Ohio Health Policy News

The Ohio Dept. of Health says it will divert incoming rapid COVID test kits to K-12 schools, colleges and universities (Source: “Ohio changes priorities for distribution of COVID tests from libraries to schools,” Statehouse News Bureau, Jan. 12).

The state's health department says it had previously ordered 1.2 million antigen tests to be distributed free of charge through libraries and health departments in the month of January but, so far, only 400,000 of those have been distributed. ODH says shipments of the remaining 800,000 proctored test kits have been put on hold by the manufacturer as demand for them has increased nationwide. ODH expects to receive shipments later this month but says when they arrive, they will be given to schools, not libraries and health departments.

ODH says once schools have what they need, the state will once again send test kits to libraries and health departments.

The Supreme Court has stopped a major push by the Biden administration to boost the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination rate, a requirement that employees at large businesses get a vaccine or test regularly and wear a mask on the job (Source: “Supreme Court halts COVID-19 vaccine rule for US businesses,” Associated Press, Jan. 14).

At the same time, the court is allowing the administration to proceed with a vaccine mandate for most healthcare workers in the U.S. The court’s orders Thursday came during a spike in coronavirus cases caused by the omicron variant.

The court’s conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine-or-test rule on U.S. businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people would have been affected and OSHA had estimated that the rule would save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over six months.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical Friday of the Biden administration’s authority to impose a vaccine-or-testing requirement on the nation’s large employers (Source: “Supreme Court skeptical of Biden’s workplace vaccine rule,” Associated Press, Jan. 7).

The court seemed more open to a separate vaccine mandate for most health care workers. The arguments in the two cases come at a time of spiking coronavirus cases because of the omicron variant.

Beginning Monday, unvaccinated employees in big companies are supposed to wear masks at work, unless the court blocks enforcement. But testing requirements and potential fines for employers don’t kick in until February.

Legal challenges to the policies from Republican-led states and business groups are in their early stages, but the outcome at the high court probably will determine the fate of vaccine requirements affecting more than 80 million people.

President Biden on Wednesday unveiled a new HIV/AIDS strategy, calling for a renewed focus on vulnerable Americans — including gay and bisexual Black and Latino men, who his administration says are too often stigmatized even as they are disproportionately affected (Source: “Biden says HIV/AIDS strategy needs to confront inequity,” Associated Press, Dec. 2).

The new strategy, which declares racism a “public health threat,” was released on the annual commemoration of (no link) World AIDS Day. It is meant to serve as a framework for how the administration shapes its policies, research, programs and planning over the next three years.

The new strategy asserts that, over generations, “structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable.”

To reduce disparities, the strategy includes calls for focusing on the needs of disproportionately affected populations, supporting (no link) racial justice, combating HIV-related stigma and discrimination and providing leadership and employment opportunities for people with or at risk for HIV.

An estimated 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in one year, a never-before-seen milestone that health officials say is tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and a more dangerous drug supply (Source: “US overdose deaths topped 100,000 in one year, officials say,” Associated Press, Nov. 18).

Drawing from the latest available death certificate data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 100,300 Americans died of drug overdoses from May 2020 to April 2021. It’s not an official count. It can take many months for death investigations involving drug fatalities to become final, so the agency made the estimate based on 98,000 reports it has received so far.

Experts believe the top drivers of overdose deaths are the growing prevalence of deadly fentanyl in the illicit drug supply and the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many drug users socially isolated and unable to get treatment or other support.

Drug overdoses jumped nearly 30% in the latest year and now surpass deaths from car crashes, guns and even flu and pneumonia. The total is close to that for diabetes, the nation’s No. 7 cause of death.

Last month, HPIO released a new fact sheet on Ohio policy options for reducing overdose deaths titled Refocusing Ohio’s Approach to Overdose Deaths. This fact sheet, which was released in conjunction with the HPIO policy brief, Taking Action to Strengthen Ohio’s Addiction Response, explores what drives overdose deaths in Ohio, why overdose deaths continue to increase and what state leaders can do to improve overdose prevention.

