Iowa news
New cases decline and more Iowans are getting boosters
This is the fifth consecutive week that Iowa has reported fewer cases than the week before, according to the weekly data release. Over the past seven days, Iowa has averaged 265 new reported cases, down from 299 per day over the week prior. But the number of people hospitalized in Iowa with COVID-19 increased in this week’s update for the first time in a month. The state also reported it had administered a total of 113,874 doses of the new bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster doses, which first became available in the state around the start of September. (Des Moines Register)
Grassley, Miller-Meeks seek assurance for Keokuk on potential rural emergency hospital designation
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) are seeking assurances from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding the agency’s pending guidelines for rural emergency hospital (REH) designations. Specifically, the lawmakers are seeking assurance from CMS that the Keokuk hospital, which closed its doors last week, is eligible for an REH designation in the future. An REH designation, which Grassley helped get signed into law in 2020, provides rural hospitals with the option to right-size their health care infrastructure while maintaining essential medical services for their communities. (www.Grassley.Senate.gov)
Iowa’s brain drain continues to cost state college-educated adults
Iowa is one of the worst states at retaining its new college graduates, according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The state spends millions of dollars funding Iowa’s public universities with the hope of training and educating new graduates to fuel the workforce, yet 34% more of Iowa’s college-educated workforce leaves the state after graduation than stays, according to the report. Iowa’s “brain drain” is worse than its six neighboring states and ranks 10th worst in the U.S. (Axios Des Moines)
National news
Winter viruses are filling up hospitals with sick kids
COVID-19 didn’t just affect schools, concerts and vacations – it disrupted other viruses, too. Cases from common respiratory infections have been historically low the past few years, health experts say, as offices closed, students learned virtually, and Americans wore masks to combat the coronavirus. But with school in full swing and winter viruses returning to seasonal patterns, hospitals across the country are beginning to fill up with sick kids. (USA Today)
Teen vaping rates rise, nearing pre-pandemic levels, CDC reports
Teen vaping rates are rising once again, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports — a signal that as kids have returned to school, so has their use of e-cigarettes. Data from the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey showed that 14.1% of high school students and 3.3% of middle school students said they’d recently used an e-cigarette or other vape. The survey, led by both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, was conducted from January through the end of May. Most surveyed youth, 84.5%, said they used flavored e-cigarettes, most often in fruity or other sweet flavors. (NBC News)
Embedded bias: How medical records can sow discrimination
Doctors often send signals of their appraisals of patients’ personas. Researchers are increasingly finding that doctors can transmit prejudice under the guise of objective descriptions. Clinicians who later read those purportedly objective descriptions can be misled and deliver substandard care. Discrimination in health care is “the secret, or silent, poison that taints interactions between providers and patients before, during, after the medical encounter,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of George Washington University’s law school and an expert in civil rights law and disparities in health care. (Kaiser Health News)