’s six-plus-hour House floor session. All three of the bills passed have a strong chance of eventually making it to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s desk for his signature. (Magan, 3/18)

Suicide and opioid overdose deaths both rose in Minnesota in 2017, extending a trend that began in 2000 and reaching record levels, according to data released Monday by state health officials who called it “a worrisome long-term trend.” Deaths by suicide rose 5 percent, while opioid overdose deaths jumped 12 percent. Deaths from alcohol-related causes declined slightly in 2017, but have also posted a long-term increase, according to the state Department of Health report. (Howatt and Van Oot, 3/18)

The opioid epidemic has required public health and other authorities to open numerous pathways to treatment to try to aid those who are addicted. Providing treatment on demand is important, experts say, because many addicted people want help one moment but turn away from it the next because of withdrawal sickness or environmental triggers that cause them to use drugs. (DeMio, 3/18)

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh stepped down from the University of Maryland Medical System’s board of directors on Monday, days after it came to light that the hospital network had for years purchased her self-published children’s books. Board positions are unpaid, but The Baltimore Sun reported last week that around a third of the board has received compensation through the UMMS network’s contracts with their businesses. The newspaper revealed that Pugh failed to fully disclose a $500,000 business relationship she began with the 11-hospital network in 2011. (3/18)

As head of New York City's correctional health services, Dr. Homer Venters spent nine years overseeing the care of thousands of inmates in the jails on Rikers Island. Though he left Rikers in 2017, what he witnessed on the job has stayed with him. "What's important to consider about jail settings is that they are incredibly dehumanizing, and they dehumanize the individuals who pass through them," Venters says. "There is not really a true respect for the rights of the detained." (Davies, 3/18)

The newfound push among state leaders and legislators around school safety and preventing mass shootings is reinvigorating ideas around mental health care for Texas children. But mental health advocates often cringe when legislators make the argument that mental health care can prevent mass shootings, saying the rhetoric stigmatizes people with mental illness as if they’re inherently violent. (Evans, 3/19)

More than half of Texas' poor children live in families where 50 percent or more of household income goes to housing, leaving little money left for necessities such as healthcare, a new national study shows. That lack of affordable housing carries a ripple effect that can also lead to a lack of healthy food, an inability to fill prescriptions or seek medical care, transportation problems and it influences where children go to school, which can ultimately determine their success as adults, researchers concluded. (Deam, 3/18)

Three Kansas hospitals are among six hospitals once run by a North Kansas City-based company that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Two of the three, Horton Community Hospital and Oswego Community Hospital, have closed in the last few weeks. The third, Hillsboro Community Hospital, remains open under the auspices of a court-ordered receivership.  (Margolies, 3/18)

The bill would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to patients who have six months or less to live and who are in dire pain. Patients would have to submit two written requests for the medication, and a physician must inform them of the risks and alternatives. (Carlesso, 3/18)

The New York State Nurses Association said it would give notice Monday that it intends to strike April 2. This follows months of stalled contract negotiations because of a dispute over staffing levels. The notice will be delivered to Montefiore, Mount Sinai and New York–Presbyterian health systems, where more than 10,000 NYSNA members work, according to the union. (LaMantia, 3/18)

The number of flaring incidents in 2018 at Chevron's Richmond refinery was at its highest level in 12 years, according to data the Bay Area Air Quality Management District released Monday at a board of directors committee meeting. The refinery experienced nine flaring events last year, more than any other refinery in the Bay Area. (Goldberg, 3/18)

The leadership at Jupiter (Fla.) Medical Center isn't sharing much detail on the circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of its CEO, who held the position for a little over a year. Don McKenna took the helm of the 327-bed hospital in January 2018. Late last week, the hospital said in a statement that McKenna and its board of trustees had determined their visions were no longer aligned. (Bannow, 3/18)

Researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, who compile annual health rankings for every county in the nation, are focusing this year on where people live, whether they experience severe housing problems and how having a good, affordable home is tied to healthy living. (Viviano and Ferenchik, 3/19)

According to the most recent data, the average infant mortality rate in Wisconsin is 4.8 per 1,000 white infants, compared to 14.2 for African American infants. And, the maternal mortality rate in Wisconsin is five times higher for black women than for white women. (Schwabe, 3/18)

The inspector general in charge of investigating fraud in Minnesota’s health and welfare programs has been placed on leave, less than a week after the legislative auditor found high levels of fraud in the state’s child-care assistance program and “significant distrust” within the agency that administers it. Carolyn Ham remains inspector general of the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), but the agency said she is “out of the office,” as of Monday. A spokeswoman for the department declined to explain why Ham was put on leave or say for how long, citing data privacy concerns. Ham did not return multiple telephone calls and e-mails Monday. (Sterres, 3/18)

The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the convictions and sentences of a Phoenix woman who faked having cancer to receive an abortion, the Arizona Attorney General's Office said Monday. Chalice Renee Zeitner was convicted on fraud, theft and forgery charges in 2016 and sentenced to 28 years in prison after she obtained a state-funded late-term abortion using a forged letter from a physician saying she had cancer. (Coble, 3/18)

