From Washington, DC,

• Both Houses of Congress will be in session this week for floor voting and Committee business. Both Houses go on month-long State / District work breaks next week.

• HR Dive reports
  • “The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed the nomination of Democrat Kalpana Kotagal to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her nomination as commissioner gives the workplace rights enforcement agency a Democratic majority. 
  • “The Senate voted 49-47 in favor of the Ohio native Thursday [July 13], after invoking cloture Wednesday. Kotagal will serve as the fifth commissioner of the agency with a term expiring July 1, 2027.” 

From the public health front,

• The FEHBlog ran across this regularly updated Census Bureau national emergency management map.

• Fierce Healthcare discusses an interesting United Healthcare population health program called Catalyst which operates in 28 states.

• NPR Shots advises avoiding heat stroke and staying healthy when it’s hot outside.

From the medical research front,

• The Wall Street Journal offers an essay about research underway to “get rid of menopause.”
  • “Imagine if women never reached menopause, that dreaded middle-age milestone—or could delay it, or decide when to have it.
  • “Women could remain fertile longer and would have more choice about when to start a family. They wouldn’t struggle with symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings and brain fog in the prime of their careers and family lives.
  • “Even more significantly, women might live longer and healthier lives. Though menopause—a full year without a menstrual cycle—is associated with the end of fertility, it also marks another profound but less recognized change. When the ovaries stop functioning and releasing important hormones, biological aging in women speeds up, increasing the risk of numerous health problems.
  • “Menopause is the single biggest accelerant of the diseases of aging for women across the board, whether it’s heart disease and stroke, autoimmune disorders, osteoporosis or cognitive decline,” says Piraye Yurttas Beim, founder and CEO of a biotech startup called Celmatix focused on improving ovarian health. “It’s the end of the function of a key organ in our body, and we should not normalize it any more than we would normalize tooth decay, osteoarthritis or cognitive decline.” * * *
  • “At Celmatix, the startup founded by Beim, researchers are seeking to develop what’s called an activator of the AMH hormone. A woman could take a drug to reduce the loss of follicles and eggs in her reserve and thus maintain optimal ovarian health and then go off the drug when she wants more eggs to be released to try to get pregnant.”