Health News Illinois reported: Lawmakers unveil state-backed tax plan to support independent pharmacies

Independent pharmacies would be able to access tax benefits under a state-backed plan unveiled Wednesday.

The proposal from Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, and Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, would allow eligible pharmacies and small businesses to access tax credits on payroll and on other business benefits like a sales tax exemption on qualifying building materials.

Businesses may also receive the benefits of Illinois's enterprise zone law without submitting an application for designation as a “high impact business.”

Eligible businesses would need to be independently owned, with no more than four stores and plan to make a qualifying capital investment of at least $500,000.

“We can use tax policy to help small independent businesses meet basic needs in underserved communities,” Guzzardi said in announcing the plan. “That's what (the bill) will do: help independent grocery stores and pharmacies provide affordable food and medicine in parts of our state that desperately need them."

The plan was announced with the backing of the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Illinois Retail Merchant Association.

Rob Karr, the association’s CEO, said it is crucial for lawmakers to support businesses that are “essential to the health and well-being of communities throughout Illinois.”

“(The bill) will help relieve some pressure by providing tax benefits to independent grocery stores and pharmacies in exchange for meaningful investments, including hiring and retaining employees, and improving property and storefronts,” he said.

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Press Release Number: CB26-TPS.63

OCT. 28, 2026 — The U.S. Census Bureau today released the Educational Attainment in the United States: 2025 table package, examining the education level of adults age 18 and older by age, sex, race, nativity, and other demographic and social characteristics.

The data are based on statistics from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.  

Highlights

Age

• In 2025, among people between the ages of 18 and 24, 65% had completed high school, 19% had earned an associate’s degree or higher, and 16% had less than a high school education.
• In 2025, about 43% of people between the ages of 25 and 54 and 35% of people age 55 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher.

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JAMA Network reported: Too many effective public health–oriented interventions reach less than half of the patients who are likely to benefit from them. Pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention, antiviral treatment of hepatitis C, colonoscopy after positive stool colorectal cancer screening result, and blood pressure control all fall into this category. Each is a breakthrough with a failure to follow through.¹

Cervical cancer is a quintessential example. Because of the near-perfect efficacy of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines and greater than 90% early-stage survival rate, eliminating cervical cancer is feasible. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035. Yet cervical cancer incidence is rising among US women aged 30 to 44 years,² and more than a third of US adolescents are not up to date with HPV vaccines.³

Bridging the stubborn gap between what we know and what we do in public health and health care has typically required concerted campaigns and small armies of dedicated people for identification, engagement, and treatment. The world finally eradicated smallpox not when the first vaccine emerged in the 1790s, but 2 centuries later when it finally paired vaccines with highly coordinated monitoring and containment strategies.

Could generative artificial intelligence (AI) help with radically compressing the time frame from breakthrough to follow-through? Artificial intelligence offers the ability to automate case finding, augment outreach, and assist with patient navigation. If directed to support longitudinal human relationships, AI might meaningfully benefit the public’s health. 

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KFF Health News reported: This year, KFF Health News has chronicled how rising healthcare costs are upending the lives of Americans. Reporters have heard from more than 130 people across the U.S. who are trying to afford their premiums, copayments, prescriptions, and medical bills even as housing, energy, and food costs swell. People told us they are forgoing health insurance coverage, rationing their medications, cutting back on doctor visits, and putting off health procedures.

“We’re not talking about the uninsured or those who are low-income who are struggling now,” said Rebecca Kirch, executive vice president at the National Patient Advocate Foundation. “Now it’s become an all-of-us issue.”

While healthcare costs have largely grown faster than the overall economy for decades, they’ve escalated at a dizzying pace recently. In 2023 and 2024, health spending hit its highest growth rates in two decades excluding 2020’s covid-fueled surge.

The prices that hospitals, doctors, and other clinicians charge have increased, along with how much care people are getting. Overall health spending hit nearly $5.3 trillion in 2024, up from $3 trillion a decade earlier, according to federal data.

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Pleased to share Health Affairs article by Fernando DeMaio, PhD, Fellow, Chair of the IOMC Social Determinants of Health Workgroup,  and Board Director, Board of Governors; and  David Ansell, MD, Fellow, IOMC: 

If we stop measuring differences within the population, those differences do not disappear. We simply diminish our ability to see them, understand them, and determine whether they are getting better or worse.

On September 10, 2026, the Census Bureau proposed consequential changes to the 2030 census. The proposal would remove questions about race and ethnicity from the decennial census questionnaire and prohibit questions about sexual orientation from being used in the population count. It would also change the rules governing who is considered a resident for purposes of the census, excluding many people who live in the United States but are not citizens or lawful permanent residents.

These proposals raise a deceptively simple question: Who counts in the United States?

The Census Bureau argues that there are “substantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact” of categorizing people by race and ethnicity and questions whether collecting such information remains useful. Race, after all, is not a biological fact. Racial and ethnic categories are socially constructed, have changed repeatedly throughout US history, and will undoubtedly continue to change. But the fact that race is socially constructed does not make its consequences trivial.

