From Washington, DC —

• Healthcare Finance tells us,
  • “On Tuesday, the American Medical Association, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and Race Forward officially launched Rise to Health, a call to action for providers, payers, pharma and professional societies to make health equity a priority.
  • “Rise to Health will have enforcement teeth in the form of establishing a set of measures across numerous participants.
  • “That’s what we are observing as a critical defining difference,” said IHI president and CEO Dr. Kedar Mate. 
  • “Dr. Aletha Maybank, AMA chief health equity officer and senior vice president called it “collective accountability.”
  • “We need data measurement,” Maybank said. “There’s a whole measurement component, with input from different folks.”
  • “Rise to Health: A National Coalition for Equity in Health Care has been in the works for about two years. Its ten founders include the AMA, American Hospital Association and AHIP.”

• The American Hospital Association reports,
  • “The FDA today told AHA that is has worked with Qilu Pharmaceuticals and Apotex Corp. to temporarily import cisplatin, a drug used in chemotherapy, after a national shortage. FDA said it is carefully assessing the overseas product for quality to ensure it is safe for U.S. patients. The agency issued a “Dear Health Care Provider” letter with details and updated its drug shortage database with more information.”

From the public health front —

• US News and World Report informs us,
  • “Almost all Americans have some level of immunity against COVID-19 through vaccination, previous infection or both, suggests new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • “The study, which was published Thursday, tested blood donations from people ages 16 years and older for antibodies against the coronavirus from July through September 2022.
  • “It found that 96% of people had antibodies by last fall. About 23% were from infection alone and 26% were from vaccination alone. Nearly 48% had hybrid immunity – a number that’s only expected to grow as the coronavirus continues to circulate.
  • “Hybrid immunity, or the combination of protection from vaccination and infection, is believed to be higher and longer lasting than protection from either source on its own.
  • “This increase in seroprevalence, including hybrid immunity, is likely contributing to lower rates of severe disease and death from COVID-19 in 2022–2023 than during the early pandemic,” the authors wrote.”

• The American Hospital Association relates,
  • “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is following up on a previous alert of an outbreak of suspected fungal meningitis in Texas, which is now significantly expanded to multiple states. A total of 212 residents in 25 U.S. states and jurisdictions have been identified who might be at risk of fungal meningitis because they received epidural anesthesia at clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, during cosmetic procedures.
  • The CDC is urging all patients, including those without symptoms, who underwent medical or surgical procedures under epidural anesthesia at River Side Surgical Center or Clinica K-3 in Matamoros, Mexico, since Jan. 1, 2023, should be evaluated for fungal meningitis as soon as possible. Health care providers should immediately report possible fungal meningitis cases possibly related to this outbreak to their state or local health department.” 

• Health Day points out,
  • “The number of American women who have diabetes when they become pregnant has increased dramatically over five years, health officials reported Wednesday. 
  • “Between 2016 and 2021, the rate of pregnancy among diabetic women has risen 27%, from about 9 per 1,000 births to 11 per 1,000 births, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
  • “Primary reasons for this increase are most likely the ongoing obesity epidemic and the fact that more older women are having children.”

• The Wall Street Journal offers an essay discussing why are our knees are so easy to injure.

From the research front, BioPharma Dive reports,

• A targeted drug from Novartis reduced the risk of breast cancer returning by 25% versus standard treatment when used after surgery in people vulnerable to a relapse, according to clinical trial data released Friday.
• The findings, which will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago, give Novartis a chance at Food and Drug Administration approval for its drug in this so-called adjuvant setting. A competing therapy from Eli Lilly won a similar OK a year and a half ago.
• Novartis announced in March that the trial, called NATALEE, had succeeded, but didn’t disclose details. The full findings now released give breast cancer doctors an opportunity to evaluate how the drug, known as ribociclib and sold as Kisqali, might fit in treatment.