Bicycle Health is partnering with Albertsons to allow its patients with an opioid addiction to receive a buprenorphine injection from pharmacists at more than 700 of the grocery and pharmacy chain's locations. [Modern Healthcare]  

Opioid use disorder patients of the telehealth company in 17 states must first have a virtual visit with Bicycle Health before being prescribed the medication, which helps reduce people's dependence on opiates. Previously, the company's patients were only able to get prescriptions for oral buprenorphine at pharmacies including Albertsons.

The partnership does not include any financial agreement, a Bicycle Health spokesperson said.

 A study published in JAMA Network in June 2021 found patients prefer injectable buprenorphine to oral buprenorphine medication. 

“In the past, if a patient was a better fit for injectable medication, we would have to refer them to a local provider," said Bicycle Health CEO Ankit Gupta. "And it was almost impossible to find a local provider who was an expert in injectable buprenorphine, could administer it and manage all of the logistics required [around receiving the medication]." 

The move comes as the Drug Enforcement Agency scrutinizes the virtual prescribing of controlled substances. In May, the DEA extended until November flexibilities that allow telehealth companies to remotely prescribe certain controlled substances without an in-person visit. Earlier this year, the agency proposed that Schedule III-V substances like buprenorphine could only be prescribed via telehealth for an initial 30-day dose.

As the DEA figures out next steps, virtual companies like Bicycle and Talkiatry are pushing the agency for permanent flexibilities around remote prescribing. They’re also working on contingency plans. 

“A lot of our work does take into account what the DEA might or might not do,” Gupta said. “We’re always planning for contingencies because of the regulatory uncertainty we live in now." 

Albertsons did not respond to an interview request.

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Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined more than 30 colleagues this week to urge the Food and Drug Administration to take further steps to protect minors from e-cigarettes. [Health News Illinois]

Thirty-two attorneys general and one deputy attorney general wrote a letter commenting on a five-year strategic plan by the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. They recommended prohibiting all non-tobacco flavors in e-cigarettes, enacting limits on nicotine in e-cigarettes, restricting marketing and closing a “loophole” where disposable e-cigarettes are not subject to the same, existing enforcement guidance as cartridge e-cigarettes.

“The FDA is a critical partner in this effort, but it can and must do more,” Raoul said in a statement. “That is why we are urging the FDA to take additional steps to protect young people from nicotine addiction through e-cigarette usage.”

A spokesman for the FDA said they will respond directly to the attorneys general.

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Elected officials and advocates called for empathy Monday toward people with substance abuse disorders and increased options for treating and preventing opioid overdoses. [Chicago Tribune]

In his address to the crowd of volunteers, supporters and onlookers in Chicago’s Federal Plaza ahead of International Overdose Awareness Day on Thursday, Mayor Brandon Johnson repeated his campaign promise on so-called Treatment Not Trauma and called for a “public health approach” to reduce opioid deaths in Chicago.

“We must not criminalize and further harm our brothers and sisters in need,” Johnson said before dozens of volunteers and bystanders. “Substance use and abuse ... creates a ripple effect of devastation in our families and neighborhoods.”

“We must extend care,” he added, “not judgment.”

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Chicagoans with confirmed and probable cases of mpox have a high rate of co-infections with other sexually transmitted infections, according to an analysis by the Chicago Department of Public Health. [Health News Illinois]

The analysis also found racial disparities, with Black individuals being twice as likely than white individuals to have mpox and HIV co-infections. Latinx individuals had a 34 percent increase and Asian individuals had a 90 percent increase in HIV co-infection compared to white people.

Kara Herrera, an epidemiologist at the department, said the analysis highlights their ability to leverage surveillance and case management data to identify vulnerable populations that may need additional care. 

She said that at the time of mpox diagnoses, “we strongly encourage HIV-negative individuals to get on PreP for HIV and encourage healthcare providers to utilize the syndemic approaches by offering testing and prevention (for) STIs, HIV and infections such as mpox.”

Additionally, the agency suggested further investigation into the association between positive syphilis serology and HIV co-infection among people with mpox.

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As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds. [PBS News Hour and the Chicago Tribune]. A cut pipe is pulled from a dig site for lead testing in Royal Oak, Michigan. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. 

Picture: Carlos Osorio AP2021

Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes.

States shouldn’t “shrug their shoulders” and pass up funds, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It’s troubling that a state would decide to take a complete pass on the funding because part of the reason for the funding is to figure out whether you even have lead,” Olson said.

The Biden administration wants to remove all 9.2 million lead pipes carrying water to U.S. homes. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. The 2021 infrastructure law provides $15 billion to find and replace them. That money will help a lot, but it isn’t enough to get all the toxic pipes out of the ground. State programs distribute the federal funds to utilities.

READ MORE: Officials test Yellowstone River water where train carrying hazardous materials fell in

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is reviewing state requests to decline funds but did not provide a full list of states that have said no so far. That information will be available in October, officials said. States that declined first-year funds can still accept them during the remaining four years.

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The number of people experiencing homelessness in Chicago increased between 2020 and 2021, according to a new estimate from Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. [Chicago Tribune-Lizzie Kane; Photo -Brian Cassella -Chicago Tribune]

The group finds that 68,440 people experienced homelessness in 2021, a 2,829 increase from the previous year, according to the coalition’s report published Thursday. The research shows shifts in the way people experienced homelessness, citing that 7,985 more people were staying on the street or in shelters as opposed to those temporarily staying with others compared with 2020 data.

