A national mental health hotline aimed at new and expecting parents received was accessed by about 12,000 people in its first 11 months, according to recently released government data.
Driving the news: The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline was launched on Mother's Day last year as part of the Biden administration's efforts to address and improve maternal health in the U.S.
The shortage of behavioral health workers is increasingly making courts and jails de facto providers of mental health services, straining local budgets nationwide, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.
The big picture: The justice and public safety system was never designed for the task, and while the majority of incarcerated people in state prisons report a history of mental health problems, more than 70% have not received treatment since being jailed.
Thousands of international nurses are stuck in limbo after the State Department stopped processing some visa applications this month, leaving nursing homes and assisted living facilities in a tight spot without a workforce they've already hired.
Why it matters: The situation shows how immigration policies are intertwined with health care workforce issues amid a pandemic-driven nursing shortage.
A fight over nursing home staffing mandates is pitting an industry that was at the epicenter of the pandemic against organized labor and some senior lawmakers in Congress.
The big picture: The Biden administration this spring wants to make every facility have enough adequately trained staff to provide high-quality care. But operators say they can't hire people out of thin air after COVID-19 hollowed out the long-term care workforce.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday sought to draw a contrast with the expiring COVID-19 public health emergency, signing a set of "medical freedom" measures into law, including bans on mask and vaccine mandates, and new conscience protections for health providers.
Why it matters: The potential 2024 presidential contender, has made medical freedom a key issue, casting aspersions on tools aimed at stopping COVID, such as dubbing the vaccines "mRNA jabs."
The big picture: The Department of Health and Human Services is fleshing out targets and putting an organizational framework around the $5 billion "Project NextGen," which will operate similarly to the Trump-era public-private partnership in speeding the development of new treatments.
The Food and Drug Administration finalized new guidance on Thursday that will allow more gay and bisexual men to donate blood.
Why it matters: The change formally ends the FDA's blood donor restrictionsfor men who have sex with men that originated during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, which have been denounced as discriminatory by medical and LGBTQ organizations.
Officials in New York City are urging clinicians to be vigilant after two cases of drug-resistant ringworm infections were recently identified there, the CDC announced Thursday.
Driving the news: The recently emerged fungus causes severe and contagious superficial skin infections.
This is the latest drug-resistant fungus to be found in the United States. Another potential global threat, the fungus Candida auris, appeared to gain strength during the pandemic.
Zoom in: Officials said they were notified in February by a dermatologist after two patients with severe ringworm were found to not improve with treatment. Neither patient had major medical conditions.
One of the patients had no recent international travel history which suggests local transmission of the fungus, they said.
What they're saying: "It is also important that clinicians strengthen surveillance of drug-resistant ringworm their antifungal stewardship and surveillance of drug-resistant ringworm," CDC officials said.
Providers who suspect the infection should contact their state or local public health department for testing help, officials said.
What to watch: Lawmakers recently reintroduced bipartisan legislation known as the PASTEUR Act, which stands for Pioneering Antimicrobial Subscriptions to End Upsurging Resistance Act, which would create market incentives for pharma companies to develop new antibiotics.
Mpox is no longer a global health emergency, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared at a press briefing Thursday.
Driving the news: There has been a steep decline in mpox — previously known as monkeypox — over the past three months, with countries reporting 90% fewer cases than they had in the previous three-month period, Tedros said.
The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was followed by a "sharp increase" in violence directed against abortion providers and patients, according to a new report from the National Abortion Federation.
Zoom in: The report found that states that protect abortion access saw a "disproportionate" increase, including a ninefold increase in reported cases of stalking, a doubling of burglaries and a 29% increase in assaults and batteries from 2021 to 2022.
Allergy season lengthened by 15 days on average between 1970 and 2021 across about 200 U.S. cities, per an analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit climate news organization.
That's based on the number of days between the last freeze each spring and the first freeze each fall — essentially, the annual window during which seasonal allergy sufferers are most likely to rely on their antihistamine of choice to get by each day.
The expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency today will cut off a pipeline of data that tallied the pandemic's human toll and offered a view of how the stealthy virus spread.
The big picture: More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID over the course of the public health emergency, or about 980 peoplea day.
Startup Alto Pharmacy plans to raise another funding round as it eyes potential acquisition targets — building on its billion dollar-plus revenue, CEO Alicia Boler-Davis said Wednesday at Axios BFD in San Francisco.
Why it matters: The company's growth plans come at a time of tightened capital markets for digital health care companies, particularly for a low-margin corner of the sector.
