By Annette Choi, CNN

(CNN) — Guns continue to be the leading cause of death for US children and teens since surpassing car accidents in 2020.

Firearms accounted for 18% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2022, the most recent data available from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database. About 3,500 children died in gun-related incidents that year. That’s about five children lost for every 100,000 children in the United States. In no other comparable country are firearms within the top four causes of mortality among children, according to a KFF analysis.

The shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday marks the 45th school shooting in 2024. Two students and two teachers were killed. It’s the deadliest school shooting since the March 2023 massacre at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

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By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

(CNN) — Sixty-five people in nine states have been sickened by a salmonella outbreak linked to recalled eggs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday.

Of 63 cases with information available, 24 have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. The CDC says the outbreak may be difficult to treat with commonly recommended antibiotics; lab tests showed the bacteria is resistant to nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin. Illnesses started from May 23 to August 10.

The eggs were supplied by Milo’s Poultry Farms LLC in Bonduel, Wisconsin, and shipped to stores and restaurants in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The US Food and Drug Administration says they may have been sent other places. The recall was announced Friday.

The eggs are labeled with Milo’s Poultry Farm or Tony’s Fresh Market. All egg types, sizes and expiration dates are included in the recall.

The recalled eggs should be thrown away or returned to the store. People should wash items and surfaces that may have touched the recalled eggs with hot, soapy water or a dishwasher.

Symptoms of a salmonella infection include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps that can start within hours or days of consuming the bacteria. Most people will recover without treatment but should seek immediate attention from a health care provider if they have severe symptoms, symptoms that don’t improve after a few days or signs of dehydration. Children, elderly people and those with weakened immune systems are more likely to become severely ill.

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By Amy O’Kruk and Rachel Wilson, CNN

(CNN) — As the demand for mental health care grows across the United States, so will an expected demand for service providers.

Employment growth in the mental health field — for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, psychiatric aides and social workers — is expected to be triple the projection for a typical US job, according to a CNN analysis of new data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A subset of mental health practitioners — specifically mental health counselors, which include substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors — is projected to grow even more rapidly. Growth for these roles is set to increase by 19%, going from about 450,000 workers in 2023 to 534,000 by 2033, making it among the top 20 fastest-growing US occupations. These counselors work with people seeking help for problems such as anxiety, addictions and stress.

Marriage and family therapists are other jobs within the mental health field expected to show notable growth by 2033, with jobs there expected to rise by 16%. And the BLS group “counselors, all other,” a catch-all category that includes jobs such as sexual assault counselors and anger control or grief counselors, is similarly projected to grow 14% by 2033.

Why and where growth is likely

Two factors could be increasing demand for mental health services: Decreasing stigma around seeking treatment and increasing uncertainty in peoples’ lives, said Traci Cipriano, a clinical psychologist and assistant clinical professor in the Yale School of Medicine. She told CNN that political divisiveness, economic uncertainty, gun violence and the climate crisis are factors putting particular pressure on Americans.

“All of these things feel threatening to a certain degree, but each one of us as an individual really has very little control over them,” Cipriano said. “Stress itself can be managed through mental health treatment but if you don’t manage it, it can lead to depression and anxiety.”

Over the next decade, more Americans are also expected to manage stress outside of formal therapy. CNN’s analysis of BLS job projections also found that holistic workers — such as acupuncturists, fitness trainers and massage therapists — are also set to outpace typical job growth.

Employment growth specifically for massage therapists is estimated to balloon by nearly 18% by 2033, adding almost 23,000 jobs annually on average. More than half of clients cited relaxation or stress relief as the primary reason for receiving a massage, according to a 2023 survey by the American Massage Therapy Association.

Access among top barriers to seeking treatment

The growing demand for mental health workers is one sign of shortages amid what many are calling a health emergency. Nine out of 10 adults said they believed that there’s a mental health crisis in the United States, and young people especially reported deteriorated well-being during and after the pandemic.

While more adults are seeking treatment in recent years, most struggling with their mental health still do not receive support.

One reason could be the approximately 122 million Americans who live in areas where there is a scarcity of mental health professionals, according to a 2021 analysis by USA Facts. Rural areas are particularly vulnerable, with Wyoming and Utah leading for the highest proportion of people without access to mental health providers.

“We’re experiencing a shortage of mental health professionals,” said Cipriano. “People can’t get in and access the treatment they need, so it makes sense there would be a need for job growth.”

Methodology

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects employment projection data for more than 1,100 detailed occupational groups. These group employment categories can represent multiple professions. For example, the occupational group “Therapists, all other” includes art and music therapists but also peripatologists – people who support those who are visually impaired to travel independently. As such, some of the group employment categories analyzed by CNN may include professions not directly connected to mental health services and similarly, some occupational groups omitted from our analysis may include mental health-related jobs.

To identify mental health professionals as specifically as possible, CNN limited its analysis to occupations in the categories of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, psychiatric aides and social workers. We included the following employment categories (national employment code in parentheses): Substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors (21-1018); counselors, all other (21-1019); marriage and family therapists (21-1013); therapists, all other (29-1129); mental health and substance abuse social workers (21-1023); clinical and counseling psychologists (19-3033); school psychologists (19-3034); psychologists, all other (19-3039); psychiatrists (29-1223); and psychiatric aides (31-1133).

For holistic workers, CNN included massage therapists (31-9011); exercise trainers and group fitness instructors (39-9031); dietitians and nutritionists (29-1031); acupuncturists (29-1291); and healthcare diagnosing or treating practitioners, all other (29-1299).

While there are limitations to this analysis because of the broad nature of the BLS’s occupational groups, its purpose is to examine high-level employment trends.

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By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

(CNN) — When she goes to the grocery store, Lilianna Wilde will sometimes go for the shopping cart from which everyone else steers clear, the sad-looking one with the squeaky wheel.

When she puts the dishes away, she’ll swap the bottom plate and put it to the top, so the it can be used.

And when she had to get rid of her favorite pair of jean shorts, the ones she wore for years, she felt bad for the clothing as she folded it to be sent away.

It’s nothing that impacts Wilde’s ability to function, she said, just a fleeting moment of emotion for the object that cannot return the feeling. When Wilde talked about the phenomenon in a video on her TikTok account, where she often posts lifestyle and relationship content, she found that she was not the only one who did it. People commented that they felt emotions for their stuffed animals, plants, furniture and even the voice behind their phone’s GPS.

The brief humanizing of these non-sentient objects could be a part of a person’s natural desire to seek out connections in their everyday lives, said Dr. Melissa Shepard, a board-certified psychiatrist in Maryland.

“We’re sort of hardwired to connect with other people, and sometimes that extends to other (things) who aren’t people,” Shepard said. “We look for ways as humans to make sense of the world, and one of the easiest ways to understand the world is through what your own experiences are.”

It’s nothing to be concerned about unless it is an extreme emotion that interferes with your daily life. Here’s what experts have to say about the curious behavior.

Anthropomorphizing household objects

When people feel sympathy for inanimate objects, they are anthropomorphizing, attributing human behaviors or feelings to animals or objects who cannot feel the same emotions as we do, Shepard said.

The exact reason people do this is unclear, but experts have  some guesses. Sometimes, the feelings are attached to objects that a person has had for a while and now finds to be sentimental or nostalgic, reminding them of a different time in their life, said Kim Egel, a licensed marriage and family therapist in California.

“I think we all have things that kind of tug at our hearts a little bit more,” Egel said. “It’s common for humans to do this. … Perhaps just some people might do it more than others for certain reasons.”

It could be a projection of someone’s feelings onto the object, such as giving an object an emotion that they have felt in the past, like loneliness when said object is isolated. Or it could be a sign that a person is not getting the connection that they want and need from humans, she added.

When Wilde first shared the video, she thought she might be the only one who experienced emotions for the unassuming objects, she said.

“My husband, who’s in the video with me, he doesn’t get it at all. He’s like, ‘I don’t understand how you could feel any kind of human feeling toward something that isn’t human or alive,’” Wilde said. “But it’s not at the same level that you feel it for a human, it’s just a comparable emotion.

“It’s not like it affects my day-to-day, like I think about it quickly, that I feel bad for the jean shorts, and then it’s over. … You realize, ‘why am I feeling sad for this? These are, you know, jean shorts,’ and you move on from it.”

She wonders if the feelings could be derived from the movies she loved to watch as a kid, such as Disney’s “Toy Story” saga or “Beauty and the Beast,” which gives life to things that do not have it in the real world. Or maybe it stems from feelings she had as a kid of being left out or not included that she doesn’t want anyone else to feel, she said.

“I guess sometimes I wonder if I feel like I’m the squeaky wheel cart, you know, like maybe someone hasn’t looked out for me – not to sound so dramatic,” Wilde said. “I wonder if I have this need to make sure no one feels left behind… so then that translates to the banana left alone on the counter.”

There is a medical condition known as delusional companion syndrome where people can have these feelings of empathy to a much more extreme extent and can be convinced that the objects do have these emotions — but it is much less common than the average anthropomorphizing, Shepard said. Anthropomorphizing is also something Shepard has more commonly noticed in her neurodivergent patients, who often have the feelings more intensely to where it can cause disruptions in life, she added.

If someone finds themselves anthropomorphizing to a point where they avoid certain activities that cause the feelings, or they are unable to throw stuff out due to the intense emotion, Shepard recommends contacting a mental health professional.

Most of the time, “it is something that’s normal for people to do, and oftentimes, can be a sign that you maybe have a really healthy imagination… and a sign that you can empathize with people more easily,” Shepard said. “It is also a really beautiful thing, because I think it allows us to connect with people and objects and things in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Feeling sympathy for robots and AI

Robots sometimes gain human sympathy as well, such as the common anthropomorphizing of the NASA Mars rovers. In August 2013, one year after its successful launch, the Curiosity rover sang itself happy birthday, and was quickly dubbed the loneliest birthday in the galaxy. In February 2019, when the Opportunity rover was declared dead – its final message to the space station in June 2018 translated to “My battery is low and it’s getting dark” – social media users responded to the announcement with their expressions of grief for the space robot.

As artificial intelligence, or AI, becomes more integrated into everyday life, research is looking into whether the chatbot can also cause people to feel similar emotions that are felt for other humans, said Dr. Marlynn Wei, a psychiatrist and founder of a holistic psychotherapy practice in New York. Typically, if robots have more human-like features, such as a face, voice, personality or human body language, people are more likely to empathize with it, she added.

But on the other end, if robots are too perfectly human-like, it creates the opposite effect known as the uncanny valley. This phenomenon is an eerie and uncomfortable feeling in reaction to CGI animation or nonhuman machines, such as a robot with human-like eyes, said Wei, who also has a performance project five years in the works called “Elixir: Digital Im­mortality,” which explores people’s reactions to AI clones of themselves or loved ones.

These AI companions are becoming increasingly popular, but experts don’t yet know how these bots can affect someone’s development or psychology, Wei said. “We’re solving our loneliness problem by giving people AI companions, but is that actually a good thing?  Is that artificial intimacy really something that we want to solve this issue of loneliness? Is it actually a healthy social connection? We’re still trying to learn how (AI) impacts us on a daily basis.”

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SANTA FE, New Mexico (KVIA) -- The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) just issued a consumer health and safety advisory for contaminated cannabis. The impacted products were being sold statewide, including in Sunland Park, Alamogordo, and Carlsbad.

The advisory is for cannabis flowers, including bud, shake, and trim, that tested positive for a prohibited pesticide sold from March 6, 2024 to August 1, 2024. The impacted brand is WH Agriculture, LLC DBA Maggie's Farm.

"Consumers should review the list below to see if they purchased a contaminated product," state officials said Friday. "If so, they are advised to destroy it or return it to the retailer for proper disposal."

The CCD says it has not received an health-related complaints in connection to this recall, but that anyone with concerns should call New Mexico's Poison Control Hotline at 800-222-1222.

The following dispensaries sold the impacted products: the R. Greenleaf Organics Dispensary on Appaloosa Drive in Sunland Park, the R. Greenleaf Organics Dispensary on North White Sands Boulevard in Alamogordo, and the R. Greenleaf Organics Dispensary on West Pierce Street in Carlsbad.

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By Carma Hassan, CNN

(CNN) — A person in Missouri is the United States’ first case of H5 avian influenza without a known exposure to a sick animal, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

“This is the 14^th human case of H5 reported in the United States during 2024 and the first case of H5 without a known occupational exposure to sick or infected animals,” the CDC said in a statement. It’s also the first H5 case detected through the country’s national flu surveillance system rather than targeted surveillance of the ongoing bird flu outbreak in animals.

The case is under investigation by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The person had underlying medical conditions and was hospitalized on August 22. The person tested positive for influenza A, was treated with influenza antiviral medications and is now recovered and at home, according to MDHSS.

A sample from the patient was sent to the CDC, which confirmed that the case was a type of bird flu. Flu viruses are classified based on two proteins that sit on the surface of the virus an H, or hemagglutinin, protein, and an N, or neuraminidase, protein. A spokesperson for the CDC said the agency had confirmed the flu type is H5, but has not yet determined the N type. They are working on isolating the virus and reading its genetic sequence. Scientists at the CDC hope to have more information on the genetics of the virus in the coming days, the spokesperson said.

Knowing the genetic sequence will tell researchers how closely the virus that infected this patient may be related to the viruses that currently causing outbreaks in chickens, and cows and other mammals in the US.

There are no cases of bird flu among cattle in Missouri, but there have been outbreaks of the virus among poultry in the state.

The CDC’s risk assessment of H5N1 for the general public remains low, the agency said.

CNN’s Brenda Goodman contributed to this report.

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By Carma Hassan, CNN

(CNN) — After nearly 20 cases of Valley fever were identified after a summer music festival in California, state health officials are warning that risk from the fungal infection rises in the late summer and early fall.

“We’re preparing for another possible increase in Valley fever cases in the coming months, and we want Californians to know the signs and symptoms to detect it early,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, the California Department of Public Health director and state public health officer. “If you have a lingering cough and fatigue, please talk to a doctor about Valley fever, especially if you’ve been outdoors in dusty air in the Central Valley or Central Coast regions.”

People and pets can get the infection by breathing in fungal spores in dust from the outdoors containing the Valley fever fungus, according to the California Department of Public Health. The infection primarily occurs in the southwestern US and some parts of Washington state, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Valley fever, also known as coccidioidomycosis, is not contagious and cannot spread person-to-person. It can take one to three weeks to develop symptoms, such as cough and chest pain, headache and tiredness. The illness can linger for at least a month.

In rare cases, the infection can spread from the lungs to the brain and spinal cord, the skin or the bones and joints, the CDC said.

Health-care providers can test for the disease through a blood sample or a skin test.

The number of infections is growing in California, with at least 9,000 cases reported across the state in 2023 and more than 5,000 preliminary cases reported so far in 2024 as of July 1, the state health department said.

More than a dozen cases of Valley fever were reported among people who attended or worked at the Lightning in a Bottle music festival in Kern County in May. There were 19 people who got Valley fever and eight people were hospitalized, according to the California Department of Public Health.

“Possible causes of this recent increase include winter rains after several years of drought, an increase in soil disturbance activities (including construction) in high-risk areas, and increased disease recognition, testing and reporting. In addition, while most cases of Valley fever in California are reported from the Central Valley and Central Coast regions, cases have been increasing outside of these regions, including in the northern Central Valley and in southern California,” the health department said in a statement.

A recent study published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health, The Americas suggests that climate change may drive case rates and the seasonal patterns of infection.

The researchers examined cases of Valley fever in 17 California counties between 2000 and 2021 and noted that exposure to the fungus is highest between July and September and lowest between February and April based on when cases increased in the weeks that followed exposure.

“California has a distinct dry season (April–October) and wet season (November–March) each year, and our results show that coccidioidomycosis seasonal peaks occur most often at the end of the dry season. Anomalously wet conditions in the prior wet season as well as anomalously dry conditions during the concurrent dry season are associated with more pronounced seasonal peaks in incidence,” the researchers wrote.

The study says the findings can help inform public health messaging, by explaining “when to avoid particularly dusty environments and dust-generating activities and, when dust exposure is not avoidable, when to use dust suppression techniques, such as wetting soil before disturbing.” People can use N95 masks to prevent inhaling fungal spores.

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By Dr. Katie Hurley, CNN

(CNN) — While school administrators and parents focus on phone bans in schools as kids head back to school — and rightfully so — we also need to pay attention to the other places where phone use (and overuse) occurs.

As a therapist who works with teenagers, I routinely hear from clients that their parents consistently criticize kids’ phone use but don’t curb their own use. Hypocrisy aside, teens tell me that it’s frustrating when their parents can’t give them their focus. Frustrated with their parents over their lack of attention, teens curb negative emotions by watching videos on social media.

Higher levels of perceived parent digital technology use that interferes with parent-child interactions — referred to as “parental technoference” by the study authors — were associated with higher levels of anxiety, inattention and hyperactivity later in development, according to a new study published in August in JAMA Network Open.

Parents often tell me the same thing — their kids are glued to their phones and don’t listen when they try to engage them. And when parents feel rejected, they also turn their attention to their phones.

In many ways, families get stuck in an endless loop of fractured communication and hurt feelings because technology steals focus.

I try to help families zoom out and look at the problem from both perspectives, and often they are able to see that technology robs them of positive interactions and quality time. I tell parents and kids alike that everyone needs to make changes in their technology habits to restore positive communication and trust. (And note to adults: It’s our job as parents to work on our family dynamics and model good behavior for our kids.)

Before you worry that you must ban phone use completely at home, it’s important to note that the “parental technoference” study deliberately centered on youth voices and did not include parent perceptions. But those results, although not conclusive, can make parents and caregivers more aware of what we do at home.

There’s a lot that can be done to curb “technoference” and restore positive and meaningful conversations within families. And no, you don’t have to throw out your phones or do all these steps at once. Do try to put down your phones (everyone) to sort out some family tech guidelines.

Set family tech guidelines together

Parents often set rules they don’t always intend to follow. Keeping phones out of the bedroom is a common rule among parents of tweens and teens, yet this rule doesn’t often apply to the parents (guilty as charged).

While it’s perfectly logical to adapt the rules by maturity level, it’s also important to include kids in these conversations to increase their understanding about the differences. In my case, my kids know that my phone is in night mode and only family can reach me for emergencies after 9 p.m.

How can we do it? Including your children’s voices in these conversations gives them some agency over learning to use technology in a healthy way in the home. Think about these questions:

●   When should we put our phones away at home?

●   How can we help each other stay off our phones during family time?

●   What system should we use to reduce our phone use (maybe a storage basket or central charging station)?

Practice active listening skills together

It’s natural for push notifications to grab attention when we see our phones light up, and it’s OK if that feels hard to resist. Some of our technology is designed to be addictive. Learning to use technology in moderation, like changing any habits, takes time and practice. Most people will make mistakes along the way.

How can we do it? Focus on these active listening skills at home to practice focused attention:

●   Maintain eye contact or look near the person’s face if eye contact is difficult.

●   Ask follow-up questions to clarify something.

●   Avoid interrupting by holding your thought until the other person is finished speaking.

●   Reflect on what you heard.

●   Listen to understand, not to respond.

Create communication systems that work

Sometimes parents will need to address work situations as they pop up (a doctor on call, a journalist with a deadline, a government official during a storm), and teens will need to handle notifications from school. (My daughter said situations like notifications from group project text chats and homework deadlines that include a specific time are best addressed right away.)

How we handle these imminent requests matter so that we don’t reject one another or interrupt important points of connection.

●   Remain focused until there is a break in the conversation.

●   Be certain the request is urgent and needs immediate attention before stepping away.

●   Make a follow-up plan to continue the conversation.

●   Be clear when you set boundaries around work needs.

Like all things related to technology, learning to use it in a positive way in the home will likely be a work in progress for a while. Try not to be hard on yourselves, or your kids, as new information arises. The best thing families can do is remain flexible and adapt as information is updated.

Make family time together

It’s always a good idea to revisit things your family enjoys doing together that don’t include technology.

●   Family game night

●   Ice cream sundae bar

●   Sunset walks around town

●   Playing Mad Libs

By prioritizing having fun together, families can curb tech overuse in a positive way.

You don’t need to do this all at once. Families I work with often find that working on one small goal at a time makes a big difference. Go ahead and plan that weekly family game night; it might just be the tech-free zone you need to reset your family habits.

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LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and local leaders just broke ground on a new reproductive health clinic in Dona Ana County.

Planning for the Center for Reproductive Health started in 2022 when the governor secured $10 million in capital improvement money to "help meet a sharply increased demand for reproductive services following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision," a spokesperson for her office explained Thursday.

Since the Dobbs decision, more women have traveled to New Mexico for abortion care. Many travel from states such as Texas and Oklahoma that started restricting abortion access following the decision.

The governor's office provided the following list of services that will be available at the clinic.

• Medication and procedural abortion
• Miscarriage management
• Range of contraception options including IUDs implants, emergency contraception, and hormonal and barrier contraception options
• Pregnancy loss support and management
• Lactation support
• Women’s Preventative care, sexually transmitted infection, and cancer screenings
• Adoption education and resources
• Limited Primary Care including: STI screenings, cervical cancer screenings, checkups for sexual health care
• Doula Support

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El Paso, TX (KVIA-TV)-September is PCOS awareness month. Dr. Ogechika Alozie explains that now is the time to spread the word about is condition and its challenges for women.

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EL PASO (KVIA) --The El Paso Foundation had a special ceremony on Sept. 4th at El Paso Children's Hospital by dedicating a room in the name of 2-time cancer survivor Hailee Ozaeta. It was part of a $25,000 donation to help kickoff Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Hailee Ozaeta can't couldn't contain her emotions, as she cried in the arms of her father while she and her family congregated around the room dedicated in her name at El Paso Children's Hospital.

 "They've helped save my life so many time," said 15-year-old Hailey.

As a kid who suffered mightily from cancer, she was thrilled to join dozens of others for the ceremony, including U.S. veterans, law enforcement, and scores of volunteers as the room she spent countless hours in as a patient was given the official name in her honor saying: "Do Not Fear, For I Am With You -Isaiah 4:10, Hailee & The Ozaeta Family."

Hailee's mother, Sandra Ozaeta, said, "So this is an honor for us to be able to give back to the hospital that helped save her life," after talking about the $25,000 dollar donation to El Paso Children's Hospital.

Hailee is also grateful for her little sister, Josie, who helped save her life by being her bone marrow donor.

When ABC-7's Paul Cicala asked Josie if she felt like a hero for donating the life-saving bone marrow, she answered, "Yes, because I love my sister, and I've done everything for her. When she's in her ups and downs, I always cheer her up."

Hailee told ABC-7's Paul Cicala: "(El Paso Children's Hospital) means so much to me honestly, through mental and physical (struggles). They first help save my life. I'm here because of them,  Me and my family have been through so many things together that I never expected. For them to get that room that I was first diagnosed in, I'm just so blessed, that they were able to do that for us," added Hailee with a huge smile on her face as members of the Official American Legion Riders Chapter 36 El Paso surrounded her in support.  

"We are incredibly grateful to Hailee’s family for their generosity and for choosing to honor her journey in such a meaningful way," said Dr. B. Abigail Tarango, Executive Director of the El Paso Children’s Foundation. "Their contribution will have a lasting impact on the lives of many children and families who walk through these doors."

The non-profit also pointed out that the donation marks the beginning of a series of events planned by the El Paso Children’s Hospital Foundation throughout September to raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer care and research.

People, Places & Paul stories can be seen periodically on KVIA ABC-7 and features many of the movers and shakers in our borderland.

ABC-7's Stephanie Valle also featured Hailee in a story back in 2019. You can see it here.

In Stephanie Valle's story, she touched on how it was in March of 2018, when Hailee was 8-years-old, and she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It's a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow that affects white blood cells. HERE'S MORE FROM STEPHANIE VALLE'S 2019 REPORT:

“I felt very sick. I felt weak,” Hailee told Valle at the time. “I felt like a weight on me. I would get a lot of headaches.

Her mother, Sandra Ozaeta, told ABC-7 that when doctors confirmed Hailee’s diagnosis, she didn’t tell her daughter.

“How do you tell your 8-year-old that she has cancer?” Sandra said.

But Hailee told ABC-7 that she learned anyway, through dreams based in her faith.

“There was this dark tunnel and I was walking to it,” Hailee said. “And there was this big light at the end. I see the Virgin Mary and she is in a burgundy thing with green, with her hands like this,” she said, gesturing with her palms up in her lap. “She didn’t use the word ‘cancer,’ but something told me in my heart that I had it,” Hailee said. “She was just telling me how I had to keep strong.”

“I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t anything,” she added. “I just felt peaceful, and I knew that I was going to be OK. I just had that faith in me.”

Hailee said she did keep strong through chemotherapy and hair loss, but that kidney failure two months into her intense treatment brought another dream of a heavenly encounter.

