AcademyHealth’s Summer Health Policy Fellowship Application is open
AcademyHealth’s advocacy team is looking for a summer fellow. The fellowship is for a current or recent graduate student who wants hands-on experience in applying their health policy and health systems knowledge and research skills to federal advocacy. This paid fellowship can be done remotely, and for more information click here.
Public Health Emergency to end on May 11
Based on current COVID-19 trends, President Biden announced that the federal Public Health Emergency (PHE) that has been in effect since January 2020 will end on May 11, 2023. This will formally restructure the federal COVID-19 response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed with existing permanent authorities. Lawmakers have already started winding down large segments of the PHE, such as ending the rule that prevented states from kicking people off of Medicaid as of April 1. Additionally, COVID-19 vaccine costs will dramatically increase and free at-home tests will no longer be offered. HHS released a fact sheet of which programs will and will not expire here.
NSF chooses to not include a question about sexual orientation on one of its workforce surveys
The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), a subdivision of the NSF, regularly administers several surveys that provide key data about the US scientific workforce to policymakers and researchers on demographics such as sex, race and ethnicity, scientific discipline and citizenship status. The NCSES has for years been considering adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its surveys, but delays have frustrated scientists. In an application filed with the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on 14 December 2022, the NSF said that it would include a two-part question about gender identity, but not one about sexual orientation, on its 2023 National Survey of College Graduates. More than 1,700 researchers have now signed an open letter urging the agency’s director to reconsider the decision.
Nursing homes object to disputed inspection results being public
The nursing home industry is asking the Biden administration to rescind a new policy of posting disputed facility inspection results on a public government website before the alleged “deficiencies” have been confirmed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will post on its Care Compare website allegations of nursing home noncompliance identified during state inspections—even when the findings are being formally challenged by the facility. Previously, when a nursing home challenged a deficiency citation, it was not posted to the website—where consumers get information about facilities—until the dispute resolution process was complete. That could take 60 days or longer. “Publicly posting these disputed citations on Nursing Home Care Compare before the dispute is resolved invalidates the process and the nursing home’s right to appeal. As the saying goes, you can’t un-ring the bell,” Smith Sloan said in a Jan. 23 letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
California is responding to insulin prices by making its own
Insulin was discovered over a hundred years ago and can be manufactured at a low cost, yet nearly one in six Americans cannot afford it for treating their diabetes. Studies show that while insulin generally costs less than $10 per dose to produce, some versions of the drug have a list price above $200. With California leading the way, a handful of states are considering trying to disrupt the market for essential medications, starting with insulin. The plan would be to manufacture and sell insulin themselves for a price that is roughly equivalent to the cost of production. Their premise: Take away the private market’s profit motive and maybe states can deliver affordable insulin as a wholly public enterprise, run by civil workers, that does not need to make money.
CVS is partnering with universities in a Community Equity Alliance
CVS Health is rolling out a new initiative, the Community Equity Alliance, in hopes it will address barriers to care in underserved communities. The Alliance is being established to expand the community health workforce, enhance connections between healthcare institutions and communities, and address disparities in heart health and mental health outcomes. The first institutions joining the initiative are Meharry Medical College, Sinai Chicago and Wayne State University. CVS Health is providing funding to each institution for locally tailored initiatives, and said it will bring Alliance members together to share best practices and work to integrate lessons into the company's health equity strategy.
FDA advisory panels recommend making Narcan an OTC drug
Two federal panels of addiction experts unanimously recommended that Narcan, the overdose-reversing nasal spray, be made widely available without a prescription, a significant step in the effort to stem skyrocketing drug fatalities. Expanding the access to a highly-effective anti-overdose medication may reduce the overdose crisis that killed over 107,000 Americans in 2021. By making Narcan OTC, it will no longer only be accessible to first responders, who may arrive too late to administer it.
FTC charging GoodRx for sharing users identifiable health data with Facebook and Google
The FTC filed a court order against GoodRx for failing to notify users that it shared their personal, identifiable health data with Facebook and Google and said it would permanently ban the company from sharing such information for ads, should the court order be federally approved. In August 2019, GoodRx compiled lists of users who'd purchased medications for heart disease and high blood pressure and uploaded their email addresses, phone numbers and mobile advertising IDs to Facebook so it could identify their profiles. GoodRx then used that information to target users with relevant ads, a 2020 Consumer Reports investigation found. The court order is the first FTC action under the Health Breach Notification Rule, which requires companies to notify users when their health data is infringed upon, and includes several safeguards aimed at protecting consumer data. The order must be approved by the federal court to go into effect.
Nominations and Applications Open for PCORI Advisory Panels
PCORI is looking for individuals to join its five advisory panels. These panels, comprised of patients, clinicians, payers, industry representatives, and other healthcare community members, are an important way PCORI brings stakeholder voices into its work. If you are interested in advancing patient-centered research and helping PCORI shape its research funding priorities, or know someone who is, consider applying or nominating a colleague for one of PCORI’s advisory panels, which focus on:
- Clinical effectiveness and decision science
- Clinical trials
- Healthcare delivery and disparities research
- Patient engagement
- Rare disease
Applications and nominations are due by March 31, 2023.
What I’m reading
Deaths from pregnancy complications have become more prevalent in Mississippi and racial disparities have widened in recent years. The Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report shows that the maternal mortality rate increased by 8.8% between 2013‐2016 and 2017‐2019, with the latter period being the most recent one analyzed by researchers. Black, non-Hispanic women had a rate four times higher than white, non-Hispanic women. Meanwhile, the rate increased by 25% for Black women while falling 14% among white women. Of the maternal deaths directly related to pregnancy, 87.5% were determined to be preventable. Additionally, the committee found that 82.5% of the women who died due to pregnancy complications between 2017 and 2019 were Medicaid recipients. It is outrageous that so many women are being left behind.
Rural nursing homes are closing as staffing shortages and decreasing pandemic-era assistance force closures. From February 2020 to November 2021, the number of workers in nursing homes and other care facilities dropped by 410,000 nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Staffing has rebounded only by about 103,000 since then. The lack of open nursing home beds is marooning some patients in hospitals for weeks while social workers seek placements. More people are winding up in care facilities far from their hometowns, especially if they have dementia, obesity, or other conditions that require extra attention.
The implications of medical debt and financial security are self-evident, however the Washington Post reported on how low credit scores tightly correlate with states that did not expand Medicaid. Medical debt is one of the most common forms of unpaid bill that individuals have. Of the 100 counties with the highest share of adults struggling to pay their medical debt, 92 are in the South. In states that immediately expanded Medicaid, medical debt was slashed nearly in half between 2013 and 2020. In states that didn’t expand Medicaid, medical debt fell just 10 percent, and in low-income communities in those states, debt levels rose.