Week of March 6–10, 2023

Week of Feb. 27–March 3, 2023

General Mental Health Articles

• Teletherapy has made mental health care more accessible than ever before, making care possible for people who otherwise would never have been able to get it. But the antiquated system of licensure in the United States is creating a huge barrier to realizing the potential for telehealth. I’ve seen the benefits of teletherapy firsthand. As society has reopened, we’ve continued to hear countless stories where patients have been able to get much-needed care that was simply not available physically near their home or place of work. Read more here.
• A Washington University professor’s research on patients who are hospitalized for mental health problems has prompted Congress to make sure such patients are included in federal health surveys. The provision included in the federal 2023 budget bill will require providers to ask people who were hospitalized for mental or behavioral health problems questions that could help improve care. Shields said she wanted to study the experiences of people hospitalized for behavioral health issues, but when she went to look at data on their care, she found it wasn’t there. Read more here.
• Psychologists in Colorado will be allowed to write prescriptions if they’re willing to obtain an additional two-year degree, under a new law signed Friday by Gov. Jared Polis.  The measure is intended to increase access to mental health care in Colorado, which has a severe shortage of mental health professionals. Psychiatrists, who are medical doctors, fought the legislation.  The law creates a path for psychologists to write mental health prescriptions, requiring that they receive a postdoctoral master’s degree in clinical psychopharmacology. Read more here.
• A woman with schizophrenia calls 911 but won't respond to paramedics, case managers or social workers embedded with police. So, police bust down her door. Despite pleas from her family that she hasn't eaten or taken her medication for days and is catatonic, she refuses to go with them. So, they leave. All agree she has to say she wants help. Sadly, hundreds of Minnesotans are living out this harrowing scenario. We can do better. A bipartisan group of Minnesota legislators has been working to accomplish that. Read more here.
• Nearly a quarter of physicians reported clinical depression in a new Medscape survey, while 9% admitted to suicidal thoughts, and 1% shared that they attempted to end their lives. Medscape surveyed 9,100 physicians across 29 specialties last year. While physicians often address the suicide crisis throughout the U.S., many are struggling with their own mental health. Read more here.
• Both women and men are likely to live longer when a country makes strides towards gender equality, according to a new global study that authors believe to be the first of its kind. The study was published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health  just ahead of International Women's Day. It adds to a growing body of research showing that advances in women's rights benefit everyone. Read more here.
• The rise of AI in mental health care has providers and researchers increasingly concerned over whether glitchy algorithms, privacy gaps and other perils could outweigh the technology's promise and lead to dangerous patient outcomes. Why it matters: As the Pew Research Center recently found, there's widespread skepticism over whether using AI to diagnose and treat conditions will complicate a worsening mental health crisis. Mental health apps are also proliferating so quickly that regulators are hard-pressed to keep up. Read more here. 

Impact of the Pandemic

• Nearly 26% of US parents said they lied about their child's COVID-19 infection or didn't follow public health guidelines meant to prevent viral spread, finds a study published today in JAMA Network Open. A team led by researchers from Middlesex Community College in Connecticut and University of Utah Health surveyed 580 US parents of children younger than 18 years from Dec 8 to 23, 2021. Read more here.
• More than a third of US adults said they trusted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to provide quality health information during the COVID-19 pandemic, while a quarter trusted state and local health departments, and 10% said they had no trust at all in these agencies, according to the first nationally representative survey on the public's faith in sources of health information. Read more here. 

The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues

• The number of young children in the US who have died from opioid overdoses has increased significantly, according to a new study on accidental poisonings of children 5 and younger. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics, looked at a nationwide database and found 731 children 5 and under among poison-related fatalities between 2005 and 2018. Some of the children were poisoned by over-the-counter pain, cold and allergy medicines, but the highest number of fatal poisonings by far were from opioids. Read more here.
• As the country's opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, some of those most at risk – the incarcerated – may soon be getting some help.  States will be allowed to use Medicaid to pay for drug treatments for people in jails and prisons under new federal guidelines announced last month. Only about 10% of people with an opioid use disorder get treatment, according to medical researchers at New York University who study drug abuse. Read more here.
• A new study by Oregon State University, Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University found people who are recently released from prison have 10 times the risk of an opioid overdose than the general public. Researchers say this underscores the need to help former inmates transition back to the real world safely, especially in the first two weeks. Read more here.
• As state and local officials voice growing concern about the fentanyl crisis — and the U.S. attorney general says the Justice Department is focusing “enormous urgency” on the deadly drug — high schools in nearly a dozen Bay Area districts are still not prepared to save an overdosing student, according to a survey by the Bay Area News Group. Read more here.
• Physicians scrambling to stop people from dying in America’s unyielding opioid crisis say Biden administration officials are working at cross purposes in their fight to reverse record numbers of fatal drug overdoses. Even as the administration is implementing a new law that makes it easier for doctors to prescribe a lifesaving drug to treat opioid use disorder, one of its agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, subjects the drug to such strict regulation that many are reluctant to dispense it. Read more here.
• More than four years ago, Denver’s city council approved an ordinance that would allow for the creation of overdose prevention centers. Sometimes referred to as safe injection sites or safe consumption sites, these centers offer a safe place for people to use illicit drugs under the supervision of trained staff that can reverse overdoses and connect people with recovery resources, if necessary. As the U.S. grapples with the worst overdose crisis in its history — nearly 1,900 people died from an overdose in Colorado in 2021, a record high — Denver still does not have an overdose prevention center. Read more here.
• Amphastar Pharmaceuticals Inc (AMPH.O) said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved its nasal spray for emergency treatment of known or suspected opioid overdose. The company's naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray can be delivered in one spray by intranasal administration — delivering 4 mg of the drug in adults and pediatric patients — for an initial dosing, according to the FDA label. The regulator's approval allows its use only when prescribed. Read more here.
• Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite enormous evidence to the contrary. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to depict the synthetic opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. problem, and said the United States should use family values to fight drug addiction. His statement came during a visit to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House homeland security adviser, to discuss the fentanyl crisis. Read more here. 