“I had another dream,” Hailee told ABC-7. “There was God, but he was a figure of light.”​​​​​​​

She described seeing stairs blanketed with clouds and eating at a banquet with angels.

“We all ate tamales and Takis,” she said, laughing.

But then she said the tone of the dream turned more serious.

“This little (angel) broke his wing, and God touched it,” she said. “I was like, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ And God said, ‘The same thing that I’m going to do to you.’ So he touched my kidneys. And that’s when I woke up.”​​​​​​​

She said that when she awoke, she was able to use the restroom — something that hadn’t been possible for a whole day due to her kidney failure.

In June 2018, her scans came back clean. She was cancer-free.

That summer, she attended a weeklong camp organized by Candlelighters of El Paso for kids who are battling or who overcame cancer.

“That was her first step out of the hospital,” Sandra said. “She was able to be a kid for a whole week.”​​​​​​​

When Hailee talked about camp, her face lit up. “My favorite thing was at the end — the dance. It was really fun this year,” she said while laughing.

With a year left of treatment, the fifth grader is dreaming of her future.

“I want to work at the children’s hospital for kids that have cancer,” Hailee said. “Now that I’ve been through this, I want to help other kids and tell my story to them and tell them that everything’s going to be OK.”​​​​​​​

Candlelighters of El Paso supports families who are fighting childhood cancer. In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Candlelighters is hosting the Walk of Hope for families of fighters, survivors, and those who who lost their battle with cancer.

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By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN

Rocklin, California (CNN) — When I visited Rocklin Elementary school, I sat in on a lesson with a third-grade class – a lesson I would never have imagined as a father, a journalist or a trauma surgeon.

“Chances are, you’re never ever going to have to use this. If you do, it’s gonna be scary,” Kate Carleton told the 20 or so 8- and 9-year-olds. “But because we’ve taught you what to do, it makes it a little less scary.”

She spent the next 30 minutes teaching them how to stop a wound from bleeding out. The lesson is appropriately titled “Stop the Bleed.”

Carleton is a trauma nurse at Sutter Roseville Medical Center, a level 2 trauma center in Rocklin, California, a northern suburb of Sacramento. At the beginning of her 17-year career, she saw a lot of car crashes, motorcycle accidents and falls. More recently, the number of gunshot wounds coming through her hospital has increased, most often from domestic violence or suicide.

On this day, she was kneeling on the ground to show these little kids the techniques paramedics often use in the field to stop bleeding. And as I looked around the classroom, I could tell that the kids were really listening.

“Now, if you’ve got that bleeding to stop on that person, what did you do for their life?” she asked the kids.

Hands flew up.

“You saved their life,” answered one little girl.

Born out of tragedy

A little more than seven years ago, Carleton was watching a special about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, and like so many parents, she wondered about her own children, then in kindergarten and second grade. Was there anything she could do to make a difference and help keep them safer in a moment like that?

Carleton approached her daughter’s kindergarten teacher and asked whether it was possible to create a curriculum to teach them how to handle these injuries. She wasn’t sure what the response would be because after all, these were young children.

But as the number of mass shootings continued to grow, so did the realization that anyone could suddenly become a first responder — even a child. The proposal was approved, and since then, she has been teaching classes to students throughout the Rocklin school district on the basics of bleeding control.

Carleton is part of a larger movement also known as “Stop the Bleed,” a campaign that was born out of the tragedy at Sandy Hook. Hartford Hospital trauma surgeon Dr. Lenworth Jacobs was tasked with reviewing the autopsies of the 20 children and six adults killed that day, to find any lessons that could be learned out of the horror.

“You cannot imagine what the kinetic energy of an AR-15 does, or a bullet does, to a 6-year-old,” Jacobs said. “This is not civilized.”

School shootings are rare, but gunshot injuries are not

Although a child dying at school in a mass shooting may be unlikely, a child dying from a gunshot is not. Firearms are the leading cause of death among people 18 and younger in the US, accounting for nearly 19% of all childhood deaths.

The most recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that both the rate and the number of children dying from gunshot wounds are the highest they have been since 1999, when data on children’s mortality and firearms was first collected. And although firearm mortality in the adult population is most often from suicide, for children, homicide is driving the deaths.

After poring over the autopsies, Jacobs gathered trauma specialists from across the country and developed “a protocol for national policy to enhance survivability from active shooter and intentional mass casualty events,” known as the Hartford Consensus. The nearly 100-page document included a letter from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who said the report was a “call to action.”

“With very little training and equipment, the individuals closest to the scene of an accident or mass casualty situation can control bleeding until first responders arrive to take over treatment,” Biden wrote.

Much of the Hartford Consensus was adopted from lessons learned in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the military, it’s known as “buddy aid”: the practice of fellow troops being trained in first aid to help wounded colleagues on the battlefield. The practices are basic, but stopping bleeding, using a tourniquet and putting these steps into practice before a wounded soldier reaches the hospital greatly improves their chances of survival. Those troops who had tourniquets applied before their bodies went into shock had a survival rate of 96%, compared with just 4% of those who got a tourniquet after blood loss caused them to go into shock.

A driving tenet of the Hartford Consensus was time. “Pretty much all of these (mass casualty) events are over in 15 minutes, and it takes more than that to get the system to respond to you,” Jacobs explained.

Experts say that the average response time for an ambulance in urban areas in the US is about eight minutes — more time than it takes for a person to bleed out from a gunshot wound.

Turning bystanders into first responders

To give a person the best chance at survival after being shot, the priority is simple. “Stop the bleeding. Keep the blood inside the body,” Jacobs said. The most efficient and quickest way to do that: turn bystanders into immediate responders by teaching them to pack a wound and use a tourniquet.

Eleven years after Jacobs and other experts first met to discuss what would ultimately become the Hartford Consensus, more than 3 million people worldwide have learned the basic principles of “Stop the Bleed” through a certification program developed by the American College of Surgeons and the American Red Cross.

According to the ACS, bleeding control kits containing gauze and tourniquets are now required in schools in at least 10 states, and teachers and staff are required to be trained in at least three states. Two states require schools to offer Stop the Bleed training to students: in Arkansas for students in ninth grade and above and in Texas for those in seventh grade and above.

After 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, a state representative introduced a bill proposing to lower the minimum grade for Stop the Bleed training to third grade. The bill never made it out of committee because of pushback.

Carleton says she’s not surprised. “Why it got started is frightening,” she tells me, “but I do think there’s a way to teach the information where it’s not.”

Meeting kids where they’re at

When Carleton speaks to the kids, she doesn’t mention guns or violence at all. During the class I visited, she asked the kids how many of their parents use power tools or could be hurt working around the house.

“If I’m working in the kitchen and I’m cutting vegetables, can I get cut? Can that cause me to bleed?” she asked the students.

She uses language that kids can easily grasp: “Look for when blood puddles or when it rains like a sprinkler. The first step, take any cloth you can find and stuff a corner of it into the wound as deep as you can.” She was teaching them the basic principles of packing a wound. On the day I was there, she told the kids they could use anything to pack a wound, even a “dirty, smelly sock.”

“Stopping the bleeding was most important, and they could give antibiotics later in the hospital to prevent infections,” she said. “Do whatever you can to just stop the bleed.”

It’s the same kind of approach that pediatric trauma nurse Missy Anderson takes when she teaches Scout troops and children’s groups in Denver. Anderson is the pediatric trauma program manager at Denver Health and describes the tourniquets as “magical bracelets” — a concept that most kids can immediately understand.

Carleton stopped bringing up gun violence after a handful of parents complained, but she doesn’t shy away when someone raises it. In a sixth-grade class I visited, a student asked, if someone was shot in multiple places, where should they try to stop the bleed?

Carleton answered quickly, “Where they are bleeding the most.”

“I try to acknowledge the kids on where they’re at,” she told me. “I acknowledge it and we move on so that we can continue to talk about how to get the bleeding to stop.”

But the topic of gun violence gives her pause. “It tugs at my heartstrings a little bit, for sure,” she said.

Like Carleton, Anderson keeps the focus on safety, not violence.

“What if no guns existed in the whole world? We wipe them all out, there’s not a single gun in the whole universe? People still get hurt, and they still can have bleeding,” Anderson said. “This course should not be affiliated with gun violence. This is about helping people that are bleeding in any scenario.”

The goal of the campaign has always been to train everyone, including children, said Dr. Kenji Inaba, chair of the Stop the Bleed Committee for the American College of Surgeons. Inaba said he taught his now-teenage son, an avid mountain biker, how to pack a wound and use a tourniquet by the time he was 10 years old. “He’s always in the middle of nowhere, by himself or with some friends, and I want him to know that knowledge.”

Inaba said that after discussion with pediatric surgeons, pediatricians and parents, the committee concluded that there really is no age limit on who should be taught these skills.

“Every child is different in their development. Every child is different in their experience,” he said.

Inaba added that the group is in discussion with child development experts and teachers to create a curriculum for younger kids.

Reaching kids where they are means designing education that meets not only their emotional needs but their physical needs. For example, Carleton explained to me that younger kids can more effectively put pressure and stop bleeding by using all of their body weight.

She showed the kids how to put their knee directly on the wound. “It’ll make it a little bit easier for you, and you won’t get tired,” she told them.

I watched as she stood in front of the class and demonstrated how to apply pressure with a rubber dummy limb, the same kind used to train EMTs. Carleton explained that adults will typically use their hands and press down as hard as possible over a packed wound, “because I’m stronger than you,” she said. One kid shouted out “Mom power!” and the class giggled.

Carleton then quickly divided the class into groups of four or five kids, led by volunteers from the fire department, to practice on dummy limbs.

“If you were in that situation, do you think you could do it now? Does that make you nervous at all?” I asked Harlow, a third-grader.

“Just the feeling of how it would be an actual person instead of a fake leg. That’s scary,” she said.

“But you think based on what you learned, if it was an actual person, you’d be able to do that?” I responded.

“Yeah,” Harlow responded confidently.

Even young children know how to help

Studies find that young people can learn lifesaving lessons. Though they aren’t as young as the students I visited, a 2019 study of high school students found that more than 80% of them were able to position a tourniquet correctly after being taught either in person or online. A small 2022 study of 11- and 12-year-olds found that 97% of the students grasped the lessons of bleeding control and tourniquet use after Stop the Bleed training.

A recent study from the American Heart Association found that children as young as 4 know how to call for help in a medical emergency and that by age 10 to 12, children can administer effective CPR.

Harlow’s classmate Jeremy told me that the best part of learning all of this was that he was prepared to help anyone. “It’s that feeling you get when you get to see them go to the hospital and know that they’re OK and the feeling that you’ve saved someone’s life,” he said.

And the lessons seem to stick with them. A sixth-grader, Piper, told me that although she would probably be nervous to apply these skills in a “real situation” when someone was “actually bleeding out and there was a puddle,” she was glad they had a trial run through the lessons in the classroom. “It kind of loosens things up and doesn’t make things so scary.”

Carleton’s daughter and Piper’s classmate, Quinn, agreed. “When a situation comes for something like this, it won’t be as scary, since we know what to do because we’ve already practiced it,” she said.

A new ‘stop, drop and roll’

As impressed as I was with how quick and engaged the kids were, I couldn’t help but feel sad that this is where we are as a country. A time when tourniquets and bleeding control kits are as routine as “stop, drop and roll,” the fire safety instructions that generations of children have learned in their classrooms.

When I shared that with Carleton, she told me that she felt the same way at first, but she had to change her approach.

“When I would initially go into that with that kind of feeling, I just found that I couldn’t teach the information in a way that it really resonated with them. It was being taught out of fear from me, and I don’t want that,” she said.

It is hard, however, to disentangle gun violence from the situations where these lessons could be most impactful.

Gun violence has become such a prevalent part of American life, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has now issued an advisory calling firearm violence an urgent public health crisis. The advisory notes that half of children ages 14 to 17 worry about school shootings and nearly 60% of them have thought about “what would happen if a person with a gun entered” their school. According to the Gun Violence Archive, last year alone, 1,682 children died and another 4,512 were injured by gun violence.

So a grass-roots movement to train elementary-age children continues, with people like Carleton leading the charge.

“We can teach it, like teaching hands-only CPR or how to use an AED. It just becomes part of what we do,” Carleton told me. “It can be used in all situations, whether it’s a violent situation or not. But either way, it’s saving somebody’s life.”

CNN’s Nadia Kounang contributed to this report.

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By Deidre McPhillips, CNN

(CNN) — Teens in the United States are far less likely to use e-cigarettes than they were a few years ago, but experts warn that any tobacco use among youth is unsafe — and now, the rise of nicotine pouches is a growing concern.

At the peak in 2019, more than 5 million students in middle and high school were using e-cigarettes. Now, about 1.6 million students – about 6% – currently use e-cigarettes, according to newly released survey data from the end of the first half of 2024. About half a million fewer students are now using e-cigarettes compared with last year — a nearly 25% drop in one year — bringing the rate down to the lowest it has been in a decade.

“While it’s encouraging to see these numbers currently remaining relatively low, the bottom line is that we are concerned about any youth appealing tobacco product,” Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement. “Our guard is up. We are aware of the reported growing sales trends for nicotine pouches and are closely monitoring the evolving tobacco product landscape for threats to public health, particularly when it comes to kids.”

Sales of nicotine pouches – small, dissolvable packets that are placed between the lip and gum – have been rising since 2016. Nearly half a million students in middle or high school, about 1.8%, use nicotine pouches, according to the survey data – up slightly from 1.5% last year. While this relatively low rate suggests that youth are not driving the popularity of the product, experts say it’s important to monitor and mitigate risks.

Tobacco use among youth is a “completely preventable health risk,” Brian King, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, said at a briefing. “We’re concerned with any tobacco product use among kids, and that includes nicotine pouches. So we’re committed to doing everything we can to reduce and prevent use of these products, as we would with other tobacco products.”

Estimates of e-cigarette and nicotine pouch use among youth are based on data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, published Thursday by the CDC and the FDA. A nationally representative sample of students in sixth through twelfth grade were surveyed at the end of the 2023-24 school year, from January to May. Students were considered to be current users of e-cigarettes or nicotine patches if they reported using a product within the past 30 days.

All pouches and most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and can harm young people’s developing brains leading to problems with their memory and attention.

Of the students who said they use e-cigarettes, more than 1 in 4 say they use them every day, the new data shows. And of those who use nicotine pouches, more than 1 in 5 say they use them every day.

This daily use is a “strong indication” that teens are addicted to nicotine products, Yolonda C. Richardson, president and chief executive officer of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a statement. The nonprofit advocacy group was not involved in the new report.

“Nicotine levels in e-cigarettes have skyrocketed in recent years, and the latest products contain as much nicotine as 20 packs of cigarettes or more, putting kids at risk of rapid and severe addiction,” Richardson said. “Despite this progress, youth e-cigarette use remains a serious public health problem in the United States, and the industry remains relentless in finding new ways to addict kids.”

The vast majority of students who use e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches favored flavored products, most commonly fruit for e-cigarettes and mint for nicotine pouches, the survey found.

These flavors and targeted marketing are among the many factors that influence youth tobacco product use, CDC’s Kittner said at the briefing.

“As a new school year begins, it’s important for educators and parents to talk to teens about vaping and all tobacco product use, help them understand the risks and empower them to practice healthy behaviors and practice positive coping skills,” she said. “Data show that most youth who are using tobacco products want to quit and there are resources available for both parents and youth.”

Health officials also emphasized the importance of a comprehensive approach to continue to bring rates down.

While the FDA has authorized the sale of 23 specific tobacco-flavored e-cigarette products and devices to date, several unauthorized e-cigarettes have emerged illegally on the market.

In recent years, the FDA has seized millions of dollars of unauthorized e-cigarettes and issued several warning letters to distributors and online retailers for selling unauthorized e-cigarette products that are popular with minors.

Focused enforcement actions have been taken against Elf Bar, which is not authorized for use in the US. This brand of vapes remain the most commonly used e-cigarettes among youth, but the new survey data shows that use has declined significantly: about 36% of youth who use e-cigarettes said they used Elf Bar in 2024, down from about 57% in 2023.

And in June, the FDA and the US Department of Justice announced the creation of a task force to fight the illegal sale and distribution of e-cigarettes.

“The continued decline in e-cigarette use among our nation’s youth is a monumental public health win,” King said in a statement. “This progress is a testament to the relentless efforts by the FDA, CDC and others, particularly over the past half decade. But we can’t rest on our laurels, as there’s still more work to do to further reduce youth e-cigarette use.”

CNN’s Jacqueline Howard and Jen Christensen contributed to this report.

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By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

(CNN) — The rollout of updated Covid-19 vaccines has begun in the United States, but for the first time, the shots will no longer be free of charge for people without insurance at their local pharmacy.

Earlier in the pandemic, vaccines were purchased by the federal government and free for everyone. Last year, as the shots transitioned to the commercial market, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Bridge Access Program provided free Covid-19 vaccines to adults without insurance and those whose insurance didn’t cover all vaccine costs. The program ended last month due to lack of federal funding.

“This means that purely uninsured people do not have access to get free Covid shots and so if they went to their pharmacy to try to get one, they’d come with a cost,” said Lori Freeman, chief executive officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. About 26 million people in the United States are uninsured.

“We know that cost, at this moment in time with the economy, is even more of a burden than ever,” Freeman said.

Most people with private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid will still be able to get vaccinated at no out-of-pocket cost, but for adults without insurance or those whose insurance does not cover the vaccine, getting the updated shot at a pharmacy could cost $201.99.

The change may catch some people by surprise.

CVS Pharmacy has posted information on its website about how much the updated Covid-19 vaccines may cost without insurance, said CVS spokesperson Amy Thibault. On a Q&A page on its site, it urged people to check whether their insurance plan covers the vaccines and if CVS is in-network.

During the last several months, Walgreens has been educating its pharmacy team members on the discontinuation of the Bridge Access Program, Walgreens corporate spokesperson Samantha Stansberry said in an email Tuesday.

“Our pharmacists are aware of the changes and can assist any patients who have questions,” Stansberry said. “Walgreens remains committed to driving equitable and convenient access to life-saving vaccines. We will continue to work with patients eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine to determine the best and most cost-efficient way to receive one.”

In some states, there might still be free shots available to some people. The CDC announced last month that it is distributing $62 million to state and local health departments to provide free Covid-19 vaccines to adults who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them.

States can order Covid-19 vaccines now, a CDC spokesperson said in an email Thursday. The program will provide vaccines through the 2024-2025 fall and winter respiratory season.

“We expect the supply in states to continue to increase,” the spokesperson said. “These funds will enhance immunization programs through support to state and local health departments, which will work with vaccine providers in their states to make them available.”

Once a health department receives the vaccines, some may decide to host public vaccination clinics or events, Freeman said.

Even with the end of the Bridge Access Program, Freeman said that many state and local health departments still would like to be involved in making updated Covid-19 vaccinations accessible to the public.

“We want the local health department to be a primary provider with the state and to have that continuous public health program,” Freeman said. “There has to be a way to both leverage the need to get vaccines safely in the hands of public, but also recognize the permanent role of the health department as a provider.”

Covid-19 levels in the US are very high and rising, according to wastewater surveillance data from the CDC. Levels have been rising since May and are already as high as they were in December of last year. Hospitalization rates related to Covid-19 also remain elevated, particularly among adults 65 and older and children under 2 years, according to the CDC.

Last season, an estimated 22.5% of adults and 14.4% of children were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with updated shots.

People still should make a commitment to get vaccinated against Covid-19 with the updated shots this fall, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

“If you’re insured, you ought to check with your insurance company to find out what the parameters are around getting vaccinated. Your vaccination should be free under the Affordable Care Act,” Benjamin said.

“If you are uninsured or underinsured, then you should check with your state or local health department and see what provisions they’re making for uninsured and underinsured people. Some of the state and local health departments, understanding this is a problem, are working with their governor’s office or mayor’s office to find funding to provide access to vaccine. In most cases, if the vaccine is available and if they have vaccine, they’ll be able to provide it for you at either no cost or reduced cost,” he said. “And there are some pharmacy assistance programs that should be available for Pfizer and Moderna.”

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CNN’s Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.

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By Jessica DuLong, CNN

(CNN) — Imagine you’re trying to learn calculus. You’re in a classroom with some students who’ve been doing high-level math for years, and others who’ve only learned basic addition. But no one can leave until everybody learns calculus. Oh, and by the way, the school building is on fire.

This is the picture Jennifer Harvey paints for readers of her bestseller “Raising White Kids” and her new book, “Anti-Racism as Daily Practice: Refuse Shame, Change White Communities, and Help Create a Just World.” Calculus, here, represents discussing racism. The calculus pros stand in for people of color whose families have, by necessity, taught them about racism since preschool. The “basic math” students represent White people who’ve had little practice talking about race.

The analogy — complete with licking flames to reflect urgency — aptly depicts this fraught moment in American society.

“We’re living in really difficult times,” Harvey wrote in the opening of her new book. “Intense white backlash against Black Lives Matter is ongoing. Efforts to ban books, fearmongering against critical race theory and takeovers of school boards by those intent on suppressing accurate teaching of US history have roared through the nation.”

To create a just world, “White folks are going to have to take embodied actions,” Harvey said. “And we are going to make mistakes. Still, we’ve got to build the skills — aka, learn the calculus — so that we can all get out of the burning school.”

Harvey intends her new book to serve as a “container for learning,” insisting that readers keep practicing while providing support and coaching around inevitable slipups. The book’s upskilling message is: “I’m going to walk with you in ways that help you be accountable. And I hope you’ll do the same for me.”

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What do you mean when you say that everyone in the US is “racially socialized”?

Jennifer Harvey: Race is everywhere in our society, woven into our origins, policies, schooling and even where we end up living because of how banks have historically given loans to some folks and not others. Racial socialization is communal, determining the legacies we inherit, the generational teachings we pass down, how our families look, and how we talk to one another.

Racialization happens in all our lives — including White lives, although often less visibly to us because we likely haven’t discussed racism much or had to fight it for our survival. Being born White automatically informs how we see the world and our place in it, shaping what we know about race and how we know it.

Socialization as a White person leads to common traits like White silence — a main reason White people today find it so difficult to discuss race, even once we know we need to. When people feel frozen and stuck, not knowing what to do when we see racism, White silence can lead to passivity in the face of injustice.

CNN: What roles do shame and guilt play in White silence and passivity?

Harvey: White silence can send confusing messages that lead to shame. For example, if a grandparent says something explicitly racist but the parents don’t object, despite having voiced that they value equality, a child watching can internalize a White racializing experience that leaves them feeling conflicted, confused and with a deep-seated sense of unworthiness.

Shame arises when I recognize that, for reasons I did not necessarily choose, my life is embedded in systems and daily realities that give me more while allowing my neighbors to experience violence, harm and injustice.

White guilt is the sense that we, or our ancestors, have caused harm. When we act to change inequitable conditions, repairing harm helps us process White guilt, and takes away its power.

CNN: What do you mean when you write that race lives in our bodies?

Harvey: Human beings are embodied, in-the-flesh, material creatures. We recognize racial differences from an early age — as young as 3 months. Before they had words, my children learned what racial difference meant by watching racial socialization play out even when it wasn’t spoken.

When I walk into a room, the way I hold my body, use eye contact and whether, or even how, I smile can increase or decrease racial tension. As a professor on a predominately White campus (Drake University in Iowa), I watched how White students responded to students of color, struggling to make eye contact and often choosing not to sit near Black students, especially early in the semester. When being in mixed-race spaces was unfamiliar, their bodies responded by creating physical distance.

CNN: What prevents White people who want to combat racism from taking action?

Harvey: There is a paradoxical tension between the need for White people to make change and to slow down and engage in enough self-reflection to avoid causing harm or creating racist backlash. But I could sit and self-reflect for the next 100 years and still not be done. The question becomes, what kind of action should I take?

The best way to take immediate action is to reach out to a people-of-color-led organization and offer help with something simple, like making copies. Instead of creating something new or giving advice, ask: “How can I be of service to work that’s already happening?” If I just do what I’m asked, I’m unlikely to cause a lot of harm, and I’ll likely learn a lot about myself in the process.

When it comes to anti-racist practice, we need to be concrete about where we’re at, developmentally. We don’t ask children in sixth grade to write a dissertation. But we also don’t say, “Don’t write anything until you can write the dissertation.”

CNN: What concrete steps can White people take to interrupt racism?

Harvey: Because even talking about race and racism in our interpersonal lives with other White folks can be difficult, it helps to find other White folks to help us practice. We can also learn from all the amazing resources out there.

Look for a group in your community that’s already working on these issues and ask if they’re taking volunteers. Too busy? Consider transferring some hours you’re currently investing in the well-being of other White people toward justice work that people of color are leading all over this nation.

