Week of Feb. 13–17, 2023

Week of Feb. 13–17, 2023

General Articles

• The United States is in the midst of a mental health crisis, with increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. At the same time, there is a drastic shortage of mental health professionals to address the growing need for care, from psychiatrists to social workers. Some people experiencing mental health issues need the intensive care that only qualified nurses, doctors, and social workers can provide. Others seeking mental health care can find it in community-based organizations staffed by people possessing an essential characteristic: empathetic engagement. Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• Adolescent girls across the country are facing record levels of violence, sadness, and despair, according to new survey data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, and other nonheterosexual identities also experience high levels of violence and distress, the survey found. "There is no question from this data [that] young people are telling us that they are in crisis," says Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health. Read more here.
• The surge of children turning up in emergency departments with mental health issues was a challenge even before 2020, but rates soared during the Covid-19 pandemic, studies show. ER staffers may be able to stabilize a child in a mental health care crisis, but research has shown that timely follow-up with a provider is key to their success long-term. Unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to be enough of it, according to a new study. Read more here.
• The Biden-Harris administration's commitment to youth mental health is encouraging, and the doors appear to be open for bipartisan efforts to invest in, protect and promote the well-being of young people everywhere. According to a recent survey by KFF, 90% of the public thinks there is a mental health crisis in the U.S. today. A problem that clearly transcends party lines, youth mental health will take a multi-pronged, systematic approach to solve. Read more here.
• What happens when children are repeatedly exposed to this kind of violence, grief and trauma over the course of their lives? The data are clear: U.S. school shootings have increased over the last few years. An estimated 338,000 children have been exposed to gun violence in K-12 schools alone since 1999. And gun violence on college campuses persists. It is currently the leading cause of death among children and teens in the U.S. Read more here.

Older Adults

• In this cohort study among US nationwide Medicare enrollees over the study period, we observed statistically significant harmful associations between long-term exposure to elevated levels of air pollution and increased risk of late-life depression diagnosis. The study findings have implications for both environmental regulation and public health management. We hope this study can inspire researchers to further consider possible environmental risk factors (such as air pollution and living environment) for the prevention of geriatric depression, to understand the disease better moving forward, and to improve the delivery of mental health care services among older adults. Read more here.

Gun Violence

• The massacre that ripped apart 17 families in Parkland, Florida, five years ago on Valentine’s Day ignited a wave of student-led protests and bipartisan legislation to combat the plague of school shootings devastating the country. But five years after the bloodbath in Parkland, the scourge of US mass shootings continues nationwide—including one Monday that left three students dead and five critically wounded at Michigan State University. So far this year, the US has suffered at least 67 mass shootings—attacks in which four or more people are shot, not including the assailant, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Read more here.
• The U.S. has already seen more than 50 mass shootings this year. At this pace, the nation will see over 620 by the end of the year, an Axios analysis of the Gun Violence Archive found. Why it matters: Five years after the Parkland massacre, a continued spate of mass shootings has reinforced a sense of helplessness and fear—especially in communities that were already at risk, or that have seen this violence up close. Read more here.
• Barely through January, America has this year already experienced 63 incidents with four or more people shot and more than 4,200 firearm deaths. These statistics do not come from official governmental sources, but are rather the result of information compiled and disseminated publicly by a small non-profit organization, the Gun Violence Archive, funded primarily by a single private donor. Our government collects no official data on mass shootings – and has no comprehensive data collection system tracking nonfatal firearm injuries – despite intense public concern about these events and the direction they may be trending. Read more here.
• A majority of Americans surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with current gun laws in the U.S. amid a recent string of mass shootings affecting the country, according to a new Gallup poll. The poll found that 63 percent of respondents said they are dissatisfied with the nation’s laws and policies on firearms, while 34 percent of those surveyed said the opposite. Read more here.
• Five years after Parkland, schools are still targets and teachers are still being shot. Lerner is working to stem some of the violence. She co-founded Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence and has been looking into school safety and the way drills are conducted, saying drills can be very traumatizing for teachers and students even if they haven't lived through a school shooting. The group works to include teachers in the national dialogue surrounding gun violence, with Lerner saying they have been excluded for too long. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues

