Good morning and welcome to Tuesday’s New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you updated on what’s happening this week in health care news and offer a look back at important news from the past week.
Curious if New York’s health is improving? Look no further than the state’s “Prevention Agenda,” a plan for health officials to promote health equity and improvement across New York. Last week, State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett provided updates on the five focus areas of the five-year plan at a meeting of the Public Health and Health Planning Council.
The gist of it, as you might expect, is that New York is making progress in several areas, while failing in others. For chronic disease prevention and management, Bassett said the state saw progress in adults over 50 through colorectal screenings, asthma management, smoking cessation and diabetes rates. Meanwhile, she said, obesity remains a “staggering challenge to the health of our nation and our state,” with rates among children starting to rise again after 2015.
The state had seen mostly positive results in the establishment healthy and safe environments, Bassett said. But it noted that crash-related pedestrian deaths and the annual number of days with unhealthy air quality had increased. “I’ll tell you the bad news,” she said. “This is how we work in public health. We meet our challenges.”
In promoting healthy women, children and babies, Bassett said the state had mostly seen declines in its tracked metrics. The maternal mortality rate increased from 18.1 per 100,000 in 2016 to 19.3 in 2019, while the disparity between the rates for the black and white population widened further. However, despite a “rising wave of opioid use,” Bassett said, the number of newborns with neonatal withdrawal symptoms improved from 2018 to 2019.
On mental health and substance use disorders, the state saw some improvements despite mental health challenges in recent years. Reports of child abuse and maltreatment, as well as rates of binge drinking among adults, fell, while ER visits for opioid overdoses improved. However, the proportion of teenagers with major depressive episodes increased from 10.8 percent to 12.9 percent. “This data comes before Covid,” added Bassett.
The last category, communicable diseases, comes as New York endures the ongoing spread of Covid, monkey pox and polio. For diseases outside of the “big three,” Bassett noted that transmission rates for gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis have increased. In positive news, adolescent HPV immunization rates rose from 28 percent to nearly 40 percent in 2020. The number of newly diagnosed HIV cases also fell between 2010 and 2019, she added.
“I’ve spent some time on all these issues just to remind us all of the purpose of the Department of Health’s work,” Bassett said. “We are very committed to whole population health, which extends beyond germ control, including the environment, non-communicable and chronic diseases. I look forward to our continued progress in the Covid – that’s why I want everyone who’s eligible to get better — so that we can address and direct the department’s attention to these long-standing challenges to the health of our population.”
WHAT WE’RE ALSO WATCHING THIS WEEK:
– New York City Council Committee on Women and Gender Equality will hold a hearing Wednesday on a series of bills aimed at improving childcare and support for working mothers.
— New York State Advisory Council on Child Poverty Reduction he will hold the first meeting on Thursday.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Shannon is off this week on vacation. POLITICO’s Julian Shen-Berro is stepping in to help with this newsletter. Please send him all your tips, news and scoops at [email protected].
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BIDEN’S MASS PARDON – POLITICO’s Mona Zhang: President Joe Biden’s mass pardon Thursday of thousands of cannabis offenders and the push to overhaul marijuana’s status under federal law is potentially the biggest shift in federal policy in more than half a century.
The move is particularly surprising for the former senator who was instrumental in the rise of drug-related incarceration in the 1990s and whose administration has punished employees for using marijuana.
But some cannabis advocates wonder if the comprehensive pre-election decision will really achieve much.
“This is a really big change of pace for him [on cannabis policy],” said David Holland, an attorney at Prince Lobel Tye in New York, who has worked on amnesty applications for federal marijuana inmates and a petition to move cannabis into a less restrictive category. But “this is so small in the world of restorative justice in cannabis.”
LONG COVID RESTRICTIONS – POLITICO’s Krista Mahr: More than four in five Americans living with long-term Covid say their daily activity is limited by their ongoing Covid-19 symptoms, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In September, CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, working with the Census Bureau, began surveying Americans on how Covid symptoms lasting three months or more are affecting individuals’ ability to perform daily activities.
More than 81 percent of respondents experiencing symptoms said they were experiencing some limitations, and a quarter reported having “significant activity limitations.”
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: This review is for you! Submit news tips, health tips, ideas, critiques and corrections [email protected].
NOW WE KNOW – Allergy seasons have almost doubled in length and increased in intensity due to climate change.
TODAY’S TIP – From CNN: “A mental health playbook to support your child”
BE SURE TO FOLLOW Shannon @ShannonYoung413 on Twitter. And for all New Jersey health news, check out Daniel Hahn, @danieljhan_.
STUDY THIS – A study found that people who lived in areas with higher Fox News viewership had higher levels of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.
Via Crain’s New York: “New York-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center have agreed to pay $165 million to 147 people who reported sexual abuse or misconduct at the hands of their former gynecologist, Robert Hadden.”
New York officials have been cooperating with community advocates to form a panel aimed at reducing child poverty in the state, Spectrum News reports.
Ambulance in a village in the north of the state will limit their use of lights and sirens after research found they “had little effect on a patient’s medical outcome by dramatically increasing the chance of a vehicle crash,” the Times Union reports.
A New York Times review found that major health insurers exploited the Medicare Advantage program to increase their profits by billions of dollars.
“Hospitals across the country are preparing for third winter with Covid — the first of which is also expected to include high rates of flu and other respiratory illnesses that have simmered quietly in the background for the past two years,” reports NBC News.
Doctors are hitting the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, declaring abortion restrictions proposed by Republicans would hurt one of the state’s largest economic sectors, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.
MISSED A SUMMARY? Catch up on the New York Health Care Bulletin.
