Florida has moved to prohibit transgender residents from using Medicaid to pay for gender-affirming care.
The big picture: Florida joined at least 10 other states — including Texas, Arizona and Missouri — in barring residents from using Medicaid to pay for the medications and surgeries prescribed to those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the Washington Post reports.
More than a third (35%) of U.S. employers already offer travel and lodging benefits for elective and medically necessary abortions and another 16% are considering offering it next year, according to a survey from human resources consultancy Willis Towers Watson.
Why it matters: It's a glimpse into how the private sector is thinking about health benefits in the post-Roe landscape.
New York City public health officials urged people on Friday to get vaccinated against polio after the virus was detected in samples taken from the city's sewage system, suggesting "likely local circulation of the virus" in the city.
Why it matters: The detection of polio in wastewater in New York City follows the identification of the virus in other sewage samples taken from two New York counties, Rockland and Orange, in the last two months.
Usage of cheaper generic hepatitis C drugs was lower among Medicare beneficiaries than Medicaid enrollees in 2020, costing seniors thousands of dollars in extra out-of-pocket spending, according to a new HHS Office of Inspector General report.
Why it matters: The report underscores that just because a generic version of a drug exists, patients are not necessarily benefitting from it — and supports arguments that Medicare's prescription drug benefit structure incentivizes insurers to favor brand-name drugs over generics.
Vulnerable Democrats believe finally passing a law to let Medicare negotiate the prices it pays for some prescription drugs will give them a much-needed lifeline in what's otherwise been shaping up as a brutal midterm cycle.
Why it matters: A relentless focus on health care helped propel Democrats to seize control of the House in 2018, and they're hoping that delivering on this decades-long campaign promise will help them keep their congressional majorities now.
New Zealand has welcomed back the first cruise ship since the country closed its borders in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic spread.
The big picture: Tourism Minister Stuart Nash said in a statement that the arrival in Auckland of Carnival Australia's Pacific Explorer cruise ship carrying some 2,000 passengers and crew was "another boost for local communities" after the government dropped pandemic restrictions at the border earlier this month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new COVID-19 guidance Thursday, loosening recommendations that have been in place since the onset of the pandemic.
Why it matters: The shift marks a significant change in how the nation deals with COVID-19 more than two years after the pandemic began. A majority of Americans are now fully vaccinated against the virus or have been exposed to it.
When a case of poliovirus was recently detected in New York, health department officials immediately had a tool at their disposal to check for disease transmission: wastewater collected for COVID sampling.
Why it matters: It's an example of a silver lining from the COVID-19 pandemic, augmenting the existing surveillance system for infectious diseases, including polio and monkeypox.
What they're saying: "COVID-19 was a paradigm shift in the way I thought about wastewater surveillance," said David Larsen, an environmental epidemiologist at Syracuse University, which was contracted by New York officials to expand wastewater surveillance to every county in the state.
He told Axios hadn't really thought about using the tool beyond pathogens like norovirus to diseases transmitted via respiratory droplets like COVID or the flu.
"It was a eureka moment," he said. "That's been a driving realization that 'Yeah, we need to have a system that improves our public health and needs to be operating continuously so we can respond."
Virus levels in wastewater typically rise several days before an area sees an increase in clinical cases, providing a harbinger of disease spread.
But since the sludge can't be used to pinpoint individual cases, it isn't viewed as a replacement for test-and-trace and other public health tools.
The big picture: While there was some level of wastewater surveillance before the pandemic, COVID supercharged it by prompting the creation of the National Wastewater Surveillance System.
There were also a number of universities that banded together to create their own networks of wastewater testing such as the WastewaterSCAN, or Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network.
The WastewaterSCAN initiative, co-led by Stanford researcher Ali Boehm, has found that detecting COVID in wastewater samples correlates very well to the number of cases increasing in the community and has expanded its work to other viruses like influenza A, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and now, monkeypox.
"This system is set up for pandemic or outbreak response because it's easy to pivot and add an assay for a different target," Boehm told Axios.
Additionally, it takes a broad sample size from a community, pointing public health agencies where to target communication, testing and outreach.
"We're still really on the front end in terms of discovering the potential here," Heather Bischel, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Davis told NPR.
Be smart: Wastewater can tell public health officials three important pieces of information starting with whether or not a particular pathogen is detected, Larsen said.
It can also tell investigators how intense transmission is through genetic sequencing. "Is it a single genetic strain, which would indicate very limited transmission, or is it 50 genetic strains?" Larsen said.
And, in a best case scenario, wastewater surveillance can offer a bit of closure. "It's also a tool to confirm it's gone," Larsen said.
Yes, but: Wastewater sampling, while an effective new tool, is not perfect.
The size of the sewershed that samples are drawn from matters.
In Los Angeles County, monkeypox wasn't detected at first through the SCAN initiative, Boehm told Axios, even though there were confirmed cases.
"The larger the sewershed, the more diluted the results will be," Boehm said.
Nearly half of U.S. consumers are largely willing to don fitness trackers or punch meals into calorie-counting apps — though they're cooler to using digital tools for mental health or medication monitoring, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society reports.
The big picture: That was one of the findings on digital health in the years ahead in HIMSS 2022 Future of Healthcare Report.
Africa's public health agency said the continent is in "very advanced discussions" with at least two partners to get monkeypox vaccines, AP reports.
Why it matters: The continent of 1.3 billion people, where more monkeypox deaths have been reported this year than anywhere else in the world, does not yet have a single dose of the vaccine.
The detection of poliovirus in wastewater samples in London and New York state is providing another stark reminder of the importance of vaccination and new forms of surveillance, public health experts say.
Why it matters: A pandemic-weary public already facing the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 and monkeypox is feeling jittery about the resurgence of a dreaded disease that was thought to be largely eradicated.
Nearly half of multiracial LGBTQ youths"seriously considered" suicide in 2021, according to a new report from The Trevor Project provided to Axios.
Why it matters: Over 40 million LGBTQ young people seriously consider suicide each year, according to rough estimates from the group, and the report examines the "unique convergence of stressors experienced by holding a multiracial identity and an LGBTQ identity."