• The overdose-reversing drug naloxone should be made available over the counter to aid the national response to the opioid crisis, U.S. health advisers said. The panel of Food and Drug Administration experts voted unanimously in favor of the switch after a full day of presentations and discussions centered on whether untrained users would be able to safely and effectively use the nasal spray in emergency situations. Read more here.
• In October, a new clinic offering opioid addiction treatment opened in Guilford County. Patients get connected to the clinic by the post-overdose response team at an organization called Guilford County Solution to the Opioid Problem—better known as GC STOP. Now, 48 people who overdosed in the community have been connected to treatment and medication thanks to the new initiative, which was made possible by a grant using funds from a massive legal settlement with McKinsey & Company. The problem is that the grant funding—which was announced in June—still hasn’t arrived at the clinic. Read more here
• New Jersey lawmakers are advancing a pair of bills that would toughen sentences for fentanyl possession and dealing, which advocates for people who use drugs fear could end up deterring people from reporting overdoses and punish people struggling with addiction. Read more here.
• A bipartisan panel of governors from Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota said they agreed on elements of each other’s ideas to address addiction and the fentanyl crisis, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “That is probably going to be the nexus of real bipartisan work,” Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, after he described treating addiction as a disease. Read more here.
• The US is in the throes of the deadliest drug epidemic in its history: Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for individuals younger than age 50. It is also clear that regulatory barriers, siloed care delivery systems, and pervasive stigma have, in combination, led to insurmountable barriers for effectively scaling access to lifesaving treatment. Read more here.
• In the coming months, millions of dollars will flood state governments to address the escalating opioid overdose epidemic. With an influx of funds, policy makers have a unique opportunity to implement evidence-based strategies to address the overdose crisis. Two areas for intervention that often go overlooked: jail and prison. Due to the progression of opioid use disorder and the criminalization of drug use, individuals with the highest risk of overdose are often incarcerated in correctional facilities; behind-the-walls treatment programs have demonstrated enormous success in reducing overdoses. Read more here.
• A record 193 homeless people died in Oregon’s Multnomah County, home to Portland, in 2021, a 53% increase compared with the previous year, according to a new county report released Wednesday. Substances contributed to about 60% of those deaths, the report found, mirroring trends seen across the country. Similar to 2020, methamphetamine was the most common drug noted in the county’s fatalities. But the number of deaths involving fentanyl, and a combination of opioids and meth, saw the biggest increases. Read more here.

988 Hotline

• Wyoming leads the nation for suicide deaths. A bill hopes to address that fact and is slowly moving through the legislature. It would permanently establish the 988 Suicide and Crisis Line in Wyoming, establish quality standards and potentially provide some kind of funding. In July of 2022, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Line was officially launched nationally. Read more here.

Workforce Issues

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), called to reduce barriers to medical education in a hearing on Thursday, bringing in medical school administrators from across the country to discuss their experiences and proposed solutions. Lawmakers were largely in agreement in addressing the health care workforce shortage during the hearing on Thursday, with Sanders setting the tone. Read more here.
  

Federal and State Policy Issues

• Federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is projected to rise dramatically over the next decade, far outpacing revenues and the economy on the whole while putting new pressure on Congress to address accelerated threats of insolvency, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The increase is driven by a variety of factors, including Social Security’s new cost-of-living adjustment, the rising cost of medical services under Medicare and greater participation rates in both programs, as the last of the baby boomers become eligible for retirement benefits. Read more here.
• There's an inconvenient truth underneath the politics of Medicare—its finances are simply unsustainable. Why it matters: Medicare is one of the largest line items in the U.S. budget, and as the population ages, it's expected to only get more expensive. And the program's trustees have said the fund that pays for Medicare's hospital coverage will soon reach a dangerous tipping point—paying out more than it takes in. Read more here.
• Medicare Advantage and Medicare drug plans told the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services that too much regulation at once could drive up costs and result in increased premiums or fewer benefits. Driving the news: Public comment closed this week on a proposal to crack down on Medicare Advantage marketing practices, impose other standards on Medicare drug plans and create requirements to increase access to behavioral health and culturally competent care. Read more here.
• Until recently, many state Medicaid programs financed and managed behavioral health (BH) services for enrollees with serious mental illnesses (SMI) and others with high BH needs separately from other services in so-called carve-out arrangements. Carve-outs were seen as advantageous because they reduced the opportunities for actions by managed care organizations (MCOs) or enrollees that could skew the distribution of the SMI population across MCOs (that is, adverse selection) and ensured expert management and delivery of SMI services. Read more here.
• South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a bill into law that will ban both surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatments for transgender minors in the state. HB 1080 outlaws the prescription and administration of puberty-blocking medication in patients under the age of 18, as well as sex hormones and surgery related to gender transition. Health care providers who violate the new law, which takes effect on July 1, risk civil suits and losing their professional or occupational licenses. Read more here.