As recently as 2018 Chicago officials denied the nation’s third largest city has a widespread problem with brain-damaging lead in drinking water, even though testing kits distributed by the city revealed high levels of the toxic metal in every neighborhood. [Chicago Tribune]

City officials pressed on, replacing hundreds of miles of water mains and installing scores of water meters, despite evidence the work made it more likely Chicagoans would ingest lead during the simple act of drinking a glass of tap water.

Times have finally changed. Not only did Mayor Brandon Johnson promise during his campaign to replace lead pipes known as service lines, his administration followed up by securing a $336 million federal loan to help pay for swapping thousands of them with safer copper pipes.

Combined with a required city match of roughly the same amount, to be financed with general obligation bonds, an estimated 30,000 of the city’s 400,000 lead service lines will be replaced during the next three years.

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Just under 25% of Illinois hospitals earned A grades this fall from hospital safety nonprofit The Leapfrog Group, including 18% of Chicago’s 22 eligible hospitals.[Chicago Tribune]

The grades examine safety procedures at general hospitals nationwide, focusing on prevention of medical errors, accidents and infections. 

Leapfrog tracks bloodstream infections associated with central lines, which deliver medicine and other fluids intravenously. The nonprofit also tracks MRSA, a type of staph infection that resists most antibiotics, as well as urinary tract infections associated with catheters.

The nonprofit focuses on similar criteria to those collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, said Dr. Lakshmi Halasyamani, system chief clinical officer at NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health.

This fall’s scores are the first to be considered post-pandemic, as there is some delay between when safety data happens and when it is collected, analyzed and scored. Preventable infections in hospitals spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, but are now trending downward in Leapfrog-graded hospitals, said Leah Binder, CEO of The Leapfrog Group.

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Mental health funding that voters approved last year would be saved from a do-over after Illinois lawmakers voted to validate multiple referendums despite concerns that ballots were improperly written. [Chicago Tribune] 

The measure would uphold referendums held by five suburban townships and Will County that created mental health boards to levy taxes for mental health programs.

“We’ve seen the value residents place on mental health care — they already approved the tax increases that will fund the creation of these community mental health boards,” said sponsoring state Sen. Ann Gillespie, a Democrat from Arlington Heights. “By validating these boards, municipalities can levy the taxes to allow the boards to function as intended.”

The bill approved Wednesday, if signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, would allow mental health funding in Addison, Lisle, Naperville, Schaumburg and Wheeling townships, as well as Will County.

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Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Monday [that] he has appointed Dr. Olusimbo "Simbo" Ige to become the new commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. [WLS and ABC7]

Dr. Ige currently works as the managing director of programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has previously served as the Assistant Commissioner for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

"Dr. Ige is a tremendous addition to not just our administration, but to the City of Chicago," said Mayor Johnson. "Dr. Ige is someone who understands the balance between hard data and community interaction when assessing public health problems and solutions, and with decades of experience in public health, she brings a clear-eyed understanding of both the challenges and the opportunities that CDPH and our city face, and how we will collectively overcome them.

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Chicago’s sanctuary city status, along with the rhetoric from its mayor, has made the city a mecca for migrants. Some Southern governors have treated this as an open invitation to transport migrants to the city. [Chicago Tribune] 

More than 20,000 migrants have come to Chicago in the past 14 months, the Tribune recently reported. It has been left for Chicago to bear the brunt of the new arrivals to the state. In addition to Chicago’s self-designation as a sanctuary city, the 2017 Illinois TRUST Act made the state a sanctuary state and was amended in August 2021 to expand protections and, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s own description, further establish Illinois as the “most welcoming state in the nation.”

Despite this status, the state has done little to regulate the influx of immigrants or where they end up, resulting in the city bearing the brunt. What can the state do to address this crisis?

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Illinois leaders are correct to focus on stepping up mental health services in schools in the wake of COVID-19, as our surveys demonstrate how dealing with the pandemic negatively affected students. But not all Illinoisans were disrupted the same way, and state leaders need to ensure that resources reach the children who were hardest hit. It is clear that the city of Chicago itself is the epicenter of this crisis. [Crain's]

“The last few years have been challenging for all of us and this is especially true for our children,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker observed in August in announcing that the state is making $10 million in federal money available as grants. He understated.