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Pleased to share a new report, “Investing in Community Health: Measuring the social return on the American Medical Association’s investment in West Side United’s impact portfolio, " Fernando De Maio, PhD, Vice President, Health Equity Research and Data Use, American Medical Association | Professor, Dept. of Sociology, DePaul University, and Fellow and Board Director on the Board of Governors, Institute of Medicine of Chicago. 

Download report here> Investing-in-community-health-report.AMA.10.2026.pdf

It’s a timely and important example of how research can support solutions for community health equity.

Stay tuned for IOMC's Leadership Summit on Dec. 16th, 2026. More details soon.

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MEDPAGE TODAY reported: WASHINGTON -- Real-world data backed the effectiveness of second-season (Beyfortus) immunizations against hospitalizations for children at high risk for severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) illness.

In the case-control study of nirsevimab-eligible children ages 8 to 23 months who were hospitalized with respiratory symptoms, the rate of RSV-positivity was less common in patients who had received nirsevimab (20% vs 42%, P<0.001), reported Angela Campbell, MD, MPH, of the CDC.

The adjusted estimated effectiveness of the long-acting monoclonal antibody against RSV-associated hospitalizations came out to 75% (86% when given within the 60 days before symptom onset and 66% when given earlier than that), according to findings presented at the IDWeek annual meeting.

"These data provide valuable real-world evidence of nirsevimab effectiveness against RSV hospitalizations for nirsevimab-eligible children in their second RSV season," said Campbell. "Overall, these estimates support the initial recommendation for use of nirsevimab as a preventive strategy in those high-risk groups."

Taylor Olson, MD, of Children's National Hospital in Washington, called these results "reassuring."

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Health News Illinois reported: A new city-run community health clinic and continued support for a program that provides mental health response teams are among the initiatives in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $17.6 billion budget proposal unveiled Wednesday.

The site of the clinic, nor its cost, were not included in his budget package, but Johnson said it would open in a “community (that) previously had their clinic closed.”

He said the decision comes as the city’s current seven clinics have seen demand for services increase by more than 52 percent from 2023 to 2025.

“That growth tells us that more Chicagoans are turning to our city’s mental health clinics for support,” Johnson said.

The budget also allocates $5 million to make permanent a program to dispatch a mental health team to certain 911 calls. The program was previously funded through now-expired federal funds in the American Rescue Plan Act.

The program recently expanded its hours from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The budget also proposes an additional $30 million to address homelessness, including rental assistance and social services.

Much of the funding for the new services comes from the city’s social media tax, which collects 50 cents per Chicago user after the first 100,000 users.

While the city is on pace to collect more than $49 million by the end of the year, those funds are being held in escrow pending litigation.

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Proceedings - Executive Summary

The 2nd Maternal & Child Health Symposium brought together evidence and practical approaches to confront maternal and child health disparities through clinical care, community partnerships, and family support. Its central message was clear: recognizing risk must lead to timely, respectful, and accountable care that families can reach and use. Improving outcomes requires attention to the whole family—from access to prenatal and specialty care and continuity after discharge to household resources, parental well-being, and children’s preventive health needs.

The morning session examined infant mortality, structural barriers, obesity in pregnancy, and equity risks in AI and FemTech. The afternoon shifted toward strategies for improvement, including cash support, coordinated community services, specialty care access, parental well-being, and oral health. Together, the sessions underscored that clinical expertise, technology, and new programs must translate into meaningful benefits for families, measured through equitable access, dependable follow-up, family experience, and better health outcomes.

View full Proceedings here>

11.1.2026  Deadline for Call for Speakers for the 2027 Maternal & Child Health Symposium. More> 

3.30.2027 Save the Date  -The Power of Partnership: Rewriting the Future of Maternal Child Health | Innovation, Equity, and Action Across the Maternal Journey. Endeavor Health - Elmhurst Hospital. More details soon. 

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MedPage Today reported: When I led the military health system, I was asked to help a service member whose family had been transferred to a military installation in rural America. Not long after they arrived, one of his children began showing developmental problems that required specialist evaluation.

The installation hospital had no developmental pediatric specialist. Neither did the surrounding community. We arranged a virtual consultation with a children's hospital several hours away. Eventually, the child had to be transported there for an in-person evaluation. When it became clear that the care the child needed simply did not exist locally, the military moved the family to another assignment where those services were available.

That solved the family's problem because the military had options. But what happens to everyone else?

A farmer cannot request a new duty station. A schoolteacher cannot order the government to move her family because her child needs a specialist. An older couple cannot simply relocate because the nearest cardiologist is 2 hours away. For tens of millions of rural Americans, geography increasingly determines what care they can get and, too often, whether they get it in time.

Approximately 66 million Americans live in rural communities. The consequences of living in medical deserts are measurable. The CDC has found that the rural-urban mortality gap has widened dramatically: in 1999, the age-adjusted death rate in rural America was 7% higher than in urban areas; by 2019, it was 20% higher. Rural residents are more likely to die prematurely from heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lung disease, and unintentional injuries. In 2022 alone, the CDC estimated that tens of thousands of rural deaths from these major causes were potentially preventable.

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You may be interested in this article: "5 Key Facts About Medicaid Coverage for People Living in Rural Areas," KFF Health News, more>

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