We don’t have to do everything. We don’t have to do huge things. It’s better to do something small and do it faithfully for a long time than it is to think, “I’m going to do something big!” and then burn out.

CNN: How can we interrupt racism in our families?

Harvey: Step one: Enlist help from two people outside the family who can offer support. They can help me practice what to say, offer cheerleading, send me good energy while I’m trying things out and then check in with me afterward. They can remind me that my job isn’t to “win” or prove anyone wrong. My only goal is to say a version of “I dissent. I’m not going to participate in this.”

If silence about race is the norm, that doesn’t mean racism isn’t happening. If no one speaks up, racism is given a pass. Even saying, “I don’t agree with this. I don’t know how to talk about it. But I don’t like it” changes dynamics. Speaking my values disrupts that status quo and opens the door to new conversations. It also models for the next generation alternatives to White silence, which is vital.

Sometimes we learn that another family member is actually an ally. Now, we can help each other develop the skills, emotional strength and courage to speak up.

Family settings are some of the hardest places to interrupt racism; I’m probably far more invested in what my mom thinks about me than a coworker. But practicing with family makes it easier to speak up in other spaces. Interrupting racism is critical because, whether through explicit endorsement or apathy, masses of White folks have enabled White supremacy to get such a stronghold that now our democracy is on the brink.

CNN: Why do you advocate for making anti-racism a daily practice?

Harvey: Over time, daily practices become part of our identity. The beautiful thing is, the more consistently we practice the less energy habits require.

Making anti-racism into a habit takes an intentional strategy with supports. Find specific, doable practices and enlist accountability buddies to encourage you to stay on track.

If you’re just starting out, pick two concrete goals for the next year and practice them over and over. If I spend two hours every week for a year as the only White person in a space with people of color, I am very likely to see new skills emerge that I couldn’t have thought my way into before I created that habit.

Once you’ve integrated the decision-making steps, the habits become easy, and you’ll discover you see the world differently.

CNN: What does racism cost White people?

Harvey: Racism costs us connection. Longstanding silences around something as consequential as racism reveals disconnection in our families and communities. My clunky, hard relationships with my own family — where we’ve talked about race for decades — aren’t perfect, but they’re deeper now than when I felt I had to hide part of myself and my values.

Ultimately, racism costs us the ability to be in relationships with other humans. Once I got to a point where I could participate in multiracial spaces without always making a mess, it brought to my life the beautiful connections that come when we embrace a plural world where diversity is in our DNA.

Jessica DuLong is a Brooklyn, New York-based journalist, book collaborator, writing coach and the author of “Saved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Lift” and “My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.”

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By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

(CNN) — The first shipments of some self-collection HPV tests for cervical cancer screening are currently on their way to doctors’ offices across the United States.

In May, the US Food and Drug Administration gave the greenlight for patients to have the option to collect their own vaginal samples for cervical cancer screenings instead of undergoing traditional HPV tests or Pap smears, which involve a speculum to screen for the disease. Similar to how they may collect their own urine samples, patients can now collect their own vaginal samples in a health-care setting, such as a doctor’s office, urgent care or pharmacy clinic.

So far, two health care businesses – biotechnology company Roche and medical technology firm BD – already have HPV tests that can be used with self-collected samples. Most cervical cancer screenings involve testing for human papillomavirus or HPV, as most cervical cancers are caused by the virus.

Shipments of the BD self-collection HPV tests began Thursday, according to the company. And Roche anticipates that its HPV self-collection screening solution will be shipped sometime this fall.

The hope is that providing a self-collection method will make screening more accessible for patients, leading to more women being screened, said Dr. Jeff Andrews, board-certified gynecologist and vice president of Global Medical Affairs for Diagnostic Solutions at BD.

Each year in the United States, more than 11,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and about 4,000 women die of the disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s estimated that about half of invasive cervical cancer cases are diagnosed in people who have never been screened and about 10% of diagnoses are in people who had not been screened in the five years prior.

“In other countries in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, we know that adding the option of self-collection has reached some of those women who were previously under screened. So that’s the main goal, is to develop a methodology that would appeal to persons with a cervix who would otherwise not be screened,” Andrews said.

“In the United States in particular, almost 30% of women are unscreened or under screened,” he said. “Those women are the ones most likely to have cervical cancer. About two-thirds of cervical cancers occur in women who are not screened within the interval,” as in the recommended time interval for which women are recommended to screen.

Methods to screen for cervical cancer

The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening for cervical cancer with cervical cytology– also known as a Pap test or Pap smear –every three years for women ages 21 to 29. For women ages 30 to 65, the USPSTF recommends screening every three years with cervical cytology alone, every five years with high-risk HPV testing alone, or every five years with high-risk HPV testing in combination with cytology.

Typically, gynecologists collect samples for HPV testing, a cervical cytology or both – and any of those screening methods, in which samples are collected, can feel uncomfortable for some patients when they involve a speculum.

Cervical cytology involves examining cervical cells for changes to find precancerous or cancerous cells. The HPV test checks cells for infection with the high-risk types of HPV that can cause cervical cancer. An HPV and Pap co-test uses both tests together to check for both high-risk HPV and cervical cell changes.

It’s estimated that about 80% of people will get an HPV infection in their lifetime. HPV, a group of more than 150 viruses, is spread primarily through sexual contact and includes low-risk strains, which most often cause warts, and high-risk strains, which have been associated with an increased risk of certain cancers, such as cervical, anal, penile and oropharyngeal cancers. In most cases, HPV clears on its own within two years, but when the infection does not go away, health problems like cancer may occur.

“Almost all cervical cancers are caused by persistent infection with certain types of HPV,” Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, said in a news release in May when the FDA approved HPV self-collection testing for cervical cancer screening. “Self-collection can expand access to screening and reduces barriers, which will give more people the opportunity to detect, treat, and ultimately survive cancer.”

For some patients, having a provider collect a vaginal sample for cervical cancer screening or HPV testing can be painful or awkward. The screening process involves a patient spreading their legs, with their feet held in stirrups, as their doctor vaginally inserts a cold, metal speculum so that they can then scrape cells from their cervix.

Many patients may skip recommended Pap exams to screen for cervical cancer because the process of a traditional Pap smear screening can be painful.

Research suggests that having the perception that a Pap test will be painful significantly reduces the likelihood of women setting the goal to schedule their first-ever Pap exam. But minimizing pain during a Pap test will likely increase acceptability of and adherence to cervical cancer screenings.

“If we can increase screening, we can reduce the incidence of this cancer. Having another modality or choice to make screening more accessible and available is important especially for our underinsured and underserved populations. Self-screening offers this extra choice for women,” Dr. John Vullo, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Catholic Health’s Good Samaritan University Hospital on Long Island and associate chair of Catholic Health Women’s Health Services, said in an email.

“Although I believe this new choice is important to offer our patients, I am glad the current recommendations are for it to be used under the supervision of a provider so that the patient can truly get and understand the benefits and limitations of this new testing,” Vullo said in part. “This will allow us to offer them another modality to screen for cervical cancer while still giving them the benefit of speaking with a provider to discuss other health issues that are part of the annual well woman exam.”

For the self-collection screening test, a clinician would have to order the test for a patient, and “that is to be sure that the person doing the test will get the results explained to them, so the person now would be in contact with their provider,” Andrews said.

That order would be directed to a lab. The lab would then create a self-collection kit, which would include instructions, a six-inch swab and the screening test itself. The kit would be shipped to the doctor’s office for the patient. The patient would use the swab to self-collect a vaginal sample, by inserting it three inches into the vagina – this could be done in the bathroom at the doctor’s office – and then the doctor’s office would ship the sample to the lab for processing. If a sample tests positive, the doctor would likely recommend further testing.

Home tests are possible in the future

While the self-collection method is now available in health-care settings, companies are hoping the self-collection kits could eventually be cleared for use at home, too.

BD has been working closely with the FDA to provide data supporting the use of its self-collection tests within the home, Andrews said.

Another company, Teal Health, has developed an at-home cervical cancer screening device called the Teal Wand that was granted “breakthrough device” status in May by the FDA, which would allow the agency to review the device on a faster timeline.

“FDA’s recognition of the Teal Wand as a Breakthrough device acknowledges the important public health benefit that self-collection for cervical cancer screening can have on those who are rarely screened or who do not participate in clinician-based screening for cervical cancer,” Trena Depel, vice president of clinical and regulatory at Teal Health, said in a news release at the time.

Regardless of where it takes place, screening for cervical cancer remains important because early cases often may not have signs or symptoms. Advanced cases may cause abnormal vaginal bleeding or unusual discharge. Cervical cancer is treated in many ways, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Some of the most important steps women can take to help prevent cervical cancer, according to the CDC, are to get vaccinated against HPV, not smoke, use condoms during sex, have regular screening tests and go back to see the doctor if screening test results are not normal.

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CNN Editorial Research

(CNN) — Here’s a look at the coronavirus outbreak, declared a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization. The coronavirus, called Covid-19 by WHO, originated in China and is the cousin of the SARS virus.

Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are common among animals. The viruses can make people sick, usually with a mild to moderate upper respiratory tract illness, similar to a common cold. Coronavirus symptoms include a runny nose, cough, sore throat, possibly a headache and maybe a fever, which can last for a couple of days.

Case Tracking

WHO Situation Reports

Coronavirus Map

Timeline

CNN’s early reporting on the coronavirus

December 31, 2019 – Cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan, China, are first reported to WHO. During this reported period, the virus is unknown. The cases occur between December 12 and December 29, according to Wuhan Municipal Health.

January 1, 2020 – Chinese health authorities close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after it is discovered that wild animals sold there may be the source of the virus.

January 5, 2020 – China announces that the unknown pneumonia cases in Wuhan are not SARS or MERS. In a statement, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission says a retrospective probe into the outbreak has been initiated.

January 7, 2020 – Chinese authorities confirm that they have identified the virus as a novel coronavirus, initially named 2019-nCoV by WHO.

January 11, 2020 – The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus. A 61-year-old man, exposed to the virus at the seafood market, died on January 9 after respiratory failure caused by severe pneumonia.

January 17, 2020 – Chinese health officials confirm that a second person has died in China. The United States responds to the outbreak by implementing screenings for symptoms at airports in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.

January 20, 2020 – China reports 139 new cases of the sickness, including a third death. On the same day, WHO’s first situation report confirms cases in Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

January 20, 2020 – The National Institutes of Health announces that it is working on a vaccine against the coronavirus. “The NIH is in the process of taking the first steps towards the development of a vaccine,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

January 21, 2020 – Officials in Washington state confirm the first case on US soil.

January 23, 2020 – At an emergency committee, WHO says that the coronavirus does not yet constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

January 23, 2020 – The Beijing Culture and Tourism Bureau cancels all large-scale Lunar New Year celebrations in an effort to contain the growing spread of coronavirus. On the same day, Chinese authorities enforce a partial lockdown of transport in and out of Wuhan. Authorities in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou Huanggang announce a series of similar measures.

January 28, 2020 – Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom in Beijing. At the meeting, Xi and WHO agree to send a team of international experts, including US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff, to China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak.

January 29, 2020 – The White House announces the formation of a new task force that will help monitor and contain the spread of the virus, and ensure Americans have accurate and up-to-date health and travel information, it says.

January 30, 2020 – The United States reports its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus. On the same day, WHO determines that the outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

January 31, 2020 – The Donald Trump administration announces it will deny entry to foreign nationals who have traveled in China in the last 14 days.

February 2, 2020 – A man in the Philippines dies from the coronavirus – the first time a death has been reported outside mainland China since the outbreak began.

February 3, 2020 – China’s Foreign Ministry accuses the US government of inappropriately reacting to the outbreak and spreading fear by enforcing travel restrictions.

February 4, 2020 – The Japanese Health Ministry announces that ten people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship moored in Yokohama Bay are confirmed to have the coronavirus. The ship, which is carrying more than 3,700 people, is placed under quarantine scheduled to end on February 19.

February 6, 2020 – First Covid-19 death in the United States: A person in California’s Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus, but the link is not confirmed until April 21.

February 7, 2020 – Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor who was targeted by police for trying to sound the alarm on a “SARS-like” virus in December, dies of the coronavirus. Following news of Li’s death, the topics “Wuhan government owes Dr. Li Wenliang an apology,” and “We want freedom of speech,” trend on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo, before disappearing from the heavily censored platform.

February 8, 2020 – The US Embassy in Beijing confirms that a 60-year-old US national died in Wuhan on February 6, marking the first confirmed death of a foreigner.

February 10, 2020 – Xi inspects efforts to contain the coronavirus in Beijing, the first time he has appeared on the front lines of the fight against the outbreak. On the same day, a team of international experts from WHO arrive in China to assist with containing the coronavirus outbreak.

February 10, 2020 – The Anthem of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, sets sail from Bayonne, New Jersey, after a coronavirus scare had kept it docked and its passengers waiting for days.

February 11, 2020 – WHO names the coronavirus Covid-19.

February 13, 2020 – China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency announces that Shanghai mayor Ying Yong will be replacing Jiang Chaoliang amid the outbreak. Wuhan Communist Party chief Ma Guoqiang has also been replaced by Wang Zhonglin, party chief of Jinan city in Shandong province, according to Xinhua.

February 14, 2020 – A Chinese tourist who tested positive for the virus dies in France, becoming the first person to die in the outbreak in Europe. On the same day, Egypt announces its first case of coronavirus, marking the first case in Africa.

February 15, 2020 – The official Communist Party journal Qiushi publishes the transcript of a speech made on February 3 by Xi in which he “issued requirements for the prevention and control of the new coronavirus” on January 7, revealing Xi knew about and was directing the response to the virus on almost two weeks before he commented on it publicly.

February 17, 2020 – A second person in California’s Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus, but the link is not confirmed until April 21.

February 18, 2020 – Xi says in a phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China’s measures to prevent and control the epidemic “are achieving visible progress,” according to state news Xinhua.

February 21, 2020 – The CDC changes criteria for counting confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the United States and begins tracking two separate and distinct groups: those repatriated by the US Department of State and those identified by the US public health network.

February 25, 2020 – The NIH announces that a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the antiviral drug remdesivir in adults diagnosed with coronavirus has started at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The first participant is an American who was evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan.

February 25, 2020 – In an effort to contain the largest outbreak in Europe, Italy’s Lombardy region press office issues a list of towns and villages that are in complete lockdown. Around 100,000 people are affected by the travel restrictions.

February 26, 2020 – CDC officials say that a California patient being treated for novel coronavirus is the first US case of unknown origin. The patient, who didn’t have any relevant travel history nor exposure to another known patient, is the first possible US case of “community spread.”

February 26, 2020 – Trump places Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the US government response to the novel coronavirus, amid growing criticism of the White House’s handling of the outbreak.

February 29, 2020 – A patient dies of coronavirus in Washington state. For almost two months, this is considered the first death due to the virus in the United States, until autopsy results announced April 21 reveal two earlier deaths in California.

March 3, 2020 – The Federal Reserve slashes interest rates by half a percentage point in an attempt to give the US economy a jolt in the face of concerns about the coronavirus outbreak. It is the first unscheduled, emergency rate cut since 2008, and it also marks the biggest one-time cut since then.

March 3, 2020 – Officials announce that Iran will temporarily release 54,000 people from prisons and deploy hundreds of thousands of health workers as officials announced a slew of measures to contain the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. It is also announced that 23 members of Iran’s parliament tested positive for the virus.

March 4, 2020 – The CDC formally removes earlier restrictions that limited coronavirus testing of the general public to people in the hospital, unless they had close contact with confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the CDC, clinicians should now “use their judgment to determine if a patient has signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and whether the patient should be tested.”

March 8, 2020 – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signs a decree placing travel restrictions on the entire Lombardy region and 14 other provinces, restricting the movements of more than 10 million people in the northern part of the country.

March 9, 2020 – Conte announces that the whole country of Italy is on lockdown.

March 11, 2020 – WHO declares the novel coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic. WHO says the outbreak is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. In an Oval Office address, Trump announces that he is restricting travel from Europe to the United States for 30 days in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus. The ban, which applies to the 26 countries in the Schengen Area, applies only to foreign nationals and not American citizens and permanent residents who’d be screened before entering the country.

March 13, 2020 – Trump declares a national emergency to free up $50 billion in federal resources to combat coronavirus.

March 18, 2020 – Trump signs into law a coronavirus relief package that includes provisions for free testing for Covid-19 and paid emergency leave.

March 19, 2020 – At a news conference, officials from China’s National Health Commission report no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for the first time since the pandemic began.

March 23, 2020 – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres calls for an immediate global ceasefire amid the pandemic to fight “the common enemy.”

March 24, 2020 – Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach agree to postpone the Olympics until 2021 amid the outbreak.

March 25, 2020 – The White House and Senate leaders reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus deal to offset the economic damage of coronavirus, producing one of the most expensive and far-reaching measures in the history of Congress.

March 27, 2020 – Trump signs the stimulus package into law.

April 2, 2020 – According to the Department of Labor, 6.6 million US workers file for their first week of unemployment benefits in the week ending March 28, the highest number of initial claims in history. Globally, the total number of coronavirus cases surpasses 1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally.

April 3, 2020 – Trump says his administration is now recommending Americans wear “non-medical cloth” face coverings, a reversal of previous guidance that suggested masks were unnecessary for people who weren’t sick.

April 8, 2020 – China reopens Wuhan after a 76-day lockdown.

April 14, 2020 – Trump announces he is halting funding to WHO while a review is conducted, saying the review will cover WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”

April 20, 2020 – Chilean health officials announce that Chile will begin issuing the world’s first digital immunity cards to people who have recovered from coronavirus, saying the cards will help identify individuals who no longer pose a health risk to others.

April 21, 2020 – California’s Santa Clara County announces autopsy results that show two Californians died of novel coronavirus in early and mid-February – up to three weeks before the previously known first US death from the virus.

April 28, 2020 – The United States passes one million confirmed cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.

May 1, 2020 – The US Food and Drug Administration issues an emergency-use authorization for remdesivir in hospitalized patients with severe Covid-19. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn says remdesivir is the first authorized therapy drug for Covid-19.

May 4, 2020 – During a virtual pledging conference co-hosted by the European Union, world leaders pledge a total of $8 billion for the development and deployment of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines against the novel coronavirus.

May 11, 2020 – Trump and his administration announce that the federal government is sending $11 billion to states to expand coronavirus testing capabilities. The relief package signed on April 24 includes $25 billion for testing, with $11 billion for states, localities, territories and tribes.

May 13, 2020 – Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, warns that the coronavirus may never go away and may just join the mix of viruses that kill people around the world every year.

May 19, 2020 – WHO agrees to hold an inquiry into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. WHO member states adopt the proposal with no objections during the World Health Assembly meeting, after the European Union and Australia led calls for an investigation.

May 23, 2020 – China reports no new symptomatic coronavirus cases, the first time since the beginning of the outbreak in December.

May 27, 2020 – Data collected by Johns Hopkins University reports that the coronavirus has killed more than 100,000 people across the US, meaning that an average of almost 900 Americans died each day since the first known coronavirus-related death was reported nearly four months earlier.

June 2, 2020 – Wuhan’s Health Commission announces that it has completed coronavirus tests on 9.9 million of its residents with no new confirmed cases found.

June 8, 2020 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces that almost all coronavirus restrictions in New Zealand will be lifted after the country reported no active cases.

June 11, 2020 – The United States passes 2 million confirmed cases of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.

June 16, 2020 – University of Oxford scientists leading the Recovery Trial, a large UK-based trial investigating potential Covid-19 treatments, announce that a low-dose regimen of dexamethasone for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation in the trial.

June 20, 2020 – The NIH announces that it has halted a clinical trial evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus. “A data and safety monitoring board met late Friday and determined that while there was no harm, the study drug was very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with Covid-19,” the NIH says in a statement.

June 26, 2020 – During a virtual media briefing, WHO announces that it plans to deliver about 2 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine to people across the globe. One billion of those doses will be purchased for low- and middle-income countries, according to WHO.

July 1, 2020 – The European Union announces it will allow travelers from 14 countries outside the bloc to visit EU countries, months after it shut its external borders in response to the pandemic. The list does not include the US, which doesn’t meet the criteria set by the EU for it to be considered a “safe country.”

July 6, 2020 – In an open letter published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, 239 scientists from around the world urge WHO and other health agencies to be more forthright in explaining the potential airborne transmission of coronavirus. In the letter, scientists write that studies “have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking, and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in air and pose a risk of exposure at distances beyond 1 to 2 meters (yards) from an infected individual.”

July 7, 2020 – The Trump administration notifies Congress and the United Nations that the United States is formally withdrawing from WHO. The withdrawal goes into effect on July 6, 2021.

July 21, 2020 – European leaders agree to create a €750 billion ($858 billion) recovery fund to rebuild EU economies ravaged by the coronavirus.

July 27, 2020 – A vaccine being developed by the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in partnership with the biotechnology company Moderna, enters Phase 3 testing. The trial is expected to enroll about 30,000 adult volunteers and evaluates the safety of the vaccine and whether it can prevent symptomatic Covid-19 after two doses, among other outcomes.

August 11, 2020 – In a live teleconference, Russian President Vladimir Putin announces that Russia has approved a coronavirus vaccine for public use before completion of Phase 3 trials, which usually precedes approval. The vaccine, which is named Sputnik-V, is developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute with funding from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

August 15, 2020 – Russia begins production on Sputnik-V, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

August 23, 2020 – The FDA issues an emergency use authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19. It is made using the blood of people who have recovered from coronavirus infections.

August 27, 2020 – The CDC notifies public health officials around the United States to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine as soon as late October. In the documents, posted by The New York Times, the CDC provides planning scenarios to help states prepare and advises on who should get vaccinated first – healthcare professionals, essential workers, national security “populations” and long-term care facility residents and staff.

September 4, 2020 – The first peer-reviewed results of Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine are published in the medical journal The Lancet. The results “have a good safety profile” and the vaccine induced antibody responses in all participants, The Lancet says.

October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for Covid-19. He spends three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center receiving treatment before returning to the White House.

October 12, 2020 – Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson announces it has paused the advanced clinical trial of its experimental coronavirus vaccine because of an unexplained illness in one of the volunteers.”Following our guidelines, the participant’s illness is being reviewed and evaluated by the ENSEMBLE independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) as well as our internal clinical and safety physicians,” the company said in a statement. ENSEMBLE is the name of the study. The trial resumes later in the month.

December 10, 2020 – Vaccine advisers to the FDA vote to recommend the agency grant emergency use authorization to Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine.

December 14, 2020 – US officials announce the first doses of the FDA authorized Pfizer vaccine have been delivered to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

December 18, 2020 – The FDA authorizes a second coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna for emergency use. “The emergency use authorization allows the vaccine to be distributed in the U.S. for use in individuals 18 years and older,” the FDA said in a tweet.

January 14, 2021 – The WHO team tasked with investigating the origins of the outbreak in Wuhan arrive in China.

January 20, 2021 – Newly elected US President Joe Biden halts the United States’ withdrawal from WHO.

February 22, 2021 – The death toll from Covid-19 exceeds 500,000 in the United States.

February 27, 2021 – The FDA grants emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, the first single dose Covid-19 vaccine available in the US.

March 30, 2021 – According to a 120-page report from WHO, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 probably spread to people through an animal, and probably started spreading among humans no more than a month or two before it was noticed in December of 2019. The report says a scenario where it spread via an intermediate animal host, possibly a wild animal captured and then raised on a farm, is “very likely.”

April 17, 2021 – The global tally of deaths from Covid-19 surpasses 3 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins.

August 3, 2021 – According to figures published by the CDC, the more contagious Delta variant accounts for an estimated 93.4% of coronavirus circulating in the United States during the last two weeks of July. The figures show a rapid increase over the past two months, up from around 3% in the two weeks ending May 22.

August 12, 2021 – The FDA authorizes an additional Covid-19 vaccine dose for certain immunocompromised people.

August 23, 2021 – The FDA grants full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for people age 16 and older, making it the first coronavirus vaccine approved by the FDA.

September 24, 2021 CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky diverges from the agency’s independent vaccine advisers to recommend boosters for a broader group of people – those ages 18 to 64 who are at increased risk of Covid-19 because of their workplaces or institutional settings – in addition to older adults, long-term care facility residents and some people with underlying health conditions.

November 2, 2021 – Walensky says she is endorsing a recommendation to vaccinate children ages 5-11 against Covid-19, clearing the way for immediate vaccination of the youngest age group yet in the US.

November 19, 2021 – The FDA authorizes boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for all adults. The same day, the CDC also endorses boosters for all adults.

December 16, 2021 – The CDC changes its recommendations for Covid-19 vaccines to make clear that shots made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are preferred over Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

December 22, 2021 – The FDA authorizes Pfizer’s antiviral pill, Paxlovid, to treat Covid-19, the first antiviral Covid-19 pill authorized in the United States for ill people to take at home, before they get sick enough to be hospitalized. The following day, the FDA authorizes Merck’s antiviral pill, molnupiravir.