The need is clear. In a recent Harris Poll survey of Chicago-area parents of school-age children (ages 5-17), 90% said that the local, state and/or federal governments need to provide more aid to support students’ mental health, and 92% said that school districts ought to prioritize offering mental health services. Pluralities of these parents said that the pandemic harmed their child’s social health (42%) and emotional development (36%), while significant numbers also reported negative effects on behavioral development (35%) and academics (33%).

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Importance  In the US, the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is 1.8% among people who are Black and 0.8% among people who are not Black. Mortality rates due to HCV are 5.01/100 000 among people who are Black and 2.98/100 000 among people who are White.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common chronic bloodborne infection in the US and a leading cause of mortality from infectious disease, primarily through progression to cirrhosis, liver failure, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).^1-3 From 2013 to 2016, approximately 4.1 million people in the US had a positive HCV antibody test result, indicating past or current HCV infection, of whom approximately 2.4 million had current HCV infection with HCV RNA detected in their blood.¹ Among approximately 29 065 800 Black individuals in the US between 2013 and 2016, the prevalence of HCV infection was 1.8% compared with 0.8% among approximately 215 615 900 individuals of other races and ethnicities combined (prevalence ratio [PR], 2.2) (Table 1).⁴ Black individuals comprise 23% of all HCV-infected individuals in the US, but represent approximately 12% of the population.⁴ Among US residents in 2021, those who were non-Hispanic Black had an HCV mortality rate of 5.01/100 000 compared with 9.99/100 000 for American Indian/Alaska Native individuals, 1.32/100 000 for Asian/Pacific Islander individuals, 3.67/100 000 for Hispanic individuals, and 2.98/100 000 for non-Hispanic White individuals (Table 2).³ Of the approximately 13 895 HCV-related deaths in 2021, an estimated 279 were among American Indian/Alaska Native people, 293 among Asian/Pacific Islander people, 2442 among Black people, and 1901 among Hispanic people.

Because of the high prevalence and absolute number of annual HCV-related deaths in Black populations relative to other racial and ethnic minority groups, this review summarizes evidence regarding Black race and inequities in outcomes of HCV infection.

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             Mental healthcare access and treatment was down by 24% and no change was detected for PRO's after ACO enrollment. 

Being enrolled in an accountable care organization (ACO) won’t do much to improve a patient’s mental healthcare access or symptom burden; in fact, ACO enrollment has proven to hamper access to care and decrease patient-reported outcomes for folks with depression and anxiety disorders, a new Health Affairs study says. [Patient Engagement HIT] 

The data, obtained via email, shows that Medicare beneficiaries newly enrolled in Medicare ACOs see a 24 percent drop in mental healthcare treatment during the year, plus no relative improvement in their anxiety and depression symptoms.

These findings come as the United States healthcare system looks to ACOs as the gold standard in chronic disease management.

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On November 1, the CDC released sobering new data that showed a 3% increase in infant mortality in 2022. This is critical as infant mortality has steadily decreased over the last several years and this data shows the largest year-to-year increase in more than 20 years. Maternal and infant health is fundamental to all health. Read our statement. [CDC and March of Dimes]

One of the leading factors in infant mortality is preterm birth. Now, more than ever, it's critical that we do all we can towards ending preventable preterm birth. This November is the 20th anniversary of Prematurity Awareness Month. Please join us to raise awareness of the maternal and infant health crisis our country is facing.

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Opioid use during pregnancy has greatly increased in the past 3 decades.¹ Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are an effective treatment, but use of MOUD remains low.¹ Little is known about the association between MOUD use in pregnancy and improved outcomes for children of pregnant people with opioid use disorder (OUD).^2-5 This omission from the literature is important, as treatment during the prenatal period may have long-term implications for infant health by ameliorating the harm caused by untreated OUD. Using a multistate Medicaid claims database on mother-infant dyads, we examined the association between receipt of prenatal MOUD and health services use (recommended number of well-child visits, emergency department [ED] visits, and rehospitalization) during the first year of life. [JAMA Network]

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