San Francisco has made remarkable strides against HIV over the past half decade: New infection numbers are the lowest since the start of the epidemic. Two-thirds of people with HIV have the virus so well under control that it’s undetectable in their blood. But these health improvements in the overall population stand in stark contrast to the stubborn effect of HIV among one subset of patients: people who are homeless. (Allday, 3/18)

Umatilla County fell and Morrow County improved in a national report that scrutinizes health behaviors. Umatilla County dropped from 15th to 20th of Oregon’s 36 counties in the annual County Health Rankings, released Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Morrow County rose from 19th to ninth. The report is a snapshot in time in health outcomes such as premature death, low birthweight and poor physical/mental health days. (Aney, 3/19)

A Massachusetts woman has filed a lawsuit against a Rhode Island hospital she says froze her embryo and kept it in storage for 13 years without her knowledge. The Providence Journal reports that Marisa Cloutier-Bristol says in her lawsuit against Women & Infants Hospital in Providence that its negligence took away her chance to have another child and caused her severe emotional distress. (3/18)

The students were there as part of an effort to use mobile air monitors to test levels of volatile organic compounds in the area, to set a baseline for comparison in the future as some worry that proposed projects nearby could affect air quality. They are testing at three sites in the Lower 9th Ward: the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi River earthen levee. They’ll be returning to the sites to get readings twice a month until the end of the year. (Sneath, 3/18)

Now, nearly four years later, a broad coalition of lawmakers plus some powerful lobbyists support expanding access to medical cannabis in Texas. But bills to do so face a major obstacle: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate's presiding officer, who can single-handedly block any legislation from coming up for a vote in the upper chamber. (Samuels, 3/19)

Imagine being able to shop for a knee-replacement surgery the way most people shop for a flight — by comparing prices on a website like Orbitz or Cheapflights.com, and understanding the full cost of exactly what you’re getting before shelling out your hard-earned money. It’s hard to imagine because hospitals, doctors and other health care providers guard the prices they negotiate with insurance companies for medical services with, one might say, our lives. Providers and insurers have long regarded prices as proprietary, shrouding them in secrecy through confidentiality agreements. (3/19)

Scott Gottlieb’s unexpected resignation as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration caused widespread concern that we are losing steady hands on a crucial government agency. Those concerns were allayed by the announcement last week that Norman “Ned” Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, will succeed him as acting commissioner. Sharpless, no doubt, has the scientific knowledge and leadership skills needed to defend public health and advance science while overseeing and regulating industries that together account for nearly 25 percent of the nation’s economic activity. Nevertheless, strong headwinds await anyone who takes the reins of the FDA in the coming years. The public health community is wading into uncharted territories on many fronts, and it needs strong leadership to guide the way. (Robert M. Califf, 3/18)

House Democrats’ new Medicare for All bill asserts “a moral imperative . . . to eliminate profit from the provision of health care.” The legislation specifies that federal health funding—virtually all health funding if the bill were to become law—may not be used for “the profit or net revenue of the provider.” That makes it more radical and less realistic than even Bernie Sanders’ plan. In one stroke, the House bill would sweep away the business model used by the vast majority of doctors in private practice, 28% of hospitals, 70% of nursing homes, and countless clinics, outpatient surgery facilities, dialysis centers, home-care agencies and more. The bill doesn’t detail an enforcement mechanism, but it seems to mean that thousands of providers would either have to reorganize as nonprofits or shut down. (Bill Hammond, 3/18)

The two middle-schoolers had never met in person, but they both struggled with depression and were drawn to the same dark group chat. When one wrote that he planned to kill himself, the other took an image of his post. “I’m so freaked out,” she told me, her school counselor. “Please find him and make sure he’s okay.” With some assistance, I was able to figure out what Washington-area school the boy attended. When I called his principal, she was bewildered. Her student could be disruptive in class, she told me, but he didn’t seem sad. (Phyllis L. Fagell, 3/18)

It’s bad enough that Congress allows military assault-style weapons to be sold to the general public, making instruments of mass carnage available for the price of a laptop computer. Making matters worse, lawmakers have granted the gun industry near-blanket protection from liability for the damage inflicted with their weapons, unlike other companies that make or sell deadly products. That shield against liability — the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act — was passed in response to a wave of lawsuits in the late 1990s against gun manufacturers and dealers for injuries and deaths caused by their goods. Last week, however, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued a ruling that might open a narrow breach in that outrageous legal wall protecting the industry. (3/19)

As a medical student fumbling with the fundamentals of interviewing patients and taking medical histories, the realities of being a doctor seem like a far-off dream. My colleagues and I work hard to prepare ourselves to be equipped to address the increasingly complex health care issues that will affect the lives of our future patients, from inequities in access to quality care to multidrug resistance. The most pressing of these issues is climate change, a growing environmental emergency that will have devastating health impacts. (Anna Goshua, 3/19)

Last summer, the World Health Organization recognized Internet gaming as a diagnosable addiction. This was an important step in aligning practice with research, but we need to go further. Psychologists and other mental-health professionals must begin to acknowledge that technology use has the potential to become addictive and impact individuals and communities — sometimes with dire consequences. (Doreen Dodgen-Magee, 3/18)