December 27, 2021 – The CDC shortens the recommended times that people should isolate when they’ve tested positive for Covid-19 from 10 days to five days if they don’t have symptoms – and if they wear a mask around others for at least five more days. The CDC also shortens the recommended time for people to quarantine if they are exposed to the virus to a similar five days if they are vaccinated.

January 31, 2022 – The FDA grants full approval to Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 18 and older. This is the second coronavirus vaccine given full approval by the FDA.

March 29, 2022 – The FDA authorizes a second booster of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for adults 50 and older. That same day, the CDC also endorses a second booster for the same age group.

April 25, 2022 – The FDA expands approval of the drug remdesivir to treat patients as young as 28 days and weighing about seven pounds.

May 17, 2022 – The FDA authorizes a booster dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 at least five months after completion of the primary vaccine series. On May 19, the CDC also endorses a booster dose for the same age group.

June 18, 2022 – The CDC recommends Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.

August 31, 2022 – The FDA authorizes updated Covid-19 vaccine booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer. Both are bivalent vaccines that combine the companies’ original vaccine with one that targets the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sublineages. The CDC signs off on the updated booster shots the following day.

May 5, 2023 – WHO says Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

August 22, 2024 – The FDA authorizes updated Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. On August 30, the FDA authorizes an updated version of the protein-based Novavax Covid-19 vaccine.

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EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Stephanie Regalado has struggled with her weight since she was a teenager. As a result, Regalado suffered from asthma, sleep apnea and leg swelling.

“Summers were horrible for me. I was always inside. I didn't want to be outside. I would overheat. I just hated it,” she said. 

The 39-year-old decided to look into weight loss surgery after doctors diagnosed her as pre-diabetic. Regalado described this as a wake-up call, especially after losing her grandmother to diabetes.

"I looked into it, and I was ready to change my life," she said.

Regalado would undergo surgery, losing over 100 pounds as a result. The mother of two said the results were positive.

"Now I'm more outside. I can be with my boys. Waterparks were out there with swimming, exercise, more with my kids to trying to change their habits and everything."

“More energy. I have more energy to do stuff with them. I'm more energetic. I'm more available for them. Not always so tired," she said.

Dr. Benjamin Clapp, the medical director of The Hospitals of Providence Weight Loss Center West, explained that every patient must meet different criteria for undergoing these types of procedures.

"People suffer from, especially things like diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, urinary stress incontinence, arthritis, things like that. When we induce this weight loss of about 80 to 100 pounds, people get better from those problems. Their sleep apnea will resolve most of the time. Their diabetes should resolve depending on how long they've had it, how much insulin requirements they have right now. High blood pressure should get easier to control, so obesity is the root cause of many of these disease processes. And by striking at that root cause, we can we can make them better."

Dr. Clapp performed Regalado's surgery. He said she is one of countless success stories.

"She's had just astounding outcomes. Let me tell you the secret about Stephanie, which you may not come across on camera. She's a hard worker. She is a hard worker. She has adopted this wholeheartedly. She is 100% changed her life and adopted this new lifestyle. She uses this tool that we've provided her with daily, and she probably be the first one to tell you that this is a daily fight," he said.

The medical director said lifestyle changes must take place after surgery.

"If you're not maintaining your diet, if you're not changing your lifestyle, if you go back to old bad habits, then we can see people start to climb back up. Now that can take years to do, and about 10 to 15% of people will do that. Obesity is a chronic disease, is very hard to treat, and it takes often more than one modality. Not just surgery, but lifestyle change, diet, exercise,” Dr. Clapp said.

"Mentally, you have to change how you think about food. How, just be more active, thinking you're not going to go back to your old habits. It's still a lot of mental, but it's worth it," Regalado said.

She hopes her story will inspire others.

"This is like the way to go, like this will change your life for the better. There's no shame in it. I mean, it's a big push. It's a lot of work, but it's so worth it in the end.”

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EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso has yet to reach an agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) to keep the group's specialists in-network.

Texas Tech sent out the email to its patients on August 21, 2024, notifying them about a potential end in partnership between the group and BCBSTX.

As of the publication of this article, Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso is still part of the network. On October 7, 2024, however HMO and PPO plans will be terminated in-network. Blue Cross Advantage HMO plans will be terminated on January 5th, 2025, Texas Tech's letter explained.

ABC-7 has reached out to BCBSTX for comment on the situation and they gave this statement:

"Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso notified us of its intent to leave our networks starting on Oct. 7, 2024, unless new terms are reached. That means Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso would be out of network for BCBSTX PPO members and some of our HMO members on Oct. 7.  Blue Advantage HMO^SM members would not be impacted until Jan. 5, 2025. We value our relationship with Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso and hope to reach a new agreement before the deadline."

ABC-7 has also spoken with officials at Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso. More details on the story will be available on ABC-7 at 10.

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By Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) — More than 49,000 people in the United States died by suicide in 2022 — that’s one death every 11 minutes, and more than any other year dating to back at least 1941, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On top of that, 13.2 million people seriously considered suicide, 3.8 million planned it and 1.6 million attempted suicide.

Though rates among 10- to 24-year-olds in the US have declined, these stats are a glaring reminder that “the silent epidemic of suicide” isn’t over, said Dr. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.

The nation “still has some of the highest rates of suicidal attempts in the developed world, and the number of suicides, at least half using firearms, is still remarkably high,” Prinstein, the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said via email.

That’s why this National Suicide Prevention Month and always, being informed about suicide and knowing that you don’t need to be a mental health provider to lower your risk of suicide or support your loved ones is as important as ever, said Dr. Justin Baker, clinical director of the Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans, or STRIVE, at the Ohio State University.

Globally, more than 720,000 people die by suicide yearly, and it’s the third leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds.

That means parents need to have the “suicide talk” with their teens just like they have conversations about sex and drugs, Prinstein said.

“There are simple, proven steps everyone can take to lower their risk and the risk of family and friends from dying by suicide,” Baker, also assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at the Ohio State University, said via email.

Knowing these five things about suicide can help.

1. Sometimes there are warning signs

Mental health professionals and researchers still haven’t nailed down how to totally predict with certainty who’s at risk for attempting suicide, and whether or when vulnerable people will do it, experts said.

That’s because stressors that could lead to suicide for some people don’t have the same impact on others. Also, there isn’t always a long time frame during which someone is suicidal and acting in ways that signal the need for help.

But there are some situations in which someone who’s suicidal and planning for a longer period will show behavioral or emotional changes. Those changes, as well as other risk factors, can include the following:

● Unusual behavior with potentially lethal items such as firearms or pills

● Giving away cherished belongings

● Excessive or insufficient sleep

● Withdrawing or isolating oneself

● Getting highly intoxicated or driving recklessly

● Talking about wanting to die, via suicide or otherwise

● Struggling to come up with reasons to live

● Feeling like a burden, unneeded or as if they don’t belong anywhere or with anyone

● Feeling hopeless

● Substance abuse issues

● A history of trauma

● Experiencing mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and personality disorders, especially if not receiving treatment

● Personal or family history of suicide

● Easy access to potentially fatal means

● Loss of interest in activities or school

2. Not everyone who attempts suicide has a mental health condition  

One of many common myths about suicide is that only people with mental health conditions have suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide.

That’s not always true. Many people who attempt or die by suicide don’t fit criteria for mental health disorders, clinical psychologist Dr. Michael Roeske told CNN in a previous story — rather, they likely don’t see a way to live with an incredibly stressful situation such as loss of a job, home or loved one; infidelity; trauma; legal matters; a debilitating illness; or other crises.

3. There are ways you can help

If your loved one seems to be at risk of suicide, be supportive and intentional about asking them what’s going on, experts said. They recommend a narrative, person-centered approach — such as asking an open-ended question like, “Hey, I’ve noticed life’s gotten overwhelming these past couple days. Do you want to tell me about it?”

Listen, express appreciation for their openness and offer to help figure it out together, without giving unsolicited advice or encouragement about all the wonderful reasons they should stay alive — sometimes that can make them feel lonelier. But if your loved one seems more urgently at risk or in the process of attempting suicide, get medical care or call 911. You can also call 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to speak with trained counselors who can help you or someone you know work through suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

If you’re the one struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek professional help and talk with someone you trust. Therapy and certain psychiatric medications, such as antidepressants, can also help.

Additionally, “developing a crisis response plan, a plan people make to identify coping strategies they can use in a crisis, can significantly reduce the risk of a suicide attempt,” Baker said.

4. People who attempt suicide aren’t selfish

Some people think suicide is selfish, but this characterization is misguided and derogatory, experts said, since people who attempt or die by suicide often desire to end their pain or see themselves as burdensome. Many don’t see any other choice.

Therefore, “nearsighted” may be a better term since their focus becomes limited to what’s immediately in front of them, rendering them unable to see the bigger picture of their past, present and future, Roeske said.

5. How you talk about suicide matters

Not treating the topic of suicide as the elephant in the room is an important step in reducing the stigma that keeps some people from getting help. But what you say and how you say it also matter.

That’s why many mental health experts, medical institutions, media and more have moved away from saying certain harmful phrases — including “committed suicide,” which implies criminality and can cast a moral judgment, Dr. Jacek Debiec, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, told CNN in a previous story.

Describing a suicide attempt as “successful” is also problematic, as taking one’s life is not a positive achievement. “Failed suicide attempt” can suggest that surviving isn’t the best outcome or that there’s something lacking in the character or willpower of the attempter. Given these factors, when referring to suicide, appropriate language includes “died by suicide,” “fatal suicide attempt,” “killed herself” or “took his own life,” experts said.

Acceptable shorthand ways to communicate not dying from an attempt include “nonfatal suicide attempt” or simply “suicide attempt.”

Using more compassionate language to discuss suicide can also improve empathy and strategies for reducing suicide risk, experts said.

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By Katia Hetter, CNN

(CNN) — It’s back to school for many more students across the United States, which means back to kids gathering in close quarters and sharing knowledge — and viruses.

Vaccines are recommended for some illnesses, but there are also basic preventive measures that parents and caregivers should take to reduce the likelihood of getting sick and missing school — and passing on viruses to other members of the family.

To find out what to do, I spoke with CNN wellness expert Dr. Leana Wen. Wen is an emergency physician and clinical associate professor at George Washington University. She previously was Baltimore’s health commissioner and is the mother of two school-age children.

CNN: What kind of virus threats should parents be ready for this school year? 

Dr. Leana Wen: There are a number to consider. The first and most common are respiratory illnesses. To begin with, Covid-19 numbers are still high. The coronavirus is an extremely contagious virus, and it’s possible to contract it, even for those who’ve previously been vaccinated or have gotten it once before or more.

Peak flu season and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, season are coming, so we should anticipate flu and RSV activity to pick up in the coming months. In the meantime, there are other common respiratory illnesses, such as rhinoviruses and adenoviruses, that are constantly in circulation and easily spread in school-age populations.

CNN: There has been a lot in the news about mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile virus and the eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE. Are these diseases parents should worry about?

Wen: Mosquito-borne illnesses are far less common compared with respiratory infections. In 2024 (as of September 3), there have been 377 cases of West Nile virus disease and six cases of EEE.

There may be higher risk in certain areas, and people should follow the guidance of their local public health officials. Everyone should be aware of the potential risk of mosquito-borne illnesses and take steps to prevent them, such as reducing time outdoors between dusk to dawn, covering up with long sleeves and pants, and using approved insect repellent.

CNN: What about bird flu? Is this a threat to kids?

Wen: The guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is that the risk of bird flu to the American public is low. Thus far this year, the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu has caused outbreaks among cattle and poultry. Thirteen humans have been diagnosed with it in 2024. All are individuals with close contact with sick animals, and there have been no cases of human-to-human transmission in this outbreak.

As a result, though bird flu remains an area of concern for epidemiologists and health officials, it is not something that should concern most Americans. Kids, like adults, should refrain from unprotected contact with cattle and poultry suspected to be infected, and they should not approach wild birds that appear ill or have died.

CNN: Let’s go back to Covid-19. The US Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new round of Covid-19 vaccines. Who should get this vaccine?

Wen: The CDC has recommended the new Covid vaccine that’s formulated against the KP.2 variant for everyone 6 months and older. I understand why they made this blanket recommendation; it helps to ensure insurance coverage for the vaccine and also simplifies the guidance.

At the same time, I believe this guidance is not nuanced enough. I think it’s very important for those most vulnerable to severe illness — namely, people who are 65 and older and those with serious underlying medical conditions — to receive the new vaccine. It’s especially important if they missed last year’s vaccine.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents and other caregivers who fit these criteria should be sure to get the updated Covid-19 vaccine. Those who are younger and generally healthy should also consider this vaccine if they have not had the coronavirus in the past three to six months. The vaccine reduces their chance of severe illness and can also help to reduce their risk of contracting the coronavirus.

CNN: What about the flu vaccine? And isn’t there now a vaccine against RSV?

Wen: I highly recommend that everyone 6 months and older receive the flu vaccine. They could choose to wait until October to get the flu shot so that there is a better shot of the protection lasting through flu season.

Individuals should consider getting both the flu and the Covid-19 vaccine this fall to help protect against both of these respiratory diseases.

There are three groups of people who are eligible to receive additional protection from RSV. The first includes older adults. Those 75 and older can get the RSV vaccine as well as those 60 to 74 who have underlying medical conditions that put them at increased risk for severe disease from RSV. The RSV vaccine is also available to pregnant women to convey protection to their babies. An RSV antibody shot is now available to infants and some young children.

This means the RSV vaccine or antibody are not options for most school-age children and their parents. But grandparents, young siblings and others in their lives who are eligible for RSV prevention should consider taking advantage of the additional protection.

CNN: Are there some vaccines that people should get now versus waiting for later in the year? 

Wen: Yes. The start of school is a good time to make sure that your child is up to date on their routine childhood immunizations. If any shots have been missed or put off before, now is a good time to get them.

The same goes for older adults. Grandparents and other vulnerable individuals who are in close contact with school-age kids should check with their primary care providers and make sure they have received their recommended shots. That includes the pneumococcal vaccine, which helps to reduce the severity bacterial pneumonia, and being current with the vaccine that targets three bacterial diseases — tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, also known as whooping cough.

CNN: With listeria outbreaks being reported, should parents avoid certain lunch meats?

Wen: Everyone should check their homes and make sure they do not have any recalled deli products. According to CDC guidance, people at higher risk for getting severely ill from listeria — including individuals who are immunocompromised, ages 65 and older, and pregnant women — should avoid eating meats sliced at deli counters unless they are heated before eating. That means most parents and children do not need to change their dietary habits for fear of listeria and can continue eating lunch meats.

CNN: What are some basic preventive measures that we can take to reduce the likelihood of our kids getting sick and missing school — and passing on viruses to other members of the family?

Wen: Everyone should wash their hands regularly with soap and water. Kids should be sure to wash their hands well when they come back from school and from playing with their friends. They should wash regularly during the school day, and, if soap and water are not always available, to use hand sanitizer.

People are still getting Covid. If kids will be seeing family members who are especially vulnerable, families could consider gathering outdoors rather than indoors. If indoors, increase ventilation by opening doors and windows. Taking a rapid test for Covid just before gathering could also help, and family members who are very worried about respiratory illnesses could also consider wearing a high-quality mask if indoor close contact cannot be avoided.

Other things, such as getting adequate sleep, eating nutritiously and keeping physically active, can improve our health and strengthen immunity.

Still, most parents of school-age kids — including myself — know to expect several rounds of viral infections every year, and this year will probably be no different. We can and should take steps to reduce the chance of infection, but we should also prepare for what happens when our kids catch viruses at school.

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Originally Published: 30 AUG 24 12:24 ET

Updated: 30 AUG 24 15:09 ET

By Kristen Rogers, CNN

Editor's note: Sign up for CNN’s Sleep, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide has helpful hints to achieve better sleep.

(CNN) — When it comes to maintaining a regular sleep schedule, sometimes a busy week can throw everything out of whack even when you have the best of intentions.

Naturally, catching up on sleep over the weekend is often the solution. New research suggests doing so may even benefit your heart health, amounting to a 19% lower risk of developing heart disease, according to a research abstract published Thursday. The abstract hasn’t been published in a journal but will be presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress on Sunday, September 1.

“The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays,” said research coauthor Yanjun Song of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease of the National Center for Cardiovascular Disease at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, in a news release.

The authors used data from 90,903 participants in the UK Biobank study, which has followed the health outcomes of more than 500,000 people generally between the ages 40 and 69 in the United Kingdom.

Data on participants’ sleep quantity was measured using activity-monitoring watches, and was divided into four groups, from those who compensated for lost sleep on weekends the least to those who did the most. Group No. 1 got 0.26 to 16.05 fewer hours of sleep on the weekends, while on the other end of the spectrum, group No. 4 got 1.28 to about 16 more hours of sleep on weekends than they did during the week.

After a follow-up period of nearly 14 years on average, the group with the most weekend compensatory sleep was 19% less likely to develop cardiovascular conditions such as heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke, compared with the group compensating for sleep the least on weekends.

In the subgroup of participants with daily sleep deprivation (defined as getting less than seven hours of sleep per night), those with the most compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of heart disease than participants who caught up on sleep the least. None of the findings differentiated by gender.

“While the study does have limitations, such as focusing exclusively on the UK population, its findings underscore the negative impact of chronic sleep deprivation on cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of Atria New York City and clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, via email. Goldberg wasn’t involved in the research.

Other experts suggested people still address inconsistent sleep patterns since it can affect more than just heart health.

Previous research into weekend sleep catchup has also shown mixed results.Past studies have found that differences in sleep duration and timing between weekdays and weekends — known as social jet lag — are linked with heart disease risk, said Dr. Nour Makarem, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“Another study demonstrated that trying to make up for sleep deprivation was not effective and in fact worsened diet, resulted in weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity,” said Dr. Martha Gulati, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and associate director of cardiology at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center, via email. “So it isn’t fully clear, even with this study, which is actually the case.”

For that reason, more regular sleep patterns every day of the week are best for optimal heart health, Makarem said.

But the findings of the latest research indicate that “when this is not possible and an individual is sleep deprived during the week, sufficient compensatory sleep during the weekend may be protective,” she added.

How sleep supports heart health

Since the research is still in abstract form, it’s “unclear what other risk factors for heart disease or other aspects of sleep were accounted … for in the analysis,” Makarem said via email.

The authors did, however, account for genetic risk, which is a strength of the research, she added — and hopeful news for people with known genetic risk factors since the association between compensatory sleep and lower heart disease risk persisted regardless.

The findings could be partly explained by sleep’s relation to healthier blood glucose and blood pressure levels, better dietary choices and lower risk for obesity, Makarem said.

“Lack of sleep can lead to numerous heart issues including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, obesity, diabetes, and stroke,” Goldberg said. “Additionally, interrupted sleep may elevate the risk of high blood pressure and arrhythmias.”

Sufficient sleep is also associated with better psychological health, which in turn is related to lower risk for heart disease, Makarem said. “Sleep is restorative and a key component of heart health preservation.”

There are still other unanswered questions, Gulati said: Is there a threshold of too much sleep on the weekend? Is there a minimal amount of sleep you need to get daily that you can’t make up? And for those who sleep properly, do they have an even better chance at not developing heart disease?

“Perhaps the mechanism of these findings is that making it up is better than not getting it at all,” Gulati said.

“To promote heart health, it’s recommended to aim for at least 7 hours of sleep each night and maintain a consistent sleep pattern,” Goldberg said.

That includes sleeping and waking at the same time each day as much as possible, Makarem said.

“If (you are) having trouble sleeping, you can discuss it with your doctor,” Goldberg said. “Remember, you are the best advocate for your health.”

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By Melanie Radzicki McManus, CNN

(CNN) — Sitting down to exercise may not seem to make sense on first glance. After all, there is a reason why people uninterested in physical activity are often dubbed couch potatoes. But chair yoga is one beneficial form of exercise that embraces the seated posture.

Chair yoga is traditional yoga performed while sitting in or using a chair. Many people assume it’s an exercise for older adults, as chair yoga classes often target this demographic. In addition, many studies have documented its benefits for the older set.

Chair yoga was found to be an effective intervention for women 65 years and older with knee osteoarthritis, according to a small study published in the April 2023 edition of the journal Healthcare. The therapy boosted the women’s functional fitness and daily life activity scores, suggesting chair yoga could help lessen the risk of osteoarthritis progressing to disability.

But chair yoga is great for everyone, no matter your age, especially if you’re glued to your desk most of the day. Fifteen minutes of chair yoga or guided meditation greatly improved several physiological and psychological stress markers in study participants, according to an exploratory study published in January 2012 in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Scores of companies also offer free chair yoga to their employees specifically for stress reduction and improved health.

That’s no surprise to Stacie Dooreck, a certified yoga instructor based in Larkspur, California, who has been teaching chair yoga at companies in the San Francisco Bay Area for several decades.

“It’s safe for all ages and can be very gentle,” Dooreck said. “It also helps with flexibility, posture — people in offices are usually hunched over at their desks — and combats repetitive stress injuries, like carpal tunnel syndrome.”

Chair yoga for everybody

Despite yoga’s association with meditation and calm, Dooreck said it actually gives you a lot of energy afterward, plus improves concentration and focus.

Chair yoga also offers people another way to move their bodies, said Ansley Davis, a master trainer for YogaSix based in Chicago. While the people she typically sees opting for chair yoga are older adults, those with injuries, and those who have trouble getting up and down from the floor, she’s a fan of the practice for everyone, no matter the age or ability.

“Chair yoga is great for releasing tension and muscle soreness and for full mobility,” Davis said. “It’s also a great rest-day activity. Plus, the more you can vary your movements, the better.”

The benefits of a regular yoga practice include increased blood flow, improved sleep, better breathing and a boost to feelings of well-being, coupled with decreases in blood pressure, depression and anxiety, chronic pain and inflammation, research has shown.

How to start chair yoga

Ready to give it a try? Aim for five minutes a day to start.

“Five minutes of chair yoga a day is better than doing it once a week for an hour,” Dooreck said. “You want to create a habit. Once you do five minutes, people often want to do more because they feel better.”

If you feel any pain or discomfort while performing a movement, do not force it and ease up or take a moment to pause before moving on to the next pose.

“Whether you’re currently feeling noticeable pain or not, if you’re someone who sits or stays sedentary for a large part of the day, you’ll notice a difference over time,” Davis said. “You might suddenly realize, ‘Oh my gosh, I can look further over my shoulder,’ or, ‘I’m breathing more deeply.’”

Here are a few movements for beginners. As you perform these poses, breathe in and out through your nose. This approach fully engages the diaphragm — the main breathing muscle — and allows for a deeper and calmer breath.

Joint warm-up

Sitting tall on the edge of the seat and facing forward, make circles with your hands and feet together or separately. This motion can prevent issues such as carpal tunnel syndrome in your wrists, plus combat fatigue in the legs, Dooreck said.

Cat-cow

This yoga movement involves arching and rounding the spine, Davis said. Sit tall and inhale as you lift your chin slightly and reach your chest forward in the cow pose, which expands the chest. Then exhale and round your spine in the cat pose, which stretches the upper back.

Side bends

Put your right hand up in the air and lean to the left, then switch sides with your left hand up in the air and leaning to the right.

Twists

Twist to one side, hold the pose for three to five breaths, then switch sides.

Seated forward bend

This movement is great for combating tension in your shoulders. Start by placing both feet flat on the floor with your chair pushed back from your desk. Raise your hands in the air, interlace your fingers, then bend forward so your chest is on your knees and your hands touch the floor.

Standing frame

Hold each elbow in the opposite palm, then raise your arms above your head. Think of pulling your arms apart while also holding them together. Hold this pose for five breaths.

Seated pose

End your session with your feet flat on the floor and your hands resting on your thighs. Take slow, deep breaths for several minutes while being aware of your body and listening to the sounds around you. Before getting up or going back to work, place your hands over your heart, one on top of the other.

Melanie Radzicki McManus is a freelance writer who specializes in hiking, travel and fitness.

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By Jacqueline Howard, CNN

(CNN) — A medication that is currently used for chronic kidney disease in patients with type 2 diabetes has been found to reduce the risk of worsening heart failure and cardiovascular death in certain people with heart failure, according to a new study.

The medication, finerenone, could be an effective therapy in people with heart failure who have mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction, suggests the study, published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“People don’t realize this, but if you’re hospitalized for heart failure, you have a life expectancy that can be worse than most cancers, and so we have been desperately looking for therapies that can lower that risk,” said Dr. Scott Solomon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Edward D. Frohlich Distinguished Chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was a trial principal investigator in the study.