988 Hotline

• A government-backed 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline's LGBTQ pilot program is now offering text and online chat services 24/7. The 988 lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) is a suicide prevention network of more than 200 crisis centers across the U.S. that provides round the clock service available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress The crisis centers provide the specialized care of a local community with the support of a national network, according to the agency's website. Read more here. 
  

Transgender Youth and Mental Health

• Family support can make a significant difference for Black trans youth as they face mounting stress and discrimination, according to a new report from the Trevor Project. Even if parents are unsure of where to start, or how to talk to their kids about gender identity, longtime advocates and mental health providers suggest that simple ways to show acceptance can have a profound impact. Read more here.
• Federal legislation to ban transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams for women and girls will be heard for the first time Wednesday morning, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced Monday. The “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” introduced in February by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), seeks to amend Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination — to recognize sex as that which is “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” Read more here. 

Gun Violence

• Stolen guns, untraceable weapons and other deadly devices are becoming more prevalent in U.S. gun crimes, new federal data shows. Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released an expansive federal report, the first of its kind in 20 years, on guns used in crimes, providing the public with more detail about stolen firearms and gun trafficking. Read more here. 
  

Social Determinants

• This month, as many as 16 million American households have received a sharp reduction in the size of their benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, as part of a federal unwinding of pandemic-era assistance. On average, participants will receive about $82 less this month in SNAP benefits, according to the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group that works to end hunger. Read more here. 

Health Insurance and Costs

• At a health-screening event in Sarasota, Florida, people milled around a parking lot waiting their turn for blood pressure or diabetes checks. The event was held in Sarasota's Newtown neighborhood, a historically Black community. Local resident Tracy Green, 54, joined the line outside a pink and white bus offering free mammograms. "It's a blessing, because some people, like me, are not fortunate and so this is what I needed," she said. Read more here. 
  

Federal and State Policy Issues

• President Biden’s  2023-24 federal budget proposal focuses heavily on expanding access to health care and lowering the cost of prescription drugs. In an effort to extend the life of Medicare’s hospital trust fund, the budget proposal would increase the number of drugs that can be negotiated, and allow those negotiations to begin sooner. Read more here.
• President Biden is proposing to extend the solvency of the Medicare national healthcare program by 25 years with an increased tax rate on high earners. The proposal would fund the program into the 2050s by increasing the Medicare tax rate from 3.8 to 5 percent for households making more than $400,000 a year. The Medicare trust fund is set to run out in 2028 under current tax and spending levels. Read more here.
• President Biden's push to let Medicare negotiate the prices of more drugs sooner after they come to market won't become law any time soon. But some experts say even raising the topic could scare off investment into new treatments. Why it matters: The possibility of Medicare having even more negotiating power increases uncertainty around future returns on today's R&D, and some economists argue that may ultimately make some investments too risky. Read more here.
• Republicans looking for ways to reduce federal spending have served notice they won't cut Medicare and Social Security. But that could mean big proposed cuts for Medicaid. Why it matters: Over 80 million people were enrolled in Medicaid as of November, higher than the number signed up for Medicare, and the pandemic and successive relief packages have swelled program rolls to record highs. Read more here.
• Senior Republicans in the House and Senate are proposing deep cuts to Medicaid as talks around reducing the deficit intensify ahead of a budget showdown between President Joe Biden and House leaders. As outside conservative groups make a case for cuts in closed-door briefings and calls, members point to pledges from party leaders on both sides not to touch Social Security or Medicare as a key reason the health insurance program for low-income Americans is on the chopping block. Read more here.
• North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper prompted loud cheers, whoops, and a standing ovation during his state of the state address when he mentioned Medicaid expansion. The governor came to the General Assembly as part of a biannual tradition to provide lawmakers and the people of North Carolina his take on how best to approach the future. Read more here.