Two of Illinois’ federal lawmakers want to update national regulations related to lead poisoning. [Health News Illinois]

The plan, proposed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García, D-Chicago, would require the Department of Housing and Urban Development to use risk assessments for low-income housing built before 1978 before a family moves into the home.

The proposal would also create a process for families to relocate on an emergency basis, without penalty or the loss of assistance, if a lead hazard is identified and the landlord fails to address it within 30 days of notification.

Landlords would have to disclose the presence of lead if found in the home.

Current law requires only a quick visual check for lead hazards in federally assisted housing until a child is already sick, which Garcia said is “too little, too late.”

“Our bill will ensure proactive, thorough testing is performed for lead paint hazards in federally assisted housing where children may potentially be exposed,” he said. 

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., is sponsoring the bill too.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson released a plan Tuesday morning on how the city will spend the last $576 million it received in federal pandemic relief dollars. [Health News Illinois]

The strategic plan calls for spending in six pillars, including $83 million for mental health services. Of that, $24 million will support home visits to families with newborns who are three-to-five weeks postpartum. 

Another $20 million will go to a city program that provides mental health services through a network of community health centers, community mental health centers and community-based organizations.

The plan allocates $72 million for housing and homelessness support, including $32 million to help individuals move from a shelter or the street to a housing unit.

The administration also wants to allocate $63 million to provide a $500 monthly stipend to low-income Chicagoans.

Federal guidelines mandate that the funds must be spent by the end of 2026.

“My administration has developed a plan to ensure that these funds are being used in a strategic way to directly and concretely impact the lives of people across Chicago,” Johnson said in a statement.

The Johnson administration also said it plans to be more transparent with the spending of federal pandemic dollars in response to rising criticism from members of the Chicago City Council. Along with monthly reports to the council, the administration said it will launch a data dashboard this fall about the spending. 

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Healthy People 2030 includes 359 core — or measurable — objectives as well as developmental and research objectives. [Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion] Learn more about the types of objective

Healthy People 2030 objectives help measure our nation’s progress in critical areas of public health — and serve as a reliable data source to support organizations and individuals working to improve health and well-being for all.

Some Healthy People 2030 objectives are also Leading Health Indicators (LHIs) — a subset of high-priority objectives that cover the life span. Browse Healthy People 2030 LHIs.

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For nearly two decades, the Commonwealth Fund has tracked health and health care in each state, seeking both to understand how the policy choices we make affect people’s health outcomes and to motivate the change needed to improve the health of all communities across the United States. But assessing how well a state performs on average can mask the profound inequities that many people experience. [The Commonwealth Fund]

The Commonwealth Fund 2024 State Health Disparities Report

This report evaluates disparities in health and health care across racial and ethnic groups, both within states and between U.S. states. We collected data for 25 indicators of health system performance, specifically focusing on health outcomes, access to health care, and quality and use of health care services for Black, white, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations. We then produced a health system performance “score” for each of the five racial and ethnic groups in every state where we were able to make direct comparisons between those groups and between groups in other states. (For complete details on our methods, see How We Measure Performance of States’ Health Care Systems for Racial and Ethnic Groups.)

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Federal agencies with competing interests are slowing the country’s ability to track and control an outbreak of highly virulent bird flu that for the first time is infecting cows in the United States, according to government officials and health and industry experts. [KFF / Washington Post]

The response has echoes of the early days of 2020, when the coronavirus began its deadly march around the world. Today, some officials and experts express frustration that more livestock herds aren’t being tested for avian flu, and that when tests and epidemiological studies are conducted, results aren’t shared fast enough or with enough detail. They fear that the delays could allow the pathogen to move unchecked — and potentially acquire the genetic machinery needed to spread swiftly among people. One dairy worker in Texas has already fallen ill amid the outbreak, the second U.S. case ever of this type of bird flu.

Officials and experts said the lack of clear and timely updates by some federal agencies responding to the outbreak recall similar communication missteps at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They point, in particular, to a failure to provide more details publicly about how the H5N1 virus is spreading in cows and about the safety of the milk supply.

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The city and state are in the planning stages to combine Chicago’s legacy homeless shelter system with its system for migrants, according to government officials, and turn it into a unified shelter structure, an idea advocates for the homeless have long championed. [Chicago Tribune]

The “One System Initiative” will shift a “permanent shelter management to the non-profit workforce,” Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Daisy Contreras said in a statement. Currently, the city contracts with Favorite Healthcare Staffing, whose sizable overtime has contributed to tens of millions of dollars in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters.

The state’s office to prevent and end homelessness will lead the initiative with more than 25 community-based agencies participating, Contreras said. Planning sessions are set to begin at the end of April and go through the spring. 

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Various metaphysical concepts -- those that transcend physical explanations or rules -- have influenced the field of medicine throughout history and continue to play a role today. The understanding of how mental processes can affect physical health is a key example. This is evident in the field of psychosomatic medicine, which studies the influence of psychological factors on physical conditions. [MedpageToday]

While the practice of medicine is grounded in the physical body, the motivations and values that guide physicians often transcend physicality. The drive to heal, to alleviate suffering, and to improve quality of life are fundamental motivations for many in the medical field. These are not simply biological drives, but metaphysical ones, rooted in empathy, compassion, and a commitment to service.

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The city and state are in the planning stages to combine Chicago’s legacy homeless shelter system with its system for migrants, according to government officials, and turn it into a unified shelter structure, an idea advocates for the homeless have long championed. [Chicago Tribune]

The “One System Initiative” will shift a “permanent shelter management to the non-profit workforce,” Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Daisy Contreras said in a statement. Currently, the city contracts with Favorite Healthcare Staffing, whose sizable overtime has contributed to tens of millions of dollars in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters.

The state’s office to prevent and end homelessness will lead the initiative with more than 25 community-based agencies participating, Contreras said. Planning sessions are set to begin at the end of April and go through the spring. 

More>

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In part two of this exclusive video interview, MedPage Today editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, talks with Monica Bertagnolli, MD, the 17th director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about the day-to-day work at the NIH on pandemic preparedness, the importance of looking for new approaches to testing, and the status of long COVID research. [MedPage Today]

Faust: Hello, this is Jeremy Faust, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. We're joined today by Dr. Monica Bertagnolli. All right, I'd like to talk a little bit about the NIH and pandemic preparedness. Broadly speaking, is this something that the NIH is thinking about? Obviously there was some involvement, obviously during the pandemic, of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the NIH was hosting guidelines for COVID clinical policies and that sort of thing. What's the day-to-day work at the NIH on pandemic preparedness like?

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Citing the changing needs of incoming migrants to Chicago, the Cook County Board of Commissioners Thursday approved a transfer of $70 million originally dedicated to providing them health care to instead cover costs of food service for new arrivals. [Chicago Tribune]

The funding represents the majority of the $100 million Board President Toni Preckwinkle dedicated in her $9.6 billion 2024 budget to the county’s Disaster Response and Recovery Fund. The remaining $30 million was allocated toward “municipal or local government costs” related to incoming migrants and “other disasters that may happen in 2024.”

Cook County legal counsel Laura Lechowicz Felicione said last year’s migrant health care expenses, which totaled $25 million, were covered by surplus dollars and “various expense lines, mostly in salaries and wages.”

“We expect that we’ll be able to cover that expense again this year” using the surplus, she said. That frees up the $70 million to reimburse the city of Chicago for costs related to feeding asylum-seekers in intake or shelters. The resolution leaves room for the money to also be used to support other “costs related to funding operations for the new arrivals.”

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