“We’ve made enormous strides in the field of heart failure in the last 20 to 25 years, but mostly that’s been in the type of heart failure called heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, when the heart doesn’t pump very well,” Solomon said. But when it comes to heart failure with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction, few therapies are available.

“That’s the reason that we did this trial,” he said. “There’s still a huge unmet need in this population.”

Ejection fraction refers to the percentage of blood the heart pumps out with each beat. When someone has heart failure with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction, their heart could be pumping normally, or somewhat normally, but still be showing signs or symptoms of heart failure. More than 6 million people in the United States are living with heart failure, and it’s estimated that nearly half of all patients with heart failure have a mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction.

The new study “highlights the importance of this type of heart failure, which is only growing as our population ages,” Solomon said.

Heart failure with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction often can be managed with medications called sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 or SGLT2 inhibitors, which help lower blood sugar. But the new study suggests that finerenone “could potentially be a second pillar of therapy in patients with heart failure with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction,” Solomon said.

Finerenone, sold under the brand names Kerendia and Firialta, was approved in 2021 by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce the risk of serious complications in certain adults with chronic kidney disease associated with type 2 diabetes.

In order for the drug to get FDA approval for use in these people with heart failure, Bayer, the pharmaceutical company behind finerenone, would need to apply to the agency for an expanded indication.

The new study, funded by Bayer, included more than 6,000 people 40 and older in 37 countries who had heart failure and mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction.

Between September 2020 and January 2023, the patients were separated into two groups; 3,003 were provided a daily dose of finerenone, and 2,998 were given a placebo.

The international team of researchers found that there were 1,024 heart failure events among people in the placebo group, compared with 842 events in the finerenone group.

Additionally, 8.7% of the participants in the placebo group died from cardiovascular causes during the course of the study, compared with 8.1% of the finerenone group, the data showed.

“The reduction in morbidity and mortality that we see will translate to years of life free of heart failure events in these patients,” said Solomon, who presented the study findings Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology conference in London.

Finerenone is a type of mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, or MRA. These drugs work by blocking the receptor for the hormone aldosterone. Aldosterone makes the kidneys hold on to salt and water, which can raise your blood pressure. When the drug blocks the receptor, the kidneys release excess water and salt from the blood, which can also affect potassium levels, but the drug prevents the loss of potassium. It’s important to keep potassium at certain levels because too much in the blood can damage the heart, and low levels can affect certain functions in the body.

The researchers found that people taking finerenone showed a higher risk of hyperkalemia, or having too much potassium in the blood. But very few of them – 0.5% of patients in the finerenone group and 0.2% in the placebo group – were hospitalized for hyperkalemia.

“Any drug that works in this way, the mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, will raise potassium in the blood,” Solomon said. “This is a very well-established and known side effect, but these drugs reduce the risk of low potassium, which also places patients at risk.”

Bayer previously released top line results from this study in early August. In that announcement, Dr. Christian Rommel, head of research and development at Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, said the company is “eager to bring finerenone to eligible patients as soon as possible.”

A separate paper, published Sunday in The Lancet, reviewed four clinical trials on MRAs in heart failure and found “significant reductions” in heart failure hospitalizations among heart failure patients.

The meta-analysis showed that steroidal MRAs reduced the risk of cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization in patients with heart failure who had reduced ejection fraction, and nonsteroidal MRAs reduced this risk in people with heart failure who had mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction. Finerenone, a nonsteroidal MRA, was among the drugs in the trials.

If the FDA expands the use of finerenone as a heart failure therapy, cardiologist Dr. Michelle Bloom said, she would think about it as an option for her patients with mildly reduced or preserved ejection fraction.

“I would certainly consider using finerenone,” Bloom, heart failure cardiologist and system director of the Cardio-Oncology Program at NYU Langone Health in New York, said in an email.

“However, I think the question is what the benefit of finerenone will be over the more traditional MRAs such as spironolactone and eplerenone. This remains to be answered,” she said.

Overall, heart failure patients with preserved ejection fraction “have historically been difficult to treat and manage,” Dr. Jayne Morgan, an Atlanta-based cardiologist and vice president for medical affairs at the heart health company Hello Heart, said in an email.

The new study “certainly provides support for additive therapy with finerenone. However certainly more data is needed, including independent data not financed by the sponsor,” Morgan said. “Further, we’d like to see more Blacks and minorities enrolled to truly make the data relevant to all sufferers.”

In the study, the researchers noted that few Black patients were enrolled.

Still, the study findings give “reason for cautious optimism,” Morgan said.

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By Madeline Holcombe, CNN

(CNN) — It’s been a hard day. The worst thing you could do is reach for the chocolate chip cookies that taste like the ones your family always had when you were a kid – right?

Not necessarily, said Jennifer Rollin, founder of The Eating Disorder Center in Rockville, Maryland.

Eating driven by emotions, otherwise known as emotional eating, is often painted as scary, unhealthy, and out of control, but the truth is that it is very normal and can be part of a healthy relationship with food, she added.

Of course, there is a line where emotional eating can become unhealthy, but it is important that people embrace nuance when it comes to ways of eating, rather than apply strict rules and shame-based strategies, said Robin Klein, a weight-inclusive eating disorder dietitian in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

It may be time to put emotional eating into proper perspective and learn how to work with it, rather than against, for a healthier relationship with food, experts said.

What is emotional eating?

Food is inherently emotional, Rollin said.

You can probably think of particular foods you eat as part of a cultural tradition, when you are connecting socially or when you are celebrating an accomplishment, she added.

“If you think about it, our lives are centered around food. Food can be really comforting, and a lot of us build traditions in all of our cultures around food that is nostalgic and sentimental,” Klein said.

Human bodies are also built to enjoy food, so it makes sense that when you are feeling strong emotions, you reach for something that tastes or feels good, Rollin said. You shouldn’t shame yourself if eating something you enjoy is one of the tools in your coping toolkit.

“We don’t shame ourselves for the use of other coping tools,” she added. “Simply eating a food, sometimes for emotional reasons, is not a problem and not something that you need to judge or beat yourself up for.”

Like most coping tools, the context matters, Klein said. Are you eating to enjoy something delicious after a hard day or in celebration of a milestone? Or are you avoiding addressing a larger issue?

“We can’t ever say this is entirely good or this is entirely bad without knowing the big picture of what’s going on in somebody’s life,” she added.

The problem with food as fuel

Shouldn’t we just remove the emotion from food and think of it as just fuel to keep our bodies going?

That doesn’t always work either, Rollin said. “Yes, food is fuel … and provides energy for our brain and bodies, but it’s also so much more than that,” she said.

Sometimes, when people get too wrapped up in only eating the most nutrient dense foods, they miss out on a lot of the moments that involve food for pleasure, socialization and connection, Rollin said.

“If our vision is that food is just fuel, then it seems like going out for dessert with a friend when I’m not hungry maybe isn’t a ‘healthy option,’” she said. “However, we know that actually, social relationships are one of the biggest predictors of health and longevity.”

Another concern is that too much restriction can often backfire into binge eating, said Natalie Mokari, a registered dietician in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Bingeing is generally a result of feeling like, ‘I shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to do it … and I’m going to do it in excess, because I’m never going eat it again,’” Mokari said. “It’s kind of this feast or famine thing.”

When to worry about binge eating

There is a line, however, when emotional eating does become a problem, and that often happens when eating is a person’s primary way to cope, Klein said.

It is important to be mindful of how often you are eating to cope with difficult emotions and if you have other strategies to process those emotions as well, she said.

Some warning signs that you are relying too much on food to cope or engaging in binge eating include: eating larger quantities than most people would in a short time, feeling a loss of control, feeling guilt and shame, eating in secret, and often eating way past the point of fullness, Rollin said.

“If you’re if you’re eating more than you feel comfortable eating, and then you’re engaging in restricting or purging or compulsive exercise, that would be another sign that your relationship to food is problematic,” she added.

How to recalibrate

A healthy relationship with food revolves around flexibility and balance, Mokari said. Can you give yourself permission to eat all kinds of foods while not feeling out of control?

The first step toward a healthier relationship with emotional eating is mindfulness, Rollin said. Instead of either restricting or reaching for the food without thinking, become aware of what purpose the food is serving and what needs it’s meeting, she said.

Maybe you are coping with boredom or stress. Maybe you want to engage with a family custom or mark an occasion with a birthday cake.

That mindfulness can also be helpful when evaluating your values, Rollin said. Is it important to you that you be known as someone who can go to a birthday party without eating cake? Or is it more important that you make memories with the people you love? Are you someone who always avoids underlying issues? Or do you want to cope while also solving bigger problems?

The key is to evaluate your values, your approach, and your relationship with food with curiosity rather than judgment, Klein added.

People can “think about it almost like they are a detective gathering data about themselves,” she said. “Is this something that is becoming a problem? Is it something that I am only coping with through food? Are there deeper layers here that need to be worked through?”

And whether you are struggling with giving yourself permission to eat, or with binge eating, it can be helpful to seek help from a therapist or dietitian that works in disordered eating, weight inclusive and anti-diet fields, Klein said.

“Making sure you go to the right type of professional is really important so that you can process some of the feelings that you’re having and not feel shame or guilt or like you’re doing something bad or wrong,” she added.

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By Andrea Kane, CNN

Editor’s note: The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life’s mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here.  

(CNN) — Matthew Perry’s 2023 death from what the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office determined were “the acute effects of ketamine” cast a shadow over a medication that has been enjoying growing popularity as therapy for depression and other mental health conditions.

(The report listed drowning as a contributing factor; Perry was found face down in a hot tub at his home.)

The actor’s death raised questions about how ketamine is being used — and possibly misused — in a largely unregulated landscape that some critics liken to the “Wild West” due to a proliferation of clinics around the country. Perry, who had struggled for years with drug addiction, had been open about receiving ketamine therapy for depression.

“Matthew Perry sought treatment for depression and anxiety and went to a local clinic where he became addicted to intravenous ketamine,” Anne Milgram, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s administrator, said at a recent press conference. “When clinic doctors refused to increase his dosage, he turned to unscrupulous doctors who saw Perry as a way to make quick money.”

Prosecutors said a underground network of drug sellers and suppliers — including two doctors — were responsible for distributing the ketamine that killed Perry. Five people have been charged in connection with the death of the “Friends” actor. Three are cooperating with prosecutors, while two defendants have pleaded not guilty to respective charges that include falsifying medical records and conspiracy to distribute among others.

To be clear, ketamine is only approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as an anesthetic and not for the treatment of any psychiatric disorder. (The FDA approved a related drug, esketamine, sold as Spravato, in 2019 for people with treatment-resistance depression.)

But the scientific evidence showing that ketamine can be helpful in patients with treatment-resistant depression and suicidal ideation is strong and goes back at least 20 years.

Still, the circumstances surrounding Perry’s death has brought scrutiny to the relatively new and somewhat misunderstood practice.

“Ketamine is such a different type of treatment than traditional treatments, not just for depression, but in medicine in general,” psychiatrist Dr. David Feifel, founder of Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute, a private clinic in San Diego that administers ketamine therapy to patients, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast Chasing Life.

“One of the major differences is that the actual setting and the patient’s state of mind when they are receiving the treatment play a big role in the outcome, the therapeutic effect.”

You can listen to the podcast’s full episode here

Feifel, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Medicine, was one of the first doctors to use ketamine off-label to treat depression at the school’s Center for Advanced Treatment of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, according to an article in the journal The Lancet.

Unlike traditional antidepressants that target the neurotransmitters serotonin and/or norepinephrine, ketamine targets glutamate — the most abundant chemical messenger in the brain, Feifel said. It also appears to enhance neuroplasticity, stimulating new connections or pathways in the brain.

Ketamine was originally developed in the 1960s as an anesthetic — an application for which it is still used today. (It is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines.)

But Feifel said the drug’s dissociative and hallucinogenic properties — which made it such a popular party drug —  may hold the key to why it helps some people with depression and other mental health disorders.

“Ketamine treatment is associated with an altered state of thinking, a psychedelic-like state of thinking, for a short period of time. There’s a substantial amount of evidence that that is part of the therapeutic effect,” Feifel said. “This psychedelic-like experience allows people to view things through a different lens that seems to play a role in their improvement.”

But, Feifel noted, it can be emotional and unpleasant for some — and it leaves patients undergoing treatment vulnerable because they are not fully in control of their faculties. As a result, proper preparation and supervision are essential, he said.

Feifel said he started treating patients with ketamine because existing treatments don’t work for everyone.

“When I started in psychiatry, one of the motivations was that I knew mental illness was an incredible scourge of society. The statistics are just unbelievable in terms of rates of depression, anxiety, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and suicide — and they are not getting better,” he said. “And after 50 years of medications, they really haven’t gotten better. So there’s a huge need.”

Here is what Feifel wants people to know about ketamine, especially if they or someone they know is interested in trying it.

Ketamine needs appropriate medical supervision

Ketamine can be a lifeline for certain people who have not responded to common treatments for depression, such as medications and different forms of psychotherapy.

“(It’s) probably the biggest advance in the field of mental health in terms of treatments in many decades,” Feifel said.

“It is highly effective when conventional (treatments) are not effective,” he said. “And its rapid effectiveness against suicidal thoughts (is) really important. We’ve never had anything like that where we can give it to somebody … and it can, sort of, vaporize their suicidal thinking.”

And when done under appropriate medical supervision, ketamine is safe.

“It is almost impossible to die from an overdose of ketamine alone,” he said, because it doesn’t lower respiration rates, “which is very unusual for an anesthetic,” and it has a wide therapeutic range.

Feifel pointed out Perry’s death didn’t happen in a clinic under treatment. “There was no medical oversight,” he said. “This was not given in anything that resembled a medical context.”

Caveat emptor (buyer beware)

If you are looking to try ketamine as treatment for depression or another mental health condition, do your homework.

“If anybody is considering (ketamine therapy), they have to be somewhat cautious,” Feifel said, “because currently it’s a very, unregulated landscape, where there are a lot of, let’s say, providers that may not be (using it) under the highest standards. And then it can be risky.”

To find an appropriate provider or clinic, start by asking your psychiatrist. “Even if they don’t practice with ketamine themselves, (they) are probably aware of their local colleagues who do so, and the ones who have a good reputation,” he said.

Look for an expert

Find a clinic run by a mental health professional.

“The problem is many of these providers are not optimal,” Feifel said. You wouldn’t go to a urology clinic run by a psychiatrist, he noted, so why would you go to a ketamine clinic run by a urologist?

“In general, a large proportion of the clinics are not run by mental health professionals, namely psychiatrists.”

Feifel said some clinics may do a good job but many don’t. “They don’t have the background,” he said, pointing to a psychiatrist’s years of residency and specialty training, not to mention deep understanding of complex medication regimens.

“Remember, the people who are coming to this treatment have the most resistant types of depression, the most complex, often with other mental illnesses commingled,” he said.

Look beyond the infusion

Seek out a clinic that includes psychotherapy as part of the treatment plan.

“The highest standard is to do ketamine treatments in the context of the specialized type of psychotherapy called ketamine-assisted psychotherapy,” Feifel said. “A provider that also has a multidisciplinary team that includes licensed therapists who are trained in this — that’s a barometer of a very high level of commitment to the best practices in ketamine.”

You don’t want to walk into a clinic, get an infusion and then be sent on your way without proper follow-up support, he said.

Steer clear of telehealth providers

During the height of the pandemic, rules around prescribing controlled medications, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs, were relaxed to allow for continuation of therapy. This flexibility of the prescribing rules could spell trouble for someone getting ketamine therapy via telehealth.

“There are companies now that will have patients do a quick telemedicine consultation with, let’s say, a nurse practitioner … just to check that box that there was a medical assessment, and then they get sent ketamine to their house to do on their own,” Feifel said. “That’s exactly part of the problem: doing it on your own, unsupervised (and) thinking, ‘Oh, this is fine.’”

He said people should steer clear of home ketamine, at least initially. “I think it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Feifel said he believes the public can separate what happened to Perry from the promise of ketamine therapy.

“There are people who traffic in drugs and, unfortunately, people who get addicted to drugs, even drugs that are relatively low on the addiction potential scale as ketamine is,” he said. “So, I think people in their minds will separate this. … That is not medical care.”

Listen to the full episode here. Starting next week, new episodes of the Chasing Life podcast will be released on Fridays. 

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CNN’s Taylor Romine, Cheri Mossburg and Grace Walker contributed to this report.

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By Brenda Goodman, CNN

(CNN) — Measuring the levels of three biomarkers in blood in midlife may give women a clearer picture of their risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes decades earlier than current risk calculators do, a new study suggests.

When it comes to the worries that women have about their health, heart disease isn’t usually at the top of the list – but it probably should be.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States. In 2021, it was responsible for the deaths of more than 310,000 women, about 1 in every 5 female deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 80% of women ages 40 to 60 are living with at least one risk factor for coronary artery disease, research has found, but only about half of women recognize heart disease as their biggest health risk.

Experts say that having better measures of risk earlier in life might help women take critical steps to improve their health before it’s too late.

Common tests give a new look at heart risk

The tests highlighted in the study are not new. “These are widely available. It’s nothing more than checking off a box with a lab slip,” said study author Dr. Paul Ridker, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They are also inexpensive, he says, ranging from $10 to $12 per test.

The study found that these three test results, considered together, could predict cardiovascular risk in seemingly healthy women as much as 30 years before a major cardiovascular event like a heart attack or stroke, a finding that Ridker said was astonishing.

“The fact that it works in primary prevention is mind-blowing to me, because it’s telling us that the process that’s driving atherosclerotic disease in these young women is there very early in life,” he said.

For the study, which was published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in London, Ridker and his colleagues followed nearly 40,000 women for 30 years starting in the early 1990s. The research was funded by the US National Institutes of Health.

The study participants were health professionals who were invited to enroll. Their average age at the beginning of the study was 55, but some were as young as 40. One in four had high blood pressure, and about 1 in 8 were current smokers. Nearly 3% had a history of diabetes, and about 14% had at least one parent who’d had a heart attack before the age of 65.

At the start of the study, about 28,000 women agreed to provide blood samples. The researchers used these to measure three biomarkers: low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, commonly known as bad cholesterol; high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or CRP; and lipoprotein(a), or LP(a).

Igniting a ‘biologic explosion’

These three factors each influence cardiovascular risk in different ways.

LDL cholesterol contributes to fatty buildup in the arteries and has long been a classic measure of heart risk.

High-sensitivity CRP is newer. It’s part of the immune system’s response to cholesterol, and it’s a way for researchers to measure simmering inflammation in blood vessels, the kind a person wouldn’t be able to feel.

When cholesterol starts to build up in the arteries, it forms crystals. The immune system sees the crystals as foreign and starts to mount a response to clear them away. In the process, high-sensitivity CRP is made.

LP(a) – pronounced LP-little-a – is a lipid that can accumulate in blood vessels and form artery-clogging plaques, similar to LDL cholesterol. A person’s risk for a high LP(a) level is largely inherited. About 1 in 5 people worldwide has a high LP(a) level but may not know it because they wouldn’t have any symptoms. A person can live a healthy lifestyle, have normal cholesterol and still develop a major artery blockage because of LP(a).

In the clinic, doctors consider and measure each of these biomarkers independently. “But they’re not independent of each other in terms of biologic explosion that they ignite,” Ridker said.

That’s a major strength of this study, said Dr. Leslie Cho, director of the Women’s Cardiovascular Center at the Cleveland Clinic.

“It’s the additive effect of the risk factors that are very interesting and incredibly potent,” said Cho, who was not involved in the research.

More elevated markers means greater risk

At the end of the study period, researchers looked to see how many of the participants had had a major cardiovascular event: a heart attack, stroke, a procedure to open an artery near the heart or death from a cardiovascular event. The women in the study experienced roughly 3,600 first major cardiovascular events.

The researchers then divided the participants into five roughly equal parts called quintiles, according to their levels of each biomarker, and compared the risk of major cardiovascular events among those in the highest quintile against those in the lowest.

They found that the three biomarkers were each individually associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, with inflammation appearing to be the strongest driver.

Women with the highest levels of high-sensitivity CRP – over 5.18 milligrams per liter – were about 70% more likely to have a major heart event than those in the lowest level. Women with the highest levels of LDL – over about 151 milligrams per deciliter – had a 36% higher risk of a major heart event. And women with the highest levels of LP(a) – over 44 milligrams per deciliter – had a 33% greater risk of a major cardiovascular event.

The effects were even stronger when the three biomarkers were considered together. Compared with women who didn’t have high levels of any of these three biomarkers, those who had high levels of all three were nearly three times more likely to have a major heart event and nearly four times more likely to have a stroke.

“We continue to underdiagnose and undertreat women compared to men,” Ridker said, adding that one of the key messages of the study is that middle-age women with elevated risks should be identified and treated earlier.

“Why are we starting statins in women at age 65 when we start them in men at age 50? Right? I mean, it’s just biologically silly,” Ridker said.

Getting doctors to test

The study suggests that doctors should be checking these markers as a routine part of primary care, but many don’t, said Dr. Gina Lundberg, a preventive cardiologist who is clinical director of the Women’s Heart Center at Emory University.

“A lot of physicians never draw the c-reactive protein or the LP(a) levels, so they’re missing out on this information,” said Lundberg, who was not involved in the study.

Ridker said he hoped the study would educate doctors about the importance of ordering these tests. “I would personally like to see universal screening for these three things,” he said.

There are medications to lower LDL cholesterol and to help control inflammation, including low-dose colchicine, a drug that’s traditionally been used to treat gout. But no drugs are specifically approved to lower LP(a), although several are being tested.

Independent experts said the new study was significant because most risk calculators tend to underestimate heart risks for women.

“It’s always been very difficult to assess heart disease risk in women because women tend to get heart disease later in life. A lot of the traditional risk factors that we use – the main one that we use is American Heart Association calculator – tends to underestimate the lifetime risk for women,” said Dr. Sonia Tolani, co-director of the Columbia Women’s Heart Center.

The study has some important limitations, too. Nearly all the women who took part in the study were White. Because they were health professionals themselves, they had better-than-average access to health care and health information and were healthier in many respects than women in the general population.

“Is it applicable to women in different socioeconomic spectrums? And is it going to be expandable to minority women?” Tolani asked of the study findings.

African Americans and South Asian women tend to have higher LPL(a) levels than Whites, Tolani noted, so that part of the study may not apply to them.

“I think that’s the biggest flaw I see,” she said.

On the other hand, the particular risk factors for heart disease in women have long been ignored, so this study is a milestone in that sense.

“We don’t have a lot of studies done in women, in cardiology, or frankly in much of medicine, so it is good to have a study focused on women and looking at their risk,” said Dr. Anum Minhas, director of Cardio-Obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“Looking 30 years early of course you’re going to have the strongest chance of preventing even those risk factors leading to heart disease,” said Minhas, who was not involved in the research.

Even though all three biomarkers are well-known to cardiologists, the high-sensitivity CRP and the LP(a) test aren’t measured or used much in primary care, which is where doctors might first screen patients.

For people who might want to get the results of these tests at their next checkup, Ridker suggests that it might be smart to come prepared.

“You might want to bring the paper with you,” he said.

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EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- El Paso City/County Health Authority Dr. Hector Ocaranza tells parents in the community not be afraid or panic after a vaccinated student at Alderete Middle School tested positive for Chickenpox , Canutillo ISD officials announced Thursday.

According to the district, the student was fully vaccinated against the Varicella virus, Canutillo ISD officials say, meaning this appears to be a breakthrough case.

"This is something that can happen, and it is not to cause any alarm," said Dr. Ocaranza. "We are working very closely with school officials and it is a good reminder that people need to stay up to date with their vaccinations as well."

Dr. Ocaranza explained people who have been vaccinated against chickenpox can still get the disease. However, they usually have milder symptoms than people who are not vaccinated.

"And that's the reason why, before the school starts, we invite everybody, all the parents, to bring their child in and make sure that they're up to date with the vaccinations," he said.

According to the CDC, Chickenpox usually lasts about 4 to 7 days. A common sign of chickenpox is a rash that turns into itchy, fluid-filled blisters which eventually become scabs.

Dr. Ocaranza said the people that medical providers are mostly concerned about getting chicken pox are those that are not vaccinated, have never gotten chickenpox, and have a weakened immune system.

He reminds parents to continue teaching children to wash their hands as a preventative measure, and for parents to stay up to date with their vaccinations.

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By Jen Christensen, CNN

(CNN) — The National Institutes of Health said Friday that it is stopping its research of what’s commonly known as Havana syndrome, a mysterious illness experienced by a number of spies, soldiers and diplomats who have reported sudden debilitating symptoms of unknown origin.

The NIH said it would end the work “out of an abundance of caution” after an internal investigation found that people had been coerced into to being part of the research.

