Key context: If any of your plumbing infrastructure has lead, it can flake or dissolve into your drinking water. You’re more likely to have a lead service line if your house was built before 1986, when lead pipes were banned nationwide. [Sun-Times]

City's take: Chicago’s drinking water comes from Lake Michigan. City officials say the treatment plant delivers water with no detectable levels of lead. But the most common sources of lead in drinking water are corroding lead pipes, faucets and fixtures. 

Check yourself: You can search your address on our look-up tool to see if your service line is made of lead, ask for a free test kit online, or request a free water-quality lead inspection by a trained technician from the city.

If you find lead in your water

Yes to a filter: A water filter can help — look for one with an "NSI/ANSI Standard 53" mark, which means it meets EPA standards, and a label stating it's certified to reduce lead levels. The city offers free water-filter sets to some residents and you can see if you're eligible here.

Run it: The longer water sits in your pipes, the more lead it might collect. Whenever you haven’t used your water for six hours or more, run it for at least five minutes before using it for cooking and drinking.

Aerator cleaning: Sediment, debris and lead particles can collect in that little screen that goes over your faucet opening, so clean it regularly.

Pipe replacement: The city has an online questionnaire to determine the replacement program for which you may be eligible.

Call the doctor: Talk with your pediatrician or other doctor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health emphasize the importance of blood lead level testing for children younger than 6 who might have been exposed.

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• U.S. physicians say their workplaces are trying to hire more workers to help meet demand for services, but a lack of qualified talent is stymieing efforts. [Healthcare Dive]
• In a new survey of 1,001 physicians conducted by Medscape, 63% of respondents said there was a lack of qualified physicians available in their local job market, and 30% said application quality for open doctor roles had declined recently.
• Many don’t see the situation improving: Nearly 6 in 10 respondents described themselves as “very unconfident” or “unconfident” that progress could be made on the physician labor shortage over the next decade.

Dive Insight:

The Medscape report is the latest analysis to underscore that, although the healthcare labor market has improved since the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers are still struggling to fill positions.

Nearly 70% of survey respondents said their workplace was actively attempting to hire doctors either full- or part-time. Hospitals and healthcare organizations were more likely to hire than office-based practices, which could be due to patients seeking out care at larger organizations, according to the report.

Most said their workplace sought to fill less than five roles. The relatively low number of open roles is somewhat “reassuring,” according to Maddi Davidson, principal and senior director of market access with Avalere Health, who was interviewed by Medscape for the report.

She said that fewer than five openings could be attributed to natural turnover. Six or more openings in smaller practices or 20-plus open roles at large care settings would signify a more systemic mismatch between labor supply and demand.

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Key Takeaways

• After the Supreme Court decision restricting the use of race in admissions, the share of medical school matriculants from groups underrepresented in medicine significantly dropped. [MedPage Today]
• Applicants from these groups were accepted at significantly lower rates than white and Asian applicants -- a break from previous years.
• The study is believed to be the first national-level analysis after the ruling, and its findings raise concerns about the future diversity of the healthcare workforce.

The number of students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups matriculating at U.S. medical schools fell significantly in 2024 following the Supreme Court's decision restricting the use of race in admissions, a cross-sectional study showed.

Among nearly 292,000 applicants, the share of new matriculants from groups underrepresented in medicine (URiM) dropped from an average of 24.39% in 2019-2023 to 20.83% in 2024 (P<0.001), reported Mytien Nguyen, MS, an MD/PhD student at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues in JAMA Network.

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On a steamy July afternoon, West Garfield Park residents lined up at the Above & Beyond Free Food Pantry on South Pulaski Road. Moms with kids, seniors and young men brought bags to fill. Inside, volunteers handed out packages of Danish pastry and cookies “rescued” from local supermarkets, along with frozen chicken and cans of tuna and beans. [Crains Forum]

Since opening during the pandemic in 2021, the pantry’s customer traffic has increased by more than 25% a year, and that’s before changes to the federal food stamp program take effect as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law in July. Executive Director Ken Cozzi is bracing for a surge in demand as the pantry prepares to move to a bigger space a few blocks away. “We’re a big pantry, but we only have so many refrigerators and freezers,” he says.

The Illinois Department of Human Services estimates that 360,000 people are at risk of losing eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which Illinois recipients access via electronic benefit transfer cards called Link. That’s largely due to stricter work requirements that will soon be imposed. The result, food experts say, will be greater food insecurity and stress on the distribution system. SNAP, once known as food stamps, is the nation’s most effective anti-poverty program for younger people, reducing extreme poverty by more than 50%, advocates say. It’s also a powerful economic multiplier.

