Health

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban into law Thursday as the state joined a growing conservative push to restrict access to the procedure ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could roll... Read More

WASHINGTON — Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., hosted a forum on Wednesday on Black maternal health to highlight the efforts being made to address reproductive issues in the U.S. for women of color. The forum aligns with Black Maternal Health Week... Read More

WASHINGTON — Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a letter this week to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf, requesting the FDA step up efforts to ensure the... Read More

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released a draft recommendation statement Tuesday regarding suicide screenings for adolescents and children. According to the recommendations, screenings for major depressive disorders are not recommended for children aged 11 or younger.  The task force advised that... Read More

Reps. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Lucy McBath, D-Ga., and several other Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to President Biden on April 8, reiterating a request to establish an Interagency Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention. In the letter, the representatives recall... Read More

On April 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released updated cybersecurity guidance for medical device manufacturers. According to the new guidance, “cybersecurity incidents have rendered medical devices and hospital networks inoperable, disrupting the delivery of patient care across health care facilities... Read More

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday the mask mandate for federal public transportation will be extended through May 3. The federal mask mandate, initially set to expire on April 18, applies to airports and airplanes, trains... Read More

A study published in JAMA Health Forum on April 8 suggests that turnover rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels across most groups of health care workers. Despite this finding, the recovery is uneven across the health care sector, and the report recommends... Read More

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, along with Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., led a bicameral, bipartisan group... Read More

A report released this week by the Government Accountability Office provides a detailed explanation of the relationship between labor force participation and substance use.  The nearly 40-page report analyzes data collected from 2015-2019 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s... Read More

Reps. A. Donald McEachin, D-Va., Dan Kildee, D-Mich., and Antonio Delgado, D-N.Y., led a bipartisan group of 38 lawmakers this week in penning a letter urging the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention to close a reporting loophole allowing hundreds of... Read More

WASHINGTON — The federal COVID-19 public health emergency, first declared Jan. 27, 2020,  was set to expire on April 16. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday extended the COVID-19 public health emergency for 90 days. A number... Read More

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A new study from researchers at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center provides evidence as to why people suffer from overnutrition and possible therapeutics that could be developed to treat metabolic syndrome. “I was always interested in body... Read More

WASHINGTON — Since the Biden administration’s announcement marking the expected end of the Title 42 migrant expulsion health authority, bipartisan and bicameral lawmakers have pushed back on the policy’s revocation. Legislation was introduced last week by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla.,... Read More

WASHINGTON — Despite pressure to go another way, Medicare on Thursday evening announced it will only cover the new Alzheimer’s disease drug Aduhelm for people participating in a clinical trial. The decision came as something of a surprise as Medicare... Read More

WASHINGTON — This week the U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing to discuss the opioid crisis in tribal communities. “Opioid overdose deaths during the pandemic increased more in Native American communities than … for... Read More

A hearing was held on Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health to discuss 19 mental health bills, several of which have already passed the House. A number of the bills support establishing better links to... Read More

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a meeting on Wednesday to discuss future COVID-19 vaccine booster doses and the process for selecting specific strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for vaccines to address current and emerging variants. The big debate of the... Read More

A coalition of Puerto Rican health care members recently sent a letter to the Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, requesting equity in the Medicare Advantage program.  “Seniors in Puerto Rico are... Read More

A study developed by researchers at Northwestern University finds that light exposure during sleep impairs cardiometabolic function.  The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that in healthy adults one night of moderate light exposure during sleep can... Read More

Researchers from the University of Bristol have published two papers in the Journal of Royal Society Interface that give the first in-depth comparison of an artificial fingertip with neural recordings of the human sense of touch.  Evidence from the first and second papers shows... Read More

A paper published on Monday in Nature finds that researchers in an African clinical trial called ANTICOV, which aims to find COVID-19 treatments that are effective in resource-poor settings, have been denied access to key antiviral drugs.  According to the paper, the... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will institute new efforts this week to accelerate prevention, detection and treatment of long COVID. “There are federal efforts underway at the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [National Institutes of Health]... Read More

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard an oral argument Monday from National Nurses United regarding the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration's emergency temporary standard for protecting health care workers... Read More

WASHINGTON — The U.S. health care system does a poor job of serving women of reproductive age compared to 10 other wealthy countries, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. “Women use the health care system more than men do,”... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed a bill capping the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for insured patients, part of an election-year push by Democrats for price curbs on prescription drugs at a time of rising inflation. Experts... Read More

The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange and the Confidentiality Coalition recently sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Commerce with recommendations to better protect patient health information from third-party apps. The WEDI, formed by... Read More

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy held an event on Tuesday to discuss the science behind clean indoor air and why Americans should care. Since May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised the main... Read More

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden delivered remarks regarding the roll out of COVID.gov, a new one-stop shop website for people in the U.S. to access vaccines, tests, treatments, masks and receive local COVID-19 updates. The president outlined new tools, like a... Read More

Researchers from the University of Minnesota will soon begin a human trial to develop a new birth control method for men using a compound known as YCT529. There are currently only two forms of male birth control: condoms and vasectomies.  ... Read More