The coercion, the agency specified, was not on its own part, but the NIH did not elaborate as to who may have forced the participation. However, it noted that voluntary consent is a fundamental pillar of the ethical conduct of research.

Some of the people who reported being sick previously claimed that the CIA made them join the research as a prerequisite for getting health care.

A CIA official said the agency takes “any claim of coercion, or perceived coercion, extremely seriously and fully cooperated with NIH’s review of this matter, and have offered access to any information requested.”

The official told CNN the CIA Inspector General is aware of the NIH’s findings and the prior related allegations.

“We greatly value the efforts of the scientific community to better understand these reported health incidents. CIA remains committed to ensuring continued access to care for affected officers and to fully investigating any reports of health incidents,” the official said in a statement.

“They wanted us to be a lab rat for a week before we actually got treatment at Walter Reed — and at bare minimum, that is unethical and immoral,” Marc Polymeropoulos told CNN in May.

Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who says he has been sick, is an advocate for those struck by what the US government calls “anomalous health incidents.” He said in May that he believes that participation in this research was “ordered” by senior leadership at the CIA.

In March, the CIA issued a statement that denied that people were required to participate. The agency did not respond to CNN’s request for comment Friday.

Forced participation in a study is considered highly unethical and is extremely uncommon, ethicists say.

The NIH said Friday that it shared the update with JAMA, the medical journal that in March published two studies that have come out of the research. JAMA did not respond to CNN’s request for further comment.

The NIH said that although it is stopping this research, this decision does not change the conclusions.

Despite federal employees’ reports of symptoms, neither study found anything definitive that would cause health problems.

In one study, NIH researchers took a closer look at the brains of people who were believed to have Havana syndrome and found no consistent evidence of brain injury. There were also no significant differences between that group and a healthy comparison group.

In the second study, NIH scientists ran a battery of tests on 86 US government staffers and family members who reported Havana syndrome, comparing them with 30 people who had similar jobs but no such symptoms. By most clinical and biomarker measures, they found, the two groups were the same.

In an editorial published in JAMA along with the studies, Dr. David Relman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford who worked on earlier investigations of this patient population, argued that although the study involving brain scans appeared to show that “nothing, or nothing serious” happened with these cases, coming to this conclusion “would be ill-advised.”

Other research has found evidence of abnormalities in the brain, he said, and the same is true for the study involving the tests. Because the condition can look different in each person, he said, doctors don’t have specific tests that can fully determine what’s wrong.

“Clearly, new, sensitive, standardized, non-invasive tests of nervous system function, especially involving the vestibular system, are needed, such as more specific blood markers of different forms of cellular injury,” Relman wrote.

The illness and its cause have remained frustratingly opaque to both the intelligence community and the medical community investigating its origin.

The illness was dubbed Havana syndrome because it emerged in late 2016 in the Cuban capital. Some American diplomats reported symptoms that were consistent with head trauma, including dizziness and extreme headaches.

Since then, at least 1,500 cases have been reported by US personnel stationed in 96 countries, officials said last year.

There was longstanding speculation about a new kind of weapon as the cause of these illnesses, but the US intelligence community said last year that it cannot link any cases to a foreign adversary, ruling it unlikely that the unexplained illness was the result of a targeted campaign by an enemy of the US.

CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis contributed to this report.

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By Carma Hassan, CNN

(CNN) — The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized an updated version of the protein-based Novavax Covid-19 vaccine for use in people 12 and up. Doses could be available by the end of next week.

“The COVID-19 vaccines have had a tremendous positive impact on public health and vaccination continues to be the most effective method for COVID-19 prevention,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “COVID-19 continues to be a very real risk for many people, and we encourage individuals to consider getting an updated COVID-19 vaccine when eligible. Today’s authorization provides an additional COVID-19 vaccine option that meets the FDA’s standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization.”

Novavax’s vaccine is based on protein technology, which takes longer to manufacture than mRNA vaccines like those made by Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna. Protein-based vaccines work by getting the body’s immune system to recognize small modified pieces of the virus it’s targeting. In this case, that means pieces of the coronavirus spike protein.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in June that everyone over 6 months old receive both an updated Covid-19 vaccine and a flu shot this year.

The FDA greenlit updated mRNA-based Moderna and Pfizer shots last week. Those vaccines target the KP.2 strain of the coronavirus, an offshoot of JN.1, which is the target of Novavax’s protein-based shots. The KP.3.1.1 strain, which is also an offshoot of JN.1, is the prevalent version in the US now, according to CDC data.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are already available in some pharmacies. Novavax said its vaccine “will be available in thousands of locations across the country, including retailers, regional grocers, and independent pharmacies.”

Levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, measured in wastewater are at “very high” levels nationally, according to CDC data, sparking the highest summer peak in the US since July 2022. Monitoring of viral levels in wastewater can give a picture of how widespread the virus is as testing and other forms of monitoring have fallen off.

CNN’s Jamie Gumbrecht and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.

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By Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) — The California Legislature has passed a bill with bipartisan support banning the use of red dye No. 40 and five other chemicals in foods served at public schools.

On Thursday, the Golden State became the first in the country to pass a bill that, if signed into law, would forbid the use of the ingredients found in some popular cereals, ice creams, drinks, candy, ice pops, cheese-flavored chips, jellies and more, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental health organization that cosponsored the law with Consumer Reports.

Known as the California School Food Safety Act and introduced by Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel in February, Assembly Bill 2316 prohibits a school district, county superintendent of schools or charter school with grades kindergarten through 12th from offering foods or beverages containing red dye No. 40, yellow dyes Nos. 5 and 6, blue dyes Nos. 1 and 2, and green dye No. 3.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has until September 30 to sign into the law the bill that, if legalized, would be enacted on December 31, 2027.

California is home to the largest public school system in the nation, with more than 6.3 million students and 10,000 schools, Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction and bill cosponsor, said in a news briefing hosted by the EWG on August 6.

The bill stems from concerns these dyes would harm children’s ability to learn, as they have been linked to behavioral difficulties and decreased attention among children, according to a 2021 study by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

The law is “important to me as a parent, it’s important to me as somebody who’s struggled with ADHD as a child, and it’s important to me as a parent of a child who is struggling with ADHD,” Gabriel said in the briefing. “We know that the synthetic food dyes that are targeted by this bill can cause harm for all kids, but we know that there is a specially pronounced impact on a lot of our young people with ADHD and other challenges.”

Gabriel and the EWG said that though “new science is available,” the US Food and Drug Administration’s current regulations of the dyes in food is based on research that’s 35 to 70 years old.

“Reassessing the safety of chemicals in food as new, relevant data become available is a priority for the FDA,” the agency said in a statement. “The FDA has reviewed the research on the effects of color additives on children’s behavior including the literature review cited by the Bill. The totality of scientific evidence shows that most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives, but some evidence suggests that certain children may be sensitive to them.”

In addition to the FDA’s own evaluations, the agency also supports and participates in international risk assessments conducted under the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives.

“All the colors listed have recently undergone assessments for safety in food by the JEFCA and were found to be safe for use in food under current use conditions,” the FDA said.

However, the agency will continue to assess the emerging science and ensure the safety of approved color additives, including by way of hosting a public meeting in September to review the process for post-market assessment of chemicals in food, according to the statement.

Impacts of AB 2316

John Hewitt of the Consumer Brands Association, which represents more than 1,700 brands, said in a statement that “it’s unfortunate that scientifically proven, safe ingredients have been demonized for the purpose of advancing a political agenda.

“No industry is more committed to food safety than the consumer packaged goods industry. It’s why we have urged the FDA to aggressively acknowledge its responsibility as the nation’s food safety regulator,” Hewitt, senior vice president of packaging and sustainability and state affairs at the association, said via email. “The passage of this bill could cost schools and families money, limit choice and access, and create consumer confusion.”

But Thurmond stressed the greater importance of “the cost of our failure to act … in a nation where our children already have some of the highest rates of illness, asthma, diabetes (and) heart disease,” compared with other countries.

Gabriel echoed these sentiments, adding that the bill may ultimately save California money by reducing the use of resources necessary for helping children struggling in the classroom.

“I see this both through personal experience and also the work that I do as a lawmaker,” he added. “It’s really expensive.”

If Newsom signs the bill, the decision would render the United States food environment more in alignment with that of the European Union, where products including these dyes are required to have a warning label saying those products could harm young people, Gabriel added.

“The point of this bill is to encourage manufacturers to make minor modifications to their recipes, so that they can serve the same foods that we all love, that our kids love, but without these dangerous chemicals that harm people,” he added. “We have incredible confidence that they’re able to do that … because they make the same products in so many countries around the world, just without the harmful chemicals.”

The EWG has noted in the past that few foods available in California schools use the ingredients the bill would ban if signed.

However, Gabriel and other assemblymembers believe that given the size of California’s economy, the law is a “major victory for the food safety movement not only here in the state of California, but also nationally,” he said, also noting that more than 70 organizations support the bill.

After the state banned brominated vegetable oil, used mostly in some sodas, as part of its California Food Safety Act in October 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration revoked the regulation for its use nine months later.

And at least 10 other states have begun following California’s lead, introducing legislation based on the act, Gabriel said.

Avoiding these chemicals in food

If you’re concerned about the potential impacts of these dyes on your child’s health, you can help them avoid them by checking the ingredient lists of any products you buy, experts said — particularly packaged foods, which are typically ultra-processed and thus are more likely to include artificial dyes, according to the EWG.

You can also try alternatives without those ingredients — foods that are USDA-certified organic, for example, can’t contain artificial food dye. Cut back on sodas, juices or sports drinks that might contain them, as well. Offering kids substitutes may be more effective than flat-out denial of something they’re craving.

“Emphasize brightly colored produce,” the EWG suggests. “The best competition for splashy packages of ultra-processed foods is the rainbow of colors in fresh fruit and vegetables.”

Actress Lesley-Ann Brandt has ongoing conversations with her 7-year-old son about which foods are more or less healthy to eat and why, she said in the briefing.

“We talk to him as if he’s an adult, and he knows we don’t eat this because of this, but here’s an alternative,” Brandt said. “We make some of our foods too, and it’s a way to discuss nutrition.”

Brandt has witnessed the benefits of nutrition in her family of origin, too, she added. After growing up in two “very different” food systems of South Africa and New Zealand, “I really noticed the difference coming to the States 14 years ago,” she said.

“I’m also the oldest sister of a brother who had severe ADHD as a child, so I got to see firsthand the impact of nutrition and how it helped him,” Brandt said. “One of the first things my mother did to try and avoid heavily medicating him was to look at his nutrition and the processed sugars, ingredients, food dyes and synthetic chemicals that just (were) not going to serve him in school.

“And it was really the difference between a B student and a C student for him,” she said. “That impacted his confidence as well.”

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By Madeline Holcombe, CNN

(CNN) — A series of recent kids’ sports injuries, some fatal, have reignited a question for many families: Is my child safe playing sports?

At least three student football players in the US have died since the start of the new school year.

Alabama teen Semaj Wilkins died August 13 after a medical emergency during football practice at New Brockton High School. Caden Tellier, 16, suffered a fatal brain injury in his season opener the same day 13-year-old Cohen Craddock died after a collision in football practice.

The number of children getting injured on the field has risen in recent years, yet sports are still important for kids’ mental and physical health, doctors say. So how can we prevent and treat sports injury in kids?

How many kids get injured playing sports?

Overall injuries due to youth participation in football showed a dramatic decline from 2013 to 2019, plateauing in 2020 and heading back up in 2021, according to the most recent figures from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The record low number of kids’ sports injuries in 2020 coincided with Covid-19 lockdown policies. The injuries rose again by 20% in 2021, 12% in 2022 and 2% in 2023, according to the National Safety Council.

More than 1 million kids ages 5 to 14 were injured in sports and required a trip to the emergency room, according to the commission. Along with sports like basketball, soccer and football, the agency also reported significant injuries from things like playground equipment and skateboards.

Children between the ages of 5 and 14 were most likely to be injured in football in 2021: There were 110,171 reported injuries in children ages 5 to 14 in 2021, compared to 92,802 in youth and young adults aged 15 to 24.

Soccer and basketball were also high risk for kids’ injuries with 59,000 injuries and 79,207 injuries, respectively.

The sports with the highest rates of concussion were: boys’ football, with 10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures; girls’ soccer, with 8.19 per 10,000 athlete exposures; and boys’ ice hockey, with 7.69 per 10,000 athlete exposures, according to a 2019 study.

High contact sports like hockey, football, lacrosse and martial arts might be higher risk for serious injuries such as head injury, but even seemingly safer sports like swimming and track pose some risk for overuse injuries. And they all can be made safer with the right strategy, said Dr. Erin Grieb, pediatric primary care sports medicine physician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, in a previous story.

Here’s what to do if your child plays sports.

What to look out for

When it comes to cardiac events, screening is crucial, said Dr. Stuart Berger, division head of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in a previous story.

Generally, kids are safe to play sports and exercise without concern for cardiac events, but with all types of sports, it is important to do a physical with family history to identify those who might be at risk, he added.

‘The concerns are that maybe there is somebody with an underlying cardiac abnormality,” Berger said. “The screening is designed to bring that out and that we can identify, if possible, who those kids are.”

Head injuries are another major concern to families when it comes to putting their children in sports.

The bulk of concussions in kids are related to youth sports, said Dr. Andrew Peterson, clinical professor of pediatrics and director of primary care sports medicine at the University of Iowa in a previous story.

The good news is that there is not strong evidence that a handful of concussions over a childhood is associated with long term impacts as an adult, he added.

But it is really important to avoid reinjuring the head before a concussion is fully healed.

“The thing we worry about most are these second impact events where people have a concussion on top of a concussion,” Peterson said.

Coaches, referees and families should learn how to spot a concussion to make sure their young athlete is properly cared for, Grieb said.

The signs and symptoms can be physical, including headaches or sensitivity to light; mental, with confusion or difficulty paying attention; emotional, with sadness and anxiety; or sleep related, she added.

It is important to remember that concussions can present in many ways, and just because you got certain symptoms in one concussion doesn’t mean you will have the same ones in the next, Grieb said.

Prevention and response

To keep kids safe in sports, it’s important to focus on both prevention and response.

Even for high contact, high-risk sports, there has been a cultural shift to focus more rules and regulations on player protection and injury prevention, Grieb said.

Learning the proper techniques and wearing well-fitting gear can help lower the risk of serious injury in sports such as football, hockey and lacrosse.

In almost any sport, kids should be given ample time to rest within the week and over the course of the year to avoid injuries that can come from overuse, she added.

With head injuries, it is important that young athletes take the proper time and action to recover before getting back to their sports, Grieb said.

“You break a bone — I can put you in a cast and not let you use that arm. When you have a head injury, I can’t put your head in a cast,” she said. “You get one brain, so it’s really important that we let your brain heal.”

In response to cardiac event, every person — player, coach or onlooker — should be familiar with CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and how to use a defibrillator, Berger said.

“Be prepared to intervene, because that’s what saves lives,” he added.

Why children should still play

The takeaway message should not be to keep your kids from sports, Berger said.

There might be a conversation with your child about what sports they want to do, along with the risks and precautions your family will take, Grieb said, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Sports and other physical activities for kids are important for building good habits to keep moving throughout their lifetime, Peterson said. And regular movement is part of growing up in a safe and healthy way, he added.

But sports also give our kids leadership skills, life lessons and fun, Grieb said.

“If you’re focused on using proper techniques, you’re focused on following the rules of the game and you have coaches and referees who are also engaged in that, then I think particularly risky sports can be safer than they have in the past,” she said.

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By Brenda Goodman, CNN

(CNN) — Crack! The sound of football helmets colliding on the field is an audible sign that fall is just around the corner.

But that sound also comes with a darker side. Mounting scientific evidence shows that repeated hits to the head — even if they don’t result in concussions — may cause lasting damage in the brain and perhaps progressive neurodegeneration called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

The problem has set off alarms at all levels of the sport, with coaches, trainers, parents and leagues wrestling with tough questions about whether football can be made safer for athletes.

In just the past month, three young players have died after playing football, two of them with head injuries. The third death is still under investigation.

After his son’s death, Ryan Craddock, the father of 13-year-old Cohen Craddock, called for all student players to wear additional soft-shell coverings called Guardian Caps. They are not helmets but pliable padded coverings that slip over a player’s existing helmet.

“I believe if my son would have been wearing something like this, this would have made a totally different outcome,” Craddock told CNN. “You’re not modifying the helmets. It’s just something that attaches directly on. So why not just have that extra layer of protection?”

Intuitively, putting more padding around a football player’s head might sound like a good idea, but there’s little independent research showing that it reduces the force of blows to the head or that it prevents head injuries.

Lab studies in which researchers simulate hits to the head have shown that the caps can reduce impact forces. But the handful of published studies that have tested the caps on college football players running drills have failed to find any benefit compared with helmets alone. There are no published independent studies that have tried to measure whether Guardian Caps reduce concussions or head injuries in players and no testing to see if they might work for younger players.

Guardian Caps have gotten a big boost from the NFL, which now allows all players to wear them during regular-season games. The league also mandates them for most players during every preseason practice, as well as regular and postseason practices with contact.

The caps’ maker, Guardian Sports, says its own extensive testing — as well as years of use by many large college football teams — proves that they reduce injuries on the field.

“We will tell anyone who asks that no product can make a player concussion proof,” Erin Hanson, who started Guardian Sports with her husband in 2011, said in a statement.

“Our product, however, is well past the point of proof of concept. We now have over 12 years of on-the-field data and feedback with over 500,000 players using Guardian Caps. Schools like UGA, Ga Tech, Alabama, Tennessee wouldn’t use a product year after year that isn’t working for their players. The NFL and CFL certainly wouldn’t mandate Caps if the data wasn’t clear,” Hansen wrote.

Dr. David Camarillo, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and a former college football player who has tested the Guardian Caps, said he doesn’t think the evidence is so clear.

“I think the rationale is, football’s in big trouble. People are worried about CTE. We’re seeing kids dying,” Camarillo said. “People want to try to do something, right, as long as they don’t think it’s going to hurt.”

On its website, Guardian says its XT model reduces the impact to a player’s head by up to 33%, while the beefier model used by the NFL reduces head acceleration in a collision by up to 40%.

NFL Vice President Jeff Miller told CNN’s Coy Wire that the caps have made players safer.

“The last two seasons, we saw about a 50% decrease in concussions in the positions that we mandated to wear them. So of course, we said, ‘OK, all positions will now wear them in the preseason,’” Miller said.

The NFL has not released the data behind its claims, however, leading to skepticism among some scientists.

“It’s hard to take what the NFL says at face value,” Camarillo said. “What they really ought to do is publicly share the data, not just publish it but release it,” and follow up by funding independent studies that could confirm their conclusions.

The league says it plans to publish research backing its conclusions soon.

“We actually have papers in progress that have been submitted to journals right now. They’re under review, so you should see that in print. You know, takes a while to get things in print, but it’s in the process,” NFL Chief Medical Office Dr. Allen Sills said.

Sills said one reason the published studies may seem to conflict with the NFL’s results is that the Guardian Cap has changed over time.

“Some older models of the cap did not show a benefit in our testing, but the newer version of the cap did show this laboratory reduction,” he said.

In a 2022 position statement, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association cautioned about the use of after-market helmet add-ons like Guardian Caps, saying that “The current evidence describes no benefit.”

Several groups of independent researchers have recently tested Guardian Caps in laboratory settings and in the real world, and they say the jury is very much out on the question of whether they work.

Studies in two labs measuring reductions in the force of twisting and side-to-side impacts to the head show a measurable — if small — benefit.

In Virginia Tech’s Helmet Lab, researchers put several models of the caps through repeated collision tests that were designed to mimic the way players can hit their heads on the field.

Lab director Dr. Steve Rowson, a biomedical engineer, said that testing has found that Guardian Caps reduce the force of an impact, especially if the thicker model deployed by the NFL is used and if both players involved in a hit have them on.

Rowson said their experiments showed that the standard model of the Guardian Cap reduced the force of acceleration by up to 5% while the model used by the NFL reduced the force of linear acceleration by as much as 14%.

When the testing simulated the impact of two players who were each wearing a Guardian Cap, the reduction was even greater.

“We saw that it pretty much doubled the effect,” Rowson said. The lab tests suggests it could reduce concussion risk by 15 to 35%, he said.

The Virginia Tech study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, however. The team says it has a paper under review, and it has published a summary of the findings online.

Several more published studies by independent researchers have looked for the reduction in impact forces in players on the field but haven’t seen it.

Two studies by researchers at the University of North Carolina and the University of Nevada, Reno, used special sensors to measure the force of head impacts in college football players and found no difference between players who wore the caps and those who didn’t.

The University of North Carolina study followed 10 Division I college football players across 14 practices in the fall 2022 season. Half wore Guardian Caps over their regular helmets; the other five did not.

All the helmets were fitted with special sensors to measure head impacts. Cameras were used to make sure the measurements corresponded to actual hits and weren’t just false positives.

After measuring and observing nearly 1,000 hits, the researchers found that there was no difference between the forces experienced by players wearing Guardian Caps and those who did not. The research was published in October 2023 in the International Journal of Research and Public Health.

Similarly, the study by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, in football players didn’t find a benefit to using Guardian Caps.

The study followed seven players across six practices. For half of the practices, they wore the extra padding on their helmets; for the other three, they did not. All the players wore special mouthguards with sensors to detect head impacts.

The researchers recorded more than 800 video-confirmed hits.

“There was no difference after implementation of the Guardian Caps to reduce the forces that are at the brain and head,” said Dr. Nicholas Murray, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who worked with his graduate student Kristen Quigley. Their study was published in June in the Journal of Athletic Training.

Considering all the known science on Guardian Caps, “I don’t think we can answer that question, honestly, if these are protective or not,” Murray said.

A third recent study, by researchers at Stanford, split the difference. When Camarillo and his team tested Guardian Caps in their lab, they found that the extra padding measurably reduced the force of impacts. When they put them on players in the field, however, there was no significant differences between those who wore Guardian Caps and those who weren’t.

Rowson, at Virginia Tech, thinks the studies that have tested the caps on players in the field perhaps haven’t found a benefit because they have been small and may not have enough data to pick up the level of benefit the caps are providing.

Murray, at the University of Nevada, Reno, says there’s no doubt that laboratory testing is important. Conditions in a lab can be carefully controlled and the tests carried out again and again.

But real-life studies are important too, he said. The results of lab studies don’t always translate directly to real life.

“On the field is where real people are engaging and real behavior is being acted out,” Murray said.

Murray said forces measured in a lab don’t directly translate into concussions or head injuries on the field, and head injuries are what they’re really trying to prevent.

In a lab, scientists measure acceleration in terms of g-force, or gravitational forces. There’s no threshold of g-forces that determines when a hit would definitely cause an injury to the brain.

Increasingly, he said, science suggests that it’s repeated blows to the head that damage the brain, perhaps even more than the force of those blows.

“I’ve seen unremarkable concussions, meaning that it’s just the lineman getting off his block, hitting his head, and comes over to the sideline and says, ‘Oh my goodness, I feel terrible.’ And I’ve seen wide receivers who have just gotten creamed, completely creamed, and are totally fine and haven’t had a concussion. And so not every blow to the head is a concussion,” he said.

For parents who are trying to figure out how best to protect their kids, Rowson’s advice is to choose a good helmet before considering adding a Guardian Cap.

“The most important factor is which helmet the player is in, not necessarily whether or not they’re wearing a cap, because some helmets test really good, and that helmet without a cap could be better than putting a cap on a poor performing helmet,” he said.

Rowson says there’s no evidence that adding padding to the outside of a helmet is going to cause a player harm.

Guardian Caps cost about $70 when ordered from the company. The models used by the NFL run $125 each.

Murray said that if teams are considering how to use limited funding to enhance player safety, he would advise hiring an athletic trainer.

“They save lives. They’re instrumental in the health and safety of the athletes,” he said. “I would argue that your money would be better spent elsewhere.”

CNN’s David Close, Coy Wire, Holly Yan, Amanda Sealy and Nadia Kounang contributed to this report.

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CNN

By Brenda Goodman, CNN

(CNN) — Crack! The sound of football helmets colliding on the field is an audible sign that fall is just around the corner.

But that sound also comes with a darker side. Mounting scientific evidence shows that repeated hits to the head — even if they don’t result in concussions — may cause lasting damage in the brain and perhaps progressive neurodegeneration called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

The problem has set off alarms at all levels of the sport, with coaches, trainers, parents and leagues wrestling with tough questions about whether football can be made safer for athletes.

In just the past month, three young players have died after playing football, two of them with head injuries. The third death is still under investigation.

After his son’s death, Ryan Craddock, the father of 13-year-old Cohen Craddock, called for all student players to wear additional soft-shell coverings called Guardian Caps. They are not helmets but pliable padded coverings that slip over a player’s existing helmet.

