Republicans press Becerra on gender-affirming care, reproductive rights
Sarah Owermohle, Stat News
GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee repeatedly interrogated Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra about issues like gender-affirming care, reproductive rights, and migrant children at the border, continuing a theme laid out by two Senate committees last week as Becerra embarks on a committee tour to sell President Biden’s proposed 2024 budget.
Dem AGs clash with Biden admin over abortion pill restrictions
Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico
The Biden administration is fighting a Democratic-led effort to make abortion pills more accessible even as it simultaneously opposes a GOP-led effort to ban the drugs nationwide.
WHO to consider adding obesity drugs to ‘essential’ medicines list
Jennifer Rigby, Reuters
Drugs that combat obesity could for the first time be included on the World Health Organization’s “essential medicines list,” used to guide government purchasing decisions in low- and middle-income countries, the U.N. agency told Reuters. A panel of advisers to the WHO will review new requests for drugs to be included next month, with an updated essential medicines list due in September.
A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the U.S. How worried should we be?
Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News
Pigs and goats likely catch it too. It’s been found in humans’ noses in the southwest— and in the air at airports and at chicken farms in Malaysia.
The Incredible Challenge of Counting Every Global Birth and Death
Jeneen Interlandi, The New York Times Magazine
In rural Colombia, as in many parts of the world, tallying births and deaths is one of the most desperately needed public-health measures. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Over-the-Counter Narcan Could Save More Lives. But Price and Stigma Are Obstacles.
Jan Hoffman, The New York Times
The Food and Drug Administration is expected this week to allow the overdose-reversal medication to be sold without a prescription, a step toward making it a common emergency tool.
Government to step up efforts to monitor health of East Palestine residents, first responders
Brenda Goodman, CNN
Almost two months after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio, the state Department of Health is preparing to offer blood and urine testing and physical exams to first responders who rushed to fight the blaze. The testing is set to start within the next two weeks and will be the first step in a long-term effort to monitor the health of responders to the accident, according to an email obtained by CNN.
The simple intervention that may keep Black moms healthier
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey, WBUR
Studies show that Black people are more than twice as likely as white people to experience severe pregnancy-related complications, and nearly three times as likely to have a pregnancy-related death. The U.S. has the worst maternal mortality rate of high-income countries in the world — and the numbers are climbing. New federal data shows maternal deaths spiked 40% in 2021.
GOP lawmakers expand gender-affirming care restrictions to adults
Oriana González, Axios
Legislators in Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas have introduced bills barring health providers from offering care such as hormone treatments or surgery to people as old as 26.
Abortion ‘Chaos State’ Erupts as Dueling Attorneys General Clash
Allie Reed, Bloomberg Law
Top law enforcement officers in red and blue states are leaning on never-before-tested legal strategies to probe the boundaries of reproductive restrictions nationwide since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
New Maryland provider opening in post-Roe ‘abortion desert’
Leah Willingham, The Associated Press
The Women’s Health Center of Maryland in Cumberland, roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers) from West Virginia, will open its doors in June — a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections — to provide abortions to patients across central Appalachia, a region clinic operators say is an “abortion desert.”
The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a Texas County
Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker
Students have overdosed during class, in bathrooms, and in an elementary-school parking lot.