The majority of people experiencing homelessness are people of color, with African American Chicagoans ending up homeless more because of racist economic, educational and housing practices, according to the coalition. The coalition finds that Latino Chicagoans are more likely to experience homelessness by doubling up with others. Most families who are experiencing homelessness, as well as many unaccompanied youth — those ages 24 and younger — are temporarily staying with others too.

The new estimate comes as Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is steering its Bring Chicago Home plan — a proposal to raise the real estate transfer tax on properties worth $1 million or more to pool additional funds to fight homelessness — through a City Council meeting and discussions with Mayor Brandon Johnson.

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 Tonjanic Hill was overjoyed in 2017 when she learned she was 14 weeks pregnant. Despite a history of uterine fibroids, she never lost faith that she would someday have a child. [KFF Health News]

But, just five weeks after confirming her pregnancy, and the day after a gender-reveal party where she announced she was having a girl, she seemed unable to stop urinating. She didn’t realize her amniotic fluid was leaking. Then came the excruciating pain. 

“I ended up going to the emergency room,” said Hill, now 35. “That’s where I had the most traumatic, horrible experience ever.”

An ultrasound showed she had lost 90% of her amniotic fluid. Yet, over the angry protestations of her nurse, Hill said, the attending doctor insisted Hill be discharged and see her own OB-GYN the next day. The doctor brushed off her concerns, she said. The next morning, her OB-GYN’s office rushed her back to the hospital. But she lost her baby, Tabitha Winnie Denkins.

Black women are less likely than women from other racial groups to carry a pregnancy to term — and in Harris County, where Houston is located, when they do, their infants are about twice as likely to die before their 1st birthday as those from other racial groups. Black fetal and infant deaths are part of a continuum of systemic failures that contribute to disproportionately high Black maternal mortality rates.

“This is a public health crisis as it relates to Black moms and babies that is completely preventable,” said Barbie Robinson, who took over as executive director of Harris County Public Health in March 2021. “When you look at the breakdown demographically — who’s disproportionately impacted by the lack of access — we have a situation where we can expect these horrible outcomes.”

In fact, Harris County ranks third, behind only Chicago’s Cook County and Detroit’s Wayne County, in what are known as excess Black infant deaths, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. Those three counties, which also are among the nation’s most populated counties, account for 7% of all Black births in the country and 9% of excess Black infant deaths, said Ashley Hirai, a senior scientist at HRSA. The counties have the largest number of Black births but also more deaths that would not occur if Black babies had the same chance of reaching their 1st birthdays as white infants.

No known genetic reasons exist for Black infants to die at higher rates than white infants. Such deaths are often called “deaths of disparity” because they are likely attributable to systemic racial disparities. Regardless of economic status or educational attainment, the stress from experiencing persistent systemic racism leads to adverse health consequences for Black women and their babies, according to a study published in the journal Women’s Health Issues.

These miscarriages and deaths can occur even in communities that otherwise appear to have vast health resources. In Harris County, for example, home to two public hospitals and the Texas Medical Center — the largest medical complex in the world, with more than 54 medical-related institutions and 21 hospitals — mortality rates were 11.1 per 1,000 births for Black infants from 2014 through 2019, according to the March of Dimes, compared with 4.7 for white infants.

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Illinois’ two Democratic senators joined nine colleagues last week urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to take further steps to address lead poisoning in federally assisted housing.[Health News Illinois]

The 11 senators, including Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, said in a letter sent last week to department Secretary Marcia Fudge that they wanted an update on its implementation of a demonstration program to assess better ways to handle its housing choice vouchers.

Current statute requires that children in the voucher program develop lead poisoning before a risk assessment is conducted, which the senators said leads to many children — specifically low-income and minority populations — being exposed to lead.

“We have previously alerted HUD of our great concern and the urgency of addressing childhood lead poisoning in both federally assisted and private market housing, especially because the health and safety of so many vulnerable children are at stake,” the senators said.

Lawmakers noted the National Housing Law Project estimates 90,000 children in the housing choice voucher program have lead poisoning, and an additional 340,000 children living in federally assisted housing are at risk.

The agency did not return a request for comment.

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At age 30, Jeanine Valrie-Logan was having a miscarriage.

The room was sterile, cold. Guarded only by a curtain to maintain a semblance of privacy and a thin hospital gown, she sat waiting for the procedure that would remove the remaining pregnancy tissue. [Chicago Tribune]

As she stood to sit atop the bed that would wheel her to the operating room, the physician asked her, “Do you want me to give you an IUD, so you don’t have any more unplanned pregnancies?”

The question stopped her in her tracks, and the fear and loneliness she’d been feeling suddenly replaced with profound anger.

“Who said this was an unwanted pregnancy?” she recalled thinking at the time. “I remember grabbing the nurse and being like, ‘Please do not let him put an IUD in.’”

Upon waking from the operation, she was told by a supervising nurse that throughout her sleep, she continuously repeated the phrase “Don’t let him take my uterus. Don’t let him take my uterus.”

The urgent pleas for control over one’s body have been echoed by Black women across Chicago and the country over the course of the nation’s history. Following the death this spring of U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Tori Bowie from complications related to childbirth, a national conversation has been sparked once again over America’s Black maternal mortality rate, the Black community’s mistrust of the medical field and the disproportionate effect on Black women.

In Chicago, where recent hospital closings have rendered entire swathes of the city “birth deserts,” the issue is laid plain: Black maternal health-care conditions remain dismal despite years of criticism, Black health-care officials say.

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