“I believe if my son would have been wearing something like this, this would have made a totally different outcome,” Craddock told CNN. “You’re not modifying the helmets. It’s just something that attaches directly on. So why not just have that extra layer of protection?”

Intuitively, putting more padding around a football player’s head might sound like a good idea, but there’s little independent research showing that it reduces the force of blows to the head or that it prevents head injuries.

Lab studies in which researchers simulate hits to the head have shown that the caps can reduce impact forces. But the handful of published studies that have tested the caps on college football players running drills have failed to find any benefit compared with helmets alone. There are no published independent studies that have tried to measure whether Guardian Caps reduce concussions or head injuries in players and no testing to see if they might work for younger players.

Guardian Caps have gotten a big boost from the NFL, which now allows all players to wear them during regular-season games. The league also mandates them for most players during every preseason practice, as well as regular and postseason practices with contact.

The caps’ maker, Guardian Sports, says its own extensive testing — as well as years of use by many large college football teams — proves that they reduce injuries on the field.

“We will tell anyone who asks that no product can make a player concussion proof,” Erin Hanson, who started Guardian Sports with her husband in 2011, said in a statement.

“Our product, however, is well past the point of proof of concept. We now have over 12 years of on-the-field data and feedback with over 500,000 players using Guardian Caps. Schools like UGA, Ga Tech, Alabama, Tennessee wouldn’t use a product year after year that isn’t working for their players. The NFL and CFL certainly wouldn’t mandate Caps if the data wasn’t clear,” Hansen wrote.

Dr. David Camarillo, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and a former college football player who has tested the Guardian Caps, said he doesn’t think the evidence is so clear.

“I think the rationale is, football’s in big trouble. People are worried about CTE. We’re seeing kids dying,” Camarillo said. “People want to try to do something, right, as long as they don’t think it’s going to hurt.”

On its website, Guardian says its XT model reduces the impact to a player’s head by up to 33%, while the beefier model used by the NFL reduces head acceleration in a collision by up to 40%.

NFL Vice President Jeff Miller told CNN’s Coy Wire that the caps have made players safer.

“The last two seasons, we saw about a 50% decrease in concussions in the positions that we mandated to wear them. So of course, we said, ‘OK, all positions will now wear them in the preseason,’” Miller said.

The NFL has not released the data behind its claims, however, leading to skepticism among some scientists.

“It’s hard to take what the NFL says at face value,” Camarillo said. “What they really ought to do is publicly share the data, not just publish it but release it,” and follow up by funding independent studies that could confirm their conclusions.

The league says it plans to publish research backing its conclusions soon.

“We actually have papers in progress that have been submitted to journals right now. They’re under review, so you should see that in print. You know, takes a while to get things in print, but it’s in the process,” NFL Chief Medical Office Dr. Allen Sills said.

Sills said one reason the published studies may seem to conflict with the NFL’s results is that the Guardian Cap has changed over time.

“Some older models of the cap did not show a benefit in our testing, but the newer version of the cap did show this laboratory reduction,” he said.

In a 2022 position statement, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association cautioned about the use of after-market helmet add-ons like Guardian Caps, saying that “The current evidence describes no benefit.”

Several groups of independent researchers have recently tested Guardian Caps in laboratory settings and in the real world, and they say the jury is very much out on the question of whether they work.

Studies in two labs measuring reductions in the force of twisting and side-to-side impacts to the head show a measurable — if small — benefit.

In Virginia Tech’s Helmet Lab, researchers put several models of the caps through repeated collision tests that were designed to mimic the way players can hit their heads on the field.

Lab director Dr. Steve Rowson, a biomedical engineer, said that testing has found that Guardian Caps reduce the force of an impact, especially if the thicker model deployed by the NFL is used and if both players involved in a hit have them on.

Rowson said their experiments showed that the standard model of the Guardian Cap reduced the force of acceleration by up to 5% while the model used by the NFL reduced the force of linear acceleration by as much as 14%.

When the testing simulated the impact of two players who were each wearing a Guardian Cap, the reduction was even greater.

“We saw that it pretty much doubled the effect,” Rowson said. The lab tests suggests it could reduce concussion risk by 15 to 35%, he said.

The Virginia Tech study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, however. The team says it has a paper under review, and it has published a summary of the findings online.

Several more published studies by independent researchers have looked for the reduction in impact forces in players on the field but haven’t seen it.

Two studies by researchers at the University of North Carolina and the University of Nevada, Reno, used special sensors to measure the force of head impacts in college football players and found no difference between players who wore the caps and those who didn’t.

The University of North Carolina study followed 10 Division I college football players across 14 practices in the fall 2022 season. Half wore Guardian Caps over their regular helmets; the other five did not.

All the helmets were fitted with special sensors to measure head impacts. Cameras were used to make sure the measurements corresponded to actual hits and weren’t just false positives.

After measuring and observing nearly 1,000 hits, the researchers found that there was no difference between the forces experienced by players wearing Guardian Caps and those who did not. The research was published in October 2023 in the International Journal of Research and Public Health.

Similarly, the study by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, in football players didn’t find a benefit to using Guardian Caps.

The study followed seven players across six practices. For half of the practices, they wore the extra padding on their helmets; for the other three, they did not. All the players wore special mouthguards with sensors to detect head impacts.

The researchers recorded more than 800 video-confirmed hits.

“There was no difference after implementation of the Guardian Caps to reduce the forces that are at the brain and head,” said Dr. Nicholas Murray, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who worked with his graduate student Kristen Quigley. Their study was published in June in the Journal of Athletic Training.

Considering all the known science on Guardian Caps, “I don’t think we can answer that question, honestly, if these are protective or not,” Murray said.

A third recent study, by researchers at Stanford, split the difference. When Camarillo and his team tested Guardian Caps in their lab, they found that the extra padding measurably reduced the force of impacts. When they put them on players in the field, however, there was no significant differences between those who wore Guardian Caps and those who weren’t.

Rowson, at Virginia Tech, thinks the studies that have tested the caps on players in the field perhaps haven’t found a benefit because they have been small and may not have enough data to pick up the level of benefit the caps are providing.

Murray, at the University of Nevada, Reno, says there’s no doubt that laboratory testing is important. Conditions in a lab can be carefully controlled and the tests carried out again and again.

But real-life studies are important too, he said. The results of lab studies don’t always translate directly to real life.

“On the field is where real people are engaging and real behavior is being acted out,” Murray said.

Murray said forces measured in a lab don’t directly translate into concussions or head injuries on the field, and head injuries are what they’re really trying to prevent.

In a lab, scientists measure acceleration in terms of g-force, or gravitational forces. There’s no threshold of g-forces that determines when a hit would definitely cause an injury to the brain.

Increasingly, he said, science suggests that it’s repeated blows to the head that damage the brain, perhaps even more than the force of those blows.

“I’ve seen unremarkable concussions, meaning that it’s just the lineman getting off his block, hitting his head, and comes over to the sideline and says, ‘Oh my goodness, I feel terrible.’ And I’ve seen wide receivers who have just gotten creamed, completely creamed, and are totally fine and haven’t had a concussion. And so not every blow to the head is a concussion,” he said.

For parents who are trying to figure out how best to protect their kids, Rowson’s advice is to choose a good helmet before considering adding a Guardian Cap.

“The most important factor is which helmet the player is in, not necessarily whether or not they’re wearing a cap, because some helmets test really good, and that helmet without a cap could be better than putting a cap on a poor performing helmet,” he said.

Rowson says there’s no evidence that adding padding to the outside of a helmet is going to cause a player harm.

Guardian Caps cost about $70 when ordered from the company. The models used by the NFL run $125 each.

Murray said that if teams are considering how to use limited funding to enhance player safety, he would advise hiring an athletic trainer.

“They save lives. They’re instrumental in the health and safety of the athletes,” he said. “I would argue that your money would be better spent elsewhere.”

CNN’s David Close, Coy Wire, Holly Yan, Amanda Sealy and Nadia Kounang contributed to this report.

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By Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) — When it comes to maintaining a regular sleep schedule, sometimes a busy week can throw everything out of whack even when you have the best of intentions.

Naturally, catching up on sleep over the weekend is often the solution. New research suggests doing so may even benefit your heart health, amounting to a 19% lower risk of developing heart disease, according to a research abstract published Thursday. The abstract hasn’t been published in a journal but will be presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress on Sunday, September 1.

“The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays,” said research coauthor Yanjun Song of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease of the National Center for Cardiovascular Disease at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, in a news release.

The authors used data from 90,903 participants in the UK Biobank study, which has followed the health outcomes of more than 500,000 people generally between the ages 40 and 69 in the United Kingdom.

Data on participants’ sleep quantity was measured using activity-monitoring watches, and was divided into four groups, from those who compensated for lost sleep on weekends the least to those who did the most. Group No. 1 got 0.26 to 16.05 fewer hours of sleep on the weekends, while on the other end of the spectrum, group No. 4 got 1.28 to about 16 more hours of sleep on weekends than they did during the week.

After a follow-up period of nearly 14 years on average, the group with the most weekend compensatory sleep was 19% less likely to develop cardiovascular conditions such as heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke, compared with the group compensating for sleep the least on weekends.

In the subgroup of participants with daily sleep deprivation (defined as getting less than seven hours of sleep per night), those with the most compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of heart disease than participants who caught up on sleep the least. None of the findings differentiated by gender.

“While the study does have limitations, such as focusing exclusively on the UK population, its findings underscore the negative impact of chronic sleep deprivation on cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of Atria New York City and clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, via email. Goldberg wasn’t involved in the research.

Other experts suggested people still address inconsistent sleep patterns since it can affect more than just heart health.

Previous research into weekend sleep catchup has also shown mixed results.Past studies have found that differences in sleep duration and timing between weekdays and weekends — known as social jet lag — are linked with heart disease risk, said Dr. Nour Makarem, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“Another study demonstrated that trying to make up for sleep deprivation was not effective and in fact worsened diet, resulted in weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity,” said Dr. Martha Gulati, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and associate director of cardiology at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center, via email. “So it isn’t fully clear, even with this study, which is actually the case.”

For that reason, more regular sleep patterns every day of the week are best for optimal heart health, Makarem said.

But the findings of the latest research indicate that “when this is not possible and an individual is sleep deprived during the week, sufficient compensatory sleep during the weekend may be protective,” she added.

How sleep supports heart health

Since the research is still in abstract form, it’s “unclear what other risk factors for heart disease or other aspects of sleep were accounted … for in the analysis,” Makarem said via email.

The authors did, however, account for genetic risk, which is a strength of the research, she added — and hopeful news for people with known genetic risk factors since the association between compensatory sleep and lower heart disease risk persisted regardless.

The findings could be partly explained by sleep’s relation to healthier blood glucose and blood pressure levels, better dietary choices and lower risk for obesity, Makarem said.

“Lack of sleep can lead to numerous heart issues including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, obesity, diabetes, and stroke,” Goldberg said. “Additionally, interrupted sleep may elevate the risk of high blood pressure and arrhythmias.”

Sufficient sleep is also associated with better psychological health, which in turn is related to lower risk for heart disease, Makarem said. “Sleep is restorative and a key component of heart health preservation.”

There are still other unanswered questions, Gulati said: Is there a threshold of too much sleep on the weekend? Is there a minimal amount of sleep you need to get daily that you can’t make up? And for those who sleep properly, do they have an even better chance at not developing heart disease?

“Perhaps the mechanism of these findings is that making it up is better than not getting it at all,” Gulati said.

“To promote heart health, it’s recommended to aim for at least 7 hours of sleep each night and maintain a consistent sleep pattern,” Goldberg said.

That includes sleeping and waking at the same time each day as much as possible, Makarem said.

“If (you are) having trouble sleeping, you can discuss it with your doctor,” Goldberg said. “Remember, you are the best advocate for your health.”

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AP Health Writer

A Boar’s Head deli meat plant in Virginia tied to a deadly food poisoning outbreak repeatedly violated federal regulations, including instances of mold, insects, liquid dripping from ceilings, and meat and fat residue on walls, floors and equipment, newly released records show.

Government inspectors logged 69 instances of “noncompliance” with federal rules in the past year, including several in recent weeks, according to documents released through federal Freedom of Information Act requests.

Inspections at the plant have been suspended and it will remain closed “until the establishment is able to demonstrate it can produce safe product,” U.S. Agriculture Department officials said in a statement Thursday. Boar’s Head officials halted production at the Jarratt, Virginia, plant in late July.

The plant has been linked to the deaths of at least nine people and hospitalizations of about 50 others in 18 states. All were sickened with listeria after eating Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc. deli meats. The company recalled more than 7 million pounds of products last month after tests confirmed that listeria bacteria in Boar’s Head products were making people sick.

Between Aug. 1, 2023, and Aug. 2, 2024, inspectors found “heavy discolored meat buildup” and “meat overspray on walls and large pieces of meat on the floor.” They also documented flies “going in and out” of pickle vats and “black patches of mold” on a ceiling. One inspector detailed blood puddled on the floor and “a rancid smell in the cooler.” Plant staff were repeatedly notified that they had failed to meet requirements, the documents showed.

“I think it is disgusting and shameful,” said Garshon Morgenstein, whose 88-year-old father, Gunter, died July 18 from a listeria infection traced to Boar’s Head liverwurst. “I’m just even more in shock that this was allowed to happen.”

The plant was inspected by Virginia officials through a partnership with the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service. When problems were found, Boar’s Head took “corrective actions in keeping with FSIS regulations,” officials said. Federal reports show no enforcement actions against Boar’s Head between January and March, the latest records available.

The documents, first reported by CBS News, didn’t contain any test results that confirmed listeria in the factory. The bacteria thrive on floors, walls and drains, in cracks and crevices and hard-to-clean parts of food processing equipment. Pests such as flies can easily spread the bacteria through a plant and the germ can survive in biofilms — thin, slimy collections of bacteria that are difficult to eradicate.

Officials with Boar’s Head did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but a spokesperson told CBS that the company regrets the impact of the recall and prioritizes food safety. On its website, the company said all the issues raised by government inspectors were addressed immediately.

Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University, said the records raise a lot of red flags.

“It makes me wonder why additional actions weren’t taken by management of that company and the regulators,” she said.

Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers food science and safety expert who reviewed the inspection documents, said reports of condensation throughout the plant are concerning because that’s a known risk factor for listeria.

“The fact that they are having the same problems over and over again weeks apart is an indication that they really struggling to keep up with sanitation,” Schaffner said.

Listeria infections cause about 1,600 illnesses each year in the U.S. and about 260 people die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People older than 65, those who are pregnant or who have weakened immune systems are most vulnerable.

Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer who has sued companies over food poisoning outbreaks, said the conditions described in the inspections reports were the worst he’s seen in three decades.

Garshon Morgenstein said his father bought Boar’s Head products because of the company’s reputation.

“For the rest of my life, I have to remember my father’s death every time I see or hear the name Boar’s Head,” he said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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AP Health Writer

A deadly food poisoning outbreak has led to the recall of more than 7 million pounds of popular Boar’s Head deli meats made at a plant in Virginia. U.S. health officials are investigating the outbreak. Nine people have died and about 50 have been hospitalized since May. Listeria bacteria are hardy and can survive and grow even during refrigeration. Cooking foods until they’re steaming hot can kill the bacteria, but deli meats are usually eaten cold. Many of the meats recalled by Boar’s Head are meant to be sliced at grocery store deli counters, though some prepackaged meats are included.

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By Katherine Dillinger, CNN

(CNN) — Two deaths from West Nile virus have been reported in Wisconsin and one in Illinois, the first such deaths in those states this year, according to the state health departments.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that it has received reports of 18 deaths from West Nile across the country this year, according to preliminary data. There were 182 such deaths in 2023, and although the 2024 numbers are lower than for this time period last year, they could change after follow-up review.

The deaths in Wisconsin, in addition to the hospitalization of another person with West Nile, were the first human cases there this year, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement Thursday. The people were residents of Outagamie, Fond du Lac and Brown counties.

The Illinois case involved a person in their 80s who lived in Lake County, the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement Tuesday. Nine other West Nile cases have also been reported in that state this year in Cook, DuPage, Will, Winnebago and Tazewell counties.

Overall, the CDC has received reports of 289 West Nile cases in 33 states for 2024; 195 of those cases have been neuroinvasive, in which the virus invades the brain and nervous system. This can lead to complications such as brain swelling, brain damage or death.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for West Nile, which is spread through the bite of infected mosquitoes. Most cases are mild and may involve flu-like symptoms and a rash. About 1,000 Americans are hospitalized each year with the most severe form of the virus. Another 1,500, on average, are diagnosed after developing symptoms, although experts estimate that as many of 80% of infections in the US are never identified because they have only mild symptoms or none at all.

The heaviest virus activity is usually seen in August and September. Experts say that reducing exposure to mosquitoes is the best way to avoid West Nile infection. The CDC advises using an insect repellant when going outdoors, as well as wearing long pants and long sleeves. The species of mosquitoes that are the main carriers of West Nile virus are especially active at dawn and dusk, so it’s particularly important to take precautions then.

Try to keep doors and windows shut as much as possible, and make sure they have tight-fitting screens that are in good condition. Eliminate standing water sources such as bird baths, flower pots, wading pools and tires where mosquitoes can breed.

CNN’s Brenda Goodman contributed to this report.

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El Paso, TX (KVIA-TV)—Meridian Medical & Associates, a local veteran and minority-owned clinic will host a Health expo to honor veterans in the El Paso community. Veterans.

The expo will be held on September 7th, 2024, at Meridian Medical and Associates LLC, 1900 N Mesa Suite B, El Paso, TX 79902.

They will also be accepting canned food and monetary donations. The money received will go to a local organization that helps feed the community and veterans.

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CANUTILLO, Texas (KVIA) -- A student at Alderete Middle School just tested positive for chicken pox. The student was fully vaccinated against the Varicella virus, Canutillo ISD officials say, meaning this appears to be a breakthrough case.

"The student is doing well and is under medical care," the Canutillo ISD officials explained. "As per El Paso City-County Health Department protocols, the District is also monitoring a pre-kindergarten student at Canutillo Elementary School since he is a sibling of the impacted student."

Canutillo ISD officials say they are working closely with health officials to make sure any student or adult that had contact with either the infected student or the sibling is okay.

"We have met with teachers and staff to alert them of the situation and ask them to be on the lookout for potential additional cases," district officials explained.

Chicken pox is highly contagious. The symptoms, initially, include fever and an itchy, blister-like rash.

"Chickenpox can be serious, especially during pregnancy, in babies, adolescents, adults, and people with weakened immune systems (lowered ability to fight germs and sickness)."

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Update: At the news conference, Las Cruces City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau said the purpose of the Notice of Breach is to hold the city and its partners accountable to their commitments.

The City of Las Cruces legal team alleges the medical center violated its lease agreement by not providing "expanded health care services to those unable to pay the full cost of healthcare services rendered to them."

"Both City and County leaders agree that they would like to see Memorial Medical Center meet its obligations and continue to serve vulnerable populations in the community," a city spokesperson explained after the news conference. "Both City and County administrators want to be involved in holding responsible parties accountable."

The City of Las Cruces is now calling on Memorial Medical Center to provide all documents related to expanded care between 2018 and 2024, documents connected to the medical center's alleged denial of expanded care services, documents connected to annual capital expenditures, and other related documents.

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- Today the City of Las Cruces sent a Notice of Breach to Memorial Medical Center and LifePoint Health. That is according to a city spokesperson.

The notice is connected to the 2004 Lease Agreement and Asset Purchase Agreements.

The city will host a news conference tomorrow to discuss the notice letter. Watch the news conference above.

Speakers from city council and the county commissioners court are expected to speak on the matter.

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By Carma Hassan, CNN

(CNN) — The use of cannabis and hallucinogens “stayed at historically high levels” among both younger and middle-age adults in the US in 2023, according to the latest survey from Monitoring the Future, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan since 1975 and funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“The survey is an important source of information about substance use trends among the adult population in the US,” said Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The survey showed that about 2 in 5 adults (42%) ages 19 to 30 reported using cannabis in the previous year, with about 10% of that group saying they used cannabis nearly every day.

For the first time, more women ages 19 to 30 reported cannabis use than men in the same age group, according to the survey data. However, there was a higher prevalence of men using cannabis than women in the older age group.

About 29% of midlife adults — people ages 35 to 50 — reported using cannabis at least once in the past year, with 8% reporting using cannabis on a daily basis.

These were not statistically different from the previous year’s findings of adults in both age groups in 2022, the researchers said, but demonstrate five- and 10-year increases.

“I’m kind of struck at how frequent daily cannabis use is. You know, about 10% of the 19- to 30-year-olds; that’s 1 in 10,” Compton said. “On average, a certain number of people in any group that’s a sizable portion are using marijuana on a daily or near-daily basis. And I think that bears watching, and those levels are at a historical high. Although they didn’t increase this year compared to the previous year, they’re still at quite high levels.”

Cannabis vaping rose slightly among younger adults, with about 1 in 5 adults in that age group saying they had used it at least once in the past year, and stayed about the same for midlife adults, with about 9% of people in that group vaping cannabis in the past year.

Nicotine vaping also stayed high among both groups of adults, according to the report.

Use of hallucinogens – such as LSD, mescaline, peyote, PC and shrooms or psilocybin – in the past year hovered around the same as in 2022, landing at 9% for adults 19 to 30 (versus 8% the previous year) and 4% for adults 35 to 50 in 2023 and 2022.

“We have seen that people at different stages of adulthood are trending toward use of drugs like cannabis and psychedelics and away from tobacco cigarettes,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “These findings underscore the urgent need for rigorous research on the potential risks and benefits of cannabis and hallucinogens – especially as new products continue to emerge.”

The most-used substance among adults is still alcohol, with more than 4 in 5 younger adults (84%) reporting drinking in the past year. However, frequent drinking – either monthly, daily or binge drinking – all decreased in 2023 from the decade prior among 19- to 30-year-olds.

The researchers also noted other decreases in drug use, reflecting a shift in habits. Cigarette smoking and use of opioid medications and prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons “maintained five- and 10-year declines” for both age groups.

“I think we’ve had very good news now for a number of years about declines in cigarette smoking. That’s been particularly true for the younger cohorts, and so our concern has been with the rise in vaping – and much higher rates of nicotine vaping in the last few years – might represent a new entree into nicotine addiction and eventual transition to the smoked products, which are so strongly associated with cancer and lung damage,” Compton said. “I’m a public health official, so I’m always pleased when we see progress, but I also want to point out the concerns that may be there in some of the other data.”

In 2023, drug overdose deaths decreased for the first time since 2018, according to preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. About 107,500 people died from a drug overdose in 2023, the data showed, driven by fentanyl and synthetic opioids.

While only slight changes were observed compared with the previous year’s Monitoring the Future survey results, the researchers say the results still help inform the bigger picture — especially as the survey respondents age.

“The data from 2023 did not show us many significant changes from the year before, but the power of surveys such as Monitoring the Future is to see the ebb and flow of various substance use trends over the longer term,” said Megan Patrick, a research professor at the University of Michigan and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future panel study.

“As more and more of our original cohorts – first recruited as teens – now enter later adulthood, we will be able to examine the patterns and effects of drug use throughout the life course. In the coming years, this study will provide crucial data on substance use trends and health consequences among older populations, when people may be entering retirement and other new chapters of their lives.”

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By Terry Ward, CNN

(CNN) — Roseanne Buckley’s 18-year-old son had always been a mild-mannered homebody and excellent student. But in March of his senior year in high school, she said the young man’s mood changed.

“He was doing things out of character or without mentioning it first,” said Buckley, who lives in Medford, New Jersey.

One time, he let a friend pierce his ear, and her son suddenly developed a snarkier and more defiant attitude toward her, she said.

Buckley, 49, learned the social media slang for this sudden defiance, which is called “soiling the nest,” and said she felt that was happening with him.

“It just felt like out of nowhere he was acting very, ‘I can do what I want because I’m 18,’” she said. “He was a completely different kid.”

Stretching their wings

Soiling the nest refers to a phase when teenagers start being more difficult at home as they’re transitioning and getting ready to go off to college, said clinical psychologist Regine Galanti, founder of the practice Long Island Behavioral Psychology on Long Island, New York, and author of the young adult nonfiction book “Anxiety Relief for Teens.”

This behavior can show up in different ways.

“It may look like picking fights with parents, talking back, leaving messes, and generally putting stress on their interpersonal relationships with their parents,” Galanti said.

And it’s a completely normal phase of growing up.

For teens graduating high school, the main psychological goal is to “develop and consolidate their own identities,” Galanti said. Since doing so can be difficult in the shadow of parents and family, some teens may assert their independence and push away from their families at this time.

Creating this space between themselves and their parents makes the transition to this new independence phase easier for some teens, Galanti said. It can help if parents expect it, even though it won’t always happen.