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Human–computer interactions have been occurring for decades, but recent technological developments in medical artificial intelligence (AI) have resulted in more effective and potentially more dangerous interactions. Although the hype around AI resonates with previous technological revolutions, such as the development of the Internet and the electronic health record,1 the appearance of large language models (LLMs) seems different. LLMs can simulate knowledge generation and clinical reasoning with humanlike fluency, which gives them the appearance of agency and independent information processing.2 Therefore, AI has the capacity to fundamentally alter medical learning and practice.3,4 As in other professions,5 the use of AI in medical training could result in professionals who are highly efficient yet less capable of independent problem solving and critical evaluation than their pre-AI counterparts. [New England Journal of Medicine]

Such a challenge presents educational opportunities and risks. AI can enhance simulation-based learning,6 knowledge recall, and just-in-time feedback7 and can be used for cognitive off-loading of rote tasks. With cognitive off-loading, learners rely on AI to reduce the load on their working memory, a strategy that facilitates mental engagement with more-demanding tasks.8 However, off-loading of complex tasks, such as clinical reasoning and decision making, can potentially lead to automation bias (overreliance on automated systems and risk of error), “deskilling” (loss of previously acquired skills), “never-skilling” (failure to develop essential competencies), and “mis-skilling” (reinforcement of incorrect behavior due to AI errors or bias).9 These risks are especially troubling because LLMs operate as unpredictable black boxes10; they generate probabilistic responses with low reasoning transparency, which limits assessment of their reliability. For example, in one study, more than a third of advanced medical students missed erroneous LLM answers to clinical scenarios.11

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The Chicago Department of Public Health will collaborate with the University of Illinois Chicago on a new network to monitor the city’s air quality. [Health News Illinois]

The network will place sensors that measure levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide around the city, with a focus on areas historically vulnerable to environmental impacts.

“Installing air sensors across our city is imperative in assessing what risks there are and protecting our community members, especially those who are most vulnerable, such as children, older folks and people with respiratory illnesses,” said health Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo “Simbo” Ige. “CDPH continues to gather the best available data for all Chicagoans to guide the development of interventions to improve the health of Chicagoans.”

Chicago air quality data is currently available and tracked by eight federal-grade monitoring systems that are run by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with Cook County.

CDPH said the new network will supplement the existing work and will provide neighborhood-level air quality data to the public.

The network will set 280 sensors around the city by the end of summer, which officials said will give Chicago the “largest community air monitoring network in the world.”

The release of a dashboard with publicly available data is expected in early 2026.

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The American Fluoridation Society opposed recent actions taken by federal officials to move away from community water fluoridation in the U.S. [Becker's Dental & DSO Review]

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency said it will “expeditiously review” new information on the potential health risks of fluoride. The move came as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would advise the CDC to stop recommending the addition of fluoride to public water supplies. Additionally, the FDA said it would begin removing ingestible fluoride prescription drug products for children. 

The American Fluoridation Society questioned EPA’s ability to conduct an impartial review due to RFK Jr.’s viewpoints, and said Aug. 12 that the attacks on fluoride are based on a “misrepresentation of the evidence.”

The organization pointed to a recent Make America Healthy Again report that cited “74 high-quality studies” reviewed by the National Toxicology Program as a basis for its concerns about fluoride. However, the AFS highlighted that 70% of the studies reviewed by the NTP were rated as low quality. The NTP report also found no link between low IQ scores and the level of fluoride in U.S. water supplies.

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In a deep red state, a public program focused on maternal and infant health has thrived for decades, and continues to win public support and federal dollars.

Project WATCH -- which stands for Working in Appalachia To Capture High-risk infants -- collects data on nearly 100% of live births in West Virginia, and has contributed to a decline in infant mortality in the state. It has also been adapted over the years to help researchers better understand evolving problems like neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

And it has managed to retain most of its federal funding, which grants $4 for every $3 invested by the state, sources told MedPage Today.

One of the reasons Project WATCH remains trusted in West Virginia is simply that it's been around for so long, said its medical director Collin John, MD, MPH, of West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Residents of the state know what the program is, even if they don't know that it receives federal funding, so it doesn't "get that government feel in it," John told MedPage Today.

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New CDC resource released today highlight effective strategies to prevent substance use among U.S. teens. ENGAGE: Evidence-Based Strategies to Prevent Youth Substance Use represents the best available information on what works to prevent youth substance use and showcases how to implement and evaluate programs.

Youth substance use is preventable. The substance use landscape is continually evolving, and prevention efforts need to keep up with these changing circumstances. ENGAGE offers state and local organizations an easily accessible resource to plan for and implement a wide range of evidence-based strategies to prevent substance use before youth reach college age. It includes six strategies - each with several different approaches, along with evidence to support each approach. [CDC]

Youth substance use is a significant public health problem. 

• Early exposure to substances during critical points in development may disrupt healthy brain development.

• In 2024, approximately 26% of 12th graders in the U.S. used illegal substances in the past year, such as cannabis, LSD and other hallucinogens, cocaine or heroin, other narcotics, amphetamines, sedatives, or tranquilizers not under a doctor’s orders. 

• Early exposure to substance use increases risk for being diagnosed with a substance use disorder (SUD); SUDs are linked to developing chronic illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, or other mental health conditions like depression.

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As clinicians, we all want the best for our patients. But when our evidence-based recommendations are thwarted by things out of our control, it can be frustrating. [MedPage Today]

In the clinic, my patients routinely ask me about ads they have seen. As an ob/gyn, this becomes particularly relevant when we discuss prenatal vitamins, because I recommend that all my pregnant patients take multivitamins with folic acid. However, what happens when a patient follows my recommendations but inadvertently buys a supplement that has ingredients that can cause harm? A bill in my home state of California, SB 646, aims to stop this from happening.

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