“Recognize that, as a parent, this is not about you,” she said. “This is about your child having difficulty figuring out how they’re going to manage the next phase of their lives. Pushing you away might make it easier for teens to launch themselves into independence.”

When your child becomes your roommate

Gabriella Neske, a mother from Tampa, Florida, said she experienced the phenomenon as her oldest daughter was getting ready to head to college. She would hide in her room, glued to her phone, acting “generally sullen,” said Neske, who is already experiencing similar behavior from her twin sons, currently high school juniors.

It felt like her kids were trying to transition into her roommates, Neske said, openly defying her when asked to do something and doing irritating things like leaving piles of wet laundry atop the dryer.

As a parent, Neske said she tries to give her kids the opportunity for independence while still keeping the guardrails up and letting them try to develop their own identities.

And that’s when things can get complicated.

“You still have to step up and try to parent that sullen little ball of emotion that doesn’t really have the skills to go out and be an adult in the world — yet,” Neske said.

How to soften the blow of a checked-out teen

Psychologist Lisa Damour, the author of “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,” advises parents not to take it personally if their teenager is holding them at arm’s length. “Trust it will be one chapter in a long book of raising that child,” Damour said.

The months leading up to a child leaving for college are emotionally charged for all members of the family, and often, parents and their teens are in different places emotionally, she said.

While it’s not unusual for parents to want to savor every close moment at this time and impart wisdom, teach life lessons that haven’t yet been shared and commune in all sorts of ways, teenagers are often trying to spend every last minute with their high school friends whom they’ll soon be missing, Damour said, which can lead to a mismatch of priorities.

“I think that it can be helpful to remember it’s not personal, that’s it’s a natural part of development and that, in some ways, the opposite would be strange,” she said. “If a teenager getting ready to leave for college was suddenly nestling into the bosom of family life, that would be odd.

“And if we can appreciate that holding one’s family at arm’s length is part of a process of moving away, it can feel less personal and hopefully less painful.”

Keep in mind, too, that not everything teenagers are up to is entirely conscious, Damour added. “They’re not always deliberately choosing to be prickly,” she said. “We need to appreciate that, for most teenagers, leaving home is really hard, however excited they are for what’s ahead.”

Teenagers will sometimes be difficult because it’s easier to say goodbye if everyone is annoyed with each other, she said.

You might also find that suddenly, your teen is nowhere to be found. “Even when you finally run into them in the kitchen, they don’t have time for a conversation — even though you might be trying to nail down critical logistics of getting them off to college,” Damour said. It can be helpful to say something like: “I’m going to need 10 minutes to talk to you about your packing. When is a good time tomorrow?”

If you understand that your kid has a lot going on, “it can smooth interactions if we are willing to coordinate our calendar with theirs,” she said.

Parents should also notice how forlorn younger siblings are since it can be a tough transition for them when an older sibling moves out.

“Take very good care of yourself and get your emotional needs met elsewhere,” she said, “so if you have younger children you can tend to their feelings about their sibling moving out, too.”

As for Buckley, she said her son reverted to his normal self as his move-out day in mid-August approached.

“My kids’ generation seems to have parents who do everything for them,” she said. “It must be a scary feeling to be going far away and suddenly having to do everything yourself.”

Once their independence has been established, Damour finds the new phase often ushers in a warmer relationship.

“It may take a full freshman (in college) year, but teenagers tend to be warmer, friendlier and in fact quite wonderful to interact with in their increasingly adult form,” she said.

Florida-based writer Terry Ward lives in Tampa with her two young children, who are still squarely ensconced in the nest.

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Originally Published: 28 AUG 24 08:45 ET

Updated: 28 AUG 24 14:36 ET

By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

(CNN) — Parents in the United States are overwhelmed and burned out with the “dizzying pace” of the world, and it’s a public health concern, according to a surgeon general’s advisory released Wednesday that calls for shifts in policy and cultural norms.

“The work of parenting is essential not only for the health of children but also for the health of society,” wrote US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, a father of two. “We know that the well-being of parents and caregivers is directly linked to the well-being of their children.

The advisory describes how mothers and fathers now work many more hours than in 1985 but also spend many more hours every week on primary child care — and that doesn’t count their total time spent with children. “Demands from both work and child caregiving have come at the cost of quality time with one’s partner, sleep, and parental leisure time,” the advisory says. The strain is even greater on parents caring for aging parents or other loved ones.

At the same time, a “culture of comparison” — often perpetuated online — around milestones, parenting and achievements, “has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind,” Murthy wrote in the 36-page advisory.

The advisory cited a 2023 survey of adults from the American Psychological Association that found 33% of parents reported high levels of stress in the past month compared with 20% of other adults.

What’s needed is a culture shift, the advisory says: “It’s time to value and respect time spent parenting on par with time spent working at a paying job, recognizing the critical importance to society of raising children.” Parents and caregivers need societal support and to be able to talk openly about the stress of parenting. Like an earlier surgeon general’s advisory, it says more connection is needed to combat loneliness and isolation among parents.

“The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents — just like loneliness, workplace well-being and the impact of social media on youth mental health — aren’t always visible, but they can take a steep toll,” Murthy wrote in a guest essay in the New York Times. “It’s time to recognize they constitute a serious public health concern for our country. Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support.”

The advisory calls for a national paid family and medical leave program and paid sick time for all workers and bolstered support for child care financial assistance, universal preschool and programs such as Head Start. Employers can expand programs that support parents’ well-being, including paid leave and flexible work schedules, and training managers on stress management.

Communities, schools and health-care workers can help, too, with additional screening and support for all, especially parents who are at most at risk. More research is needed, the advisory says, and it recommends developing parent-specific standardized measures of mental health and well-being.

Individual actions can make a difference, too. Showing up to help so parents can eat a meal or take a shower “go a long way toward helping parents feel supported and seen,” he said.

“There’s difference between saying something’s important and making it a priority,” Murthy said on CNN Wednesday. “And if we’re going to really make supporting parents a priority, then we’ve got to have a major culture shift in our country, such that we see parenting is central to the health and well-being of society.”

Surgeon general’s advisories are public statements to draw attention to public health issues that require awareness and action. Murthy has issued advisories in the past about health misinformation and gun violence, but also on mental health topics such as loneliness and isolation and the effects of social media on youth.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to start seeing mental health as health. It is no less important than our physical health,” Murthy said Wednesday. “If we can attend to both our mental and physical health, then we have a good chance, you know, of being happy, healthy and fulfilled, and that’s what we all want for ourselves and especially for our kids.”

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By Katia Hetter, CNN

(CNN) — When Dr. Anthony Fauci became infected with West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease, it was so severe that he had to be hospitalized.

Fauci, once the top US infectious disease expert, is now recovering at home —although he told Stat, the health and medical news website, that it could take “weeks and weeks to get back to normal.”

With summer temperatures persisting, I wanted to know more about West Nile — what are the symptoms and what makes it so serious? Are there vaccines and treatments available? And, as the summer’s high temperatures and peak mosquito season continues, what can we do to reduce our risk of contracting this and other mosquito-borne illnesses?

To help with these questions, I spoke with CNN wellness expert Dr. Leana Wen. Wen is an emergency physician and clinical associate professor at George Washington University. She previously was Baltimore’s health commissioner.

CNN: What are the symptoms of West Nile virus disease and how serious is it?

Dr. Leana Wen: West Nile virus is the No. 1 cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is most commonly spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. The time of the year when this disease is most often seen is the summer and early fall.

Most people infected with West Nile virus are asymptomatic. Of those who develop symptoms, many have flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches, body aches, swollen lymph nodes and nausea.

There is a subset of people who develop a neurological form of the disease. (Fauci said he did not.) These cases can involve brain inflammation and swelling resulting in confusion, seizures, paralysis, coma and death. Individuals can also experience long-term neurological consequences as a result of contracting West Nile.

CNN: How common is West Nile?

Wen: In the US this year, the CDC has documented 33 states that have had West Nile cases. In 2023, 47 states reported West Nile cases; in total, there were more than 2,400 reported instances, though this was likely a significant undercount given the number of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases.

The West Nile virus is also found throughout the world, including across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

CNN: Can West Nile be spread from person-to-person?

Wen: West Nile cannot be transmitted through casual contact with other humans who have the disease. Humans are also believed to be “dead-end hosts,” meaning that a mosquito that bites an infected human is not going to transmit the virus to another human.

However, there have been documented cases of transmission through blood transfusion, organ transplantation and, rarely, from mother to baby during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The dominant mode of transmission, by far, is through mosquito bites.

CNN: How is West Nile virus disease diagnosed? What should someone do if they think they have it?

Wen: There are blood tests that can detect antibodies to West Nile virus that are used for diagnosis. Patients with the neurological form of the illness may also receive a spinal tap, and testing could be done of the spinal fluid.

Individuals concerned about West Nile should speak with their health care provider to discuss whether and how they can pursue diagnostic testing.

CNN: Is there a vaccine or treatment for West Nile?

Wen: Unfortunately, there is no vaccine and no specific antiviral treatment for West Nile. Individuals diagnosed with it receive supportive treatment to address their symptoms, but there is no directed antiviral therapeutic at this time.

CNN: In addition to West Nile, are there other mosquito-borne diseases that people should be aware of?

Wen: Dengue is another example of a virus transmitted by mosquito. Most cases in the US are from travelers, but local transmission has also occurred. Those traveling to other parts of the world need to consider malaria, which could be deadly.

And there are rarer cases of mosquito-borne diseases that can be very serious. For instance, Eastern equine encephalitis, also called EEE, was recently reported in Massachusetts — a disease that has a mortality rate of about 30%.

CNN: As the summer and peak mosquito season continue, what can people do to reduce their risk of contracting mosquito-borne illnesses?

Wen: Prevention is key, especially as there is no specific vaccine or treatment for West Nile. People should take these steps between peak West Nile season, which is typically July to September, though cases have also been reported in the continental United States as early as June and as late as October.

First, reduce mosquito bites. Wear long-sleeve shirts and long pants when possible, especially when going out at sunrise, sundown and during the night, when mosquitoes are most active. Apply US Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents to all areas of exposed skin. These will contain active ingredients like DEET. When used as directed, they are safe, including for children and pregnant women. An added step is to wear permethrin-treated clothing, which further reduces the risk of mosquito bites.

Second, work to reduce mosquitoes near you. Use screens on windows and doors, especially between dusk and dawn. Remove standing water in your garden and around your home, as these are key breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Look for items around your home that can hold water, like buckets, trash containers and toys, and empty and wash them at least once a week.

Third, assess your personal risk. If you are going to be traveling out of the country and going to areas known to have diseases such as yellow fever and malaria, make sure to ask your health care provider about additional prophylactic steps, such as the yellow fever vaccine and antimalarial pills.

Know, though, that there are risks close to home, too. Fauci said that he believes he got bitten by mosquitoes in his garden in suburban Washington, DC.

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By Jen Christensen and Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

(CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reminding the public to avoid eating recalled deli meats amid a listeria outbreak that has expanded to become the nation’s largest since 2011.

Boar’s Head issued a recall in late July for more than 7.2 million pounds of its ready-to-eat liverwurst and some other deli meat products due to concerns about potential listeria contamination, but the CDC says at least a dozen more listeriosis cases have been reported in recent weeks.

Documents from the US Department of Agriculture that were first obtained by CBS News show that insects and mold were identified at the company facility that’s been linked with the recall.

A total of 57 people have been hospitalized in 18 states in connection with the outbreak, and nine people have died. The CDC says this listeria outbreak is now the largest since one linked to cantaloupe in 2011.

The agency has said that the true number of illnesses is probably higher than what’s been reported because some people may have had a milder case and were not tested for listeria. There’s also a lag time between when an illness happens and when scientists can connect it with an ongoing investigation.

The CDC advises consumers to check their kitchens for any remaining recalled products because they can have a long shelf life. Look for “EST. 12612” or “P-12612” inside the USDA mark of inspection on labels. Some of the products have sell-by dates into October 2024.

The recalled products include liverwurst, ham, bologna, sausage and roasted bacon. Most people who became sick reported eating turkey or liverwurst, and some reported eating ham.

However, Boar’s Head says any products now available at deli counters are not subject to recall.

Documents show reports of insects, mold

Insects and mold were identified at the Virginia Boar’s Head plant linked to the recall, according to USDA documents.

Reports from the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service show 84 “noncompliances” from January 2022 to August 2024, 69 of them since August 2023. They describe insects, alive and dead, in several areas of the Jarratt, Virginia, plant, at various times and mold seen on doors, near a hand-washing sink and on a ceiling at different points. One report from February 2024 described “blood in puddles on the floor” and a “rancid smell in the cooler.”

Boar’s Head said in a statement to CNN on Thursday that “We deeply regret the impact this recall has had on affected families. No words can fully express our sympathies and the sincere and deep hurt we feel for those who have suffered losses or endured illness.”

The company said it is working with food safety experts to investigate how liverwurst made at the Jarratt facility was adulterated and to keep such problems from happening again.

“As soon as we learned of a health risk with our liverwurst, we immediately recalled it and then, out of an abundance of caution, voluntarily expanded our recall to include every product made at the same facility,” the statement said. “We have paused production at this facility in Jarratt, Virginia, and will not resume until we are confident that it meets the standards our customers expect and deserve. Consumer health and wellness are, and always have been, our top priorities.”

The USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, known as FSIS, said it has suspended inspection at the Boar’s Head facility, “which means that it remains closed until the establishment is able to demonstrate it can produce safe product.”

According to the USDA, the facility is inspected by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as part of the Talmadge-Aiken Cooperative Inspection Program, which allows some states to provide federal inspection services.

“Inspectors found instances of noncompliance, and the establishment implemented corrective actions in keeping with FSIS regulations,” the statement said. “FSIS is working closely with VDACS to ensure the establishment has an effective system in place to produce safe food for the public.”

Dangers of listeria

Listeria bacteria is hardy and can stay on surfaces like countertops and meat slicers, so you don’t even have to eat a contaminated product to get sick. It can spread easily at delis, the CDC says, transferring from equipment to surfaces to hands and food. Refrigeration does not kill the bacteria, but heat can.

People who are pregnant, those who are 65 and older, and those with weakened immune systems are advised to avoid eating any deli meat unless it’s been heated until it steams or reaches an internal temperature of 165 F.

If you’ve had sliced deli meat at home, clean the refrigerator and any containers or surfaces that may have come into contact with it, and watch out for symptoms of listeriosis, which can take up to 10 weeks to develop.

Listeria bacteria causes listeriosis, the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the United States.

Symptoms can include fever, muscle aches and fatigue. An infection can also cause a stiff neck, a headache, confusion or seizures.

Anyone who develops symptoms of listeriosis should get medical care right away.

The timeline of this outbreak stretches over several months, the CDC said, as the first person got sick at the end of May. The investigation is ongoing.

The CDC is encouraging people who get sick with listeria to work with local public health officials, who may get in touch to find out what they ate in the previous month and may ask for receipts or leftover food to help pinpoint the root of the outbreak.

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By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

(CNN) — Parents in the United States are overwhelmed and burned out with the “dizzying pace” of the world, and it’s a public health concern, according to a surgeon general’s advisory released Wednesday that calls for shifts in policy and cultural norms.

“The work of parenting is essential not only for the health of children but also for the health of society,” wrote US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, a father of two. “We know that the well-being of parents and caregivers is directly linked to the well-being of their children.

The advisory describes how mothers and fathers now work many more hours than in 1985 but also spend many more hours every week on primary child care — and that doesn’t count their total time spent with children. “Demands from both work and child caregiving have come at the cost of quality time with one’s partner, sleep, and parental leisure time,” the advisory says. The strain is even greater on parents caring for aging parents or other loved ones.

At the same time, a “culture of comparison” — often perpetuated online — around milestones, parenting and achievements, “has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind,” Murthy wrote in the 36-page advisory.

The advisory cited a 2023 survey of adults from the American Psychological Association that found 33% of parents reported high levels of stress in the past month compared with 20% of other adults.

What’s needed is a culture shift, the advisory says: “It’s time to value and respect time spent parenting on par with time spent working at a paying job, recognizing the critical importance to society of raising children.” Parents and caregivers need societal support and to be able to talk openly about the stress of parenting. Like an earlier surgeon general’s advisory, it says more connection is needed to combat loneliness and isolation among parents.

“The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents — just like loneliness, workplace well-being and the impact of social media on youth mental health — aren’t always visible, but they can take a steep toll,” Murthy wrote in a guest essay in the New York Times. “It’s time to recognize they constitute a serious public health concern for our country. Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support.”

The advisory calls for a national paid family and medical leave program and paid sick time for all workers and bolstered support for child care financial assistance, universal preschool and programs such as Head Start. Employers can expand programs that support parents’ well-being, including paid leave and flexible work schedules, and training managers on stress management.

Communities, schools and health-care workers can help, too, with additional screening and support for all, especially parents who are at most at risk. More research is needed, the advisory says, and it recommends developing parent-specific standardized measures of mental health and well-being.

Individual actions can make a difference, too. Showing up to help so parents can eat a meal or take a shower “go a long way toward helping parents feel supported and seen,” he said.

“There’s difference between saying something’s important and making it a priority,” Murthy said on CNN Wednesday. “And if we’re going to really make supporting parents a priority, then we’ve got to have a major culture shift in our country, such that we see parenting is central to the health and well-being of society.”

Surgeon general’s advisories are public statements to draw attention to public health issues that require awareness and action. Murthy has issued advisories in the past about health misinformation and gun violence, but also on mental health topics such as loneliness and isolation and the effects of social media on youth.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to start seeing mental health as health. It is no less important than our physical health,” Murthy said Wednesday. “If we can attend to both our mental and physical health, then we have a good chance, you know, of being happy, healthy and fulfilled, and that’s what we all want for ourselves and especially for our kids.”

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CNN

By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

(CNN) — Parents in the United States are overwhelmed and burned out with the “dizzying pace” of the world, and it’s a public health concern, according to a surgeon general’s advisory released Wednesday that calls for shifts in policy and cultural norms.

“The work of parenting is essential not only for the health of children but also for the health of society,” wrote US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, a father of two. “We know that the well-being of parents and caregivers is directly linked to the well-being of their children.

The advisory describes how mothers and fathers now work many more hours than in 1985 but also spend many more hours every week on primary child care — and that doesn’t count their total time spent with children. “Demands from both work and child caregiving have come at the cost of quality time with one’s partner, sleep, and parental leisure time,” the advisory says. The strain is even greater on parents caring for aging parents or other loved ones.

At the same time, a “culture of comparison” — often perpetuated online — around milestones, parenting and achievements, “has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind,” Murthy wrote in the 36-page advisory.

The advisory cited a 2023 survey of adults from the American Psychological Association that found 33% of parents reported high levels of stress in the past month compared with 20% of other adults.

What’s needed is a culture shift, the advisory says: “It’s time to value and respect time spent parenting on par with time spent working at a paying job, recognizing the critical importance to society of raising children.” Parents and caregivers need societal support and to be able to talk openly about the stress of parenting. Like an earlier surgeon general’s advisory, it says more connection is needed to combat loneliness and isolation among parents.

“The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents — just like loneliness, workplace well-being and the impact of social media on youth mental health — aren’t always visible, but they can take a steep toll,” Murthy wrote in a guest essay in the New York Times. “It’s time to recognize they constitute a serious public health concern for our country. Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support.”

The advisory calls for a national paid family and medical leave program and paid sick time for all workers and bolstered support for child care financial assistance, universal preschool and programs such as Head Start. Employers can expand programs that support parents’ well-being, including paid leave and flexible work schedules, and training managers on stress management.

Communities, schools and health-care workers can help, too, with additional screening and support for all, especially parents who are at most at risk. More research is needed, the advisory says, and it recommends developing parent-specific standardized measures of mental health and well-being.

Individual actions can make a difference, too. Showing up to help so parents can eat a meal or take a shower “go a long way toward helping parents feel supported and seen,” he said.

“There’s difference between saying something’s important and making it a priority,” Murthy said on CNN Wednesday. “And if we’re going to really make supporting parents a priority, then we’ve got to have a major culture shift in our country, such that we see parenting is central to the health and well-being of society.”

Surgeon general’s advisories are public statements to draw attention to public health issues that require awareness and action. Murthy has issued advisories in the past about health misinformation and gun violence, but also on mental health topics such as loneliness and isolation and the effects of social media on youth.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to start seeing mental health as health. It is no less important than our physical health,” Murthy said Wednesday. “If we can attend to both our mental and physical health, then we have a good chance, you know, of being happy, healthy and fulfilled, and that’s what we all want for ourselves and especially for our kids.”

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By Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, CNN

(CNN) — Just like urine and stool, semen can provide important clues about a man’s health. Variations in its color, texture, smell and volume can signal underlying health conditions. Understanding these signs can help men maintain their overall well-being and address potential issues early on.

What is normal for semen?

It is normal for semen to have minor changes in color, texture or smell. The quality may also vary from day to day or ejaculate to ejaculate — no two are exactly the same. Semen, or seminal fluid, is a mixture of fluid from the prostate, seminal vesicles and testicles.

Normal semen parameters include a sperm concentration of at least 15 million sperm per milliliter, with at least 40% of the sperm showing motility and 4% having normal morphology or appearance, according to the World Health Organization. It typically has a slightly thick, gel-like consistency. It has a faint, bleach-like smell due to its alkaline pH. The volume of ejaculate typically ranges from 1.5 to 5 milliliters per ejaculation. Semen liquifies within minutes after exiting the body, going from thick gel to smooth liquid to support the movement of sperm.

Simply said, each ejaculate has millions of sperm; not all of them have to be gold medal swimmers, and not all of them have to look normal. Also, it’s important to note that abnormal swimmers or appearance does not equal abnormal genetics or higher risk of congenital anaomolies.

Color changes

Semen is usually whitish-gray in color. The color may change as it mixes with urine, blood or other fluids in the urinary or reproductive tracts. Semen can change color from starting a B vitamin or medications. Just like there may be changes in the color of your urine when starting supplements and medications, the same can happen with the semen.

Medical conditions like liver failure or jaundice, where the entire body appears more yellow, can also discolor the semen. Even smoking can alter semen parameters with not just changes in color but a decline in fertility. Yellow or green semen might suggest an infection, such as a sexually transmitted infection (STI), urinary tract infection or prostate inflammation (prostatitis). Red or brown semen, known as hematospermia, can be alarming but is often benign, typically caused by inflammation, enlarged prostate infection or even riding a bike for too long.

Texture and consistency

Normal semen is slightly thick and gelatinous, so thick and clumpy semen might be a sign of dehydration or infection. Men with chronic dehydration often have altered semen parameters, which include texture, which can lead to a decrease in fertility. Watery semen, on the other hand, can indicate a low sperm count or frequent ejaculation, which may temporarily reduce sperm quality.

Smell

Typically, semen has a light bleach or ammonia-like smell due to its slightly alkaline pH. A strong or foul odor can be a red flag for infections such as bacterial prostatitis or STIs. A sweet smell may signal abnormal glucose levels concerning for diabetes.

Volume

The average volume of ejaculate ranges from 1.5 to 5 milliliters—about 1/3 to 1.5 teaspoons—or roughly what you would find in a small packet of ketchup. Low volume can result from frequent ejaculation, low testosterone levels or blockages in the reproductive tract. A high volume of semen may be due to prolonged abstinence or in rare cases, an infection or inflammation.

Frequency of Ejaculation

While regular ejaculation is generally healthy, very frequent ejaculation can affect semen quality. It is well known that men who ejaculate multiple times daily may experience temporary reductions in sperm count and motility, though this typically normalizes with less frequent ejaculation.

Pain during ejaculation

Painful ejaculation can be a symptom of prostatitis, urethritis and conditions like Peyronie’s disease (abnormal penile curvature) or post-vasectomy pain syndrome. A recent guideline review found that 15% to 55% of men with chronic prostatitis may experience sexual dysfunction and/or pain during ejaculation, which can significantly impact their quality of life and virality.

Lifestyle factors

Diet, hydration and overall health profoundly impact semen quality. Poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking can negatively affect semen health, while a healthy lifestyle can improve it.

Medications and supplements

Certain medications and supplements can alter semen’s appearance and quality. For example, testosterone replacement therapy can reduce sperm production, while supplements like zinc and folic acid can enhance semen quality.

When to see a doctor

Occasional changes in semen are usually not cause for concern. However, persistent changes should be evaluated by a healthcare professional. Regular check-ups and open communication with your doctor are crucial for maintaining sexual health and addressing any issues early. It’s important to remind your doctor of any medication or over-the-counter supplements you’re taking.

Semen can provide valuable insights into a man’s health. By paying attention to its color, texture, smell and volume, men can detect potential health issues early. If you notice persistent changes, consulting with a healthcare provider can help ensure your sexual health remains in top shape.

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