New research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found disparities in vaccination coverage prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (Source: “Disparities Found in Vaccination Coverage by Age 24 Months Before COVID-19,” HealthDay News, Oct. 18).

The study, which was published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that in 2017 and 2018, coverage disparities were seen for race/ethnicity, poverty status and health insurance status. Children who were not privately insured had lower coverage with most vaccines.

"Persistent disparities in vaccination coverage by health insurance status, race and ethnicity, and poverty status indicate that improvement is needed to achieve equity in the national childhood vaccination program," the authors write.

People who are Black, Hispanic or American Indian/Alaska Native are more likely than white people to be hospitalized with a case of the flu in the United States, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutions (Source: “The flu proves more deadly for children of color than for White youths, study says,” Washington Post, Oct. 11).

Young children in these groups, along with Asian and Pacific Islander children, are also more likely to die of flu than white children.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, took a close look at 113,352 flu hospitalizations between 2009 and 2019 from across the country. Researchers found clear disparities in those hospitalizations as well as among those who were ultimately admitted to the intensive care unit or who died.

Overall, Black people had the highest rates of hospitalization and ICU admission, followed by American Indians or Alaska Natives and Hispanic people, although the trends varied within age groups. Except in the youngest children, Asian and Pacific Islander people had hospitalization rates similar to or slightly lower than non-Hispanic white people. Across racial and ethnic groups, researchers found few differences in hospitalization, ICU admission and death from flu among adults 75 and older.

State lawmakers this week listened to public testimony for the first time on a fast-tracked bill to limit COVID-19 vaccine mandates and expand exemptions, after the bill failed to get enough support in the Ohio House (Source: “COVID-19 vaccine exemption bill gets another look from Ohio lawmakers,” Akron Beacon-Journal, Oct. 6).

Hearings on Wednesday and Thursday were "informal hearings," said Rep. Dick Stein, R-Norwalk, House Commerce and Labor Committee chairman, only to determine "the line between personal freedom and companies' rights... and where that lies."

Republican leadership tried to rush House Bill 435 and pass it out quickly last week, but the speedy timeline resulted in pushback. Legislators are now taking more time to revisit the bill's details.

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, including Ohio, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases (Source: “Over Half of States Have Rolled Back Public Health Powers in Pandemic,” Kaiser Health News, Sept. 15).

A Kaiser Health News review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the COVID-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.

In at least 16 states, legislators have limited the power of public health officials to order mask mandates, or quarantines or isolation. In some cases, they gave themselves or local elected politicians the authority to prevent the spread of infectious disease. At least 17 states passed laws banning covid vaccine mandates or passports, or made it easier to get around vaccine requirements. At least nine states have new laws banning or limiting mask mandates. Executive orders or a court ruling limit mask requirements in five more.

New research has found a strong link between COVID-19 and neighborhood disadvantage, a finding that supports earlier contentions of the connection between social factors and coronavirus disparities (Source: “How Neighborhood Disadvantage Drove COVID Health Disparities,” Patient Engagement HIT, July 21).

The study examined the connection between COVID-19 inequity and subway ridership in New York City. Neighborhoods that ranked higher on a COVID-19 inequity index — meaning that the neighborhood saw more factors that could put inhabitants at risk — also had higher subway ridership even after COVID-19 forced city-wide shutdowns.

Daniel Carrión, a researcher from Mount Sinai, said needing to ride the subway — or work an essential job — had a strong link to the unequal infection rates seen during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, largely because it limits the ability to socially distance.

“For us, subway utilization was a proxy measure for the capacity to socially distance,” Carrión, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine, told PatientEngagementHIT in an interview.

Although public health experts have made the link between the social determinants of health leading to actual infection, not just poor outcomes, Carrión and his colleagues put some data behind that. Social disadvantage was linked with higher subway utilization, and ultimately to higher infection rates and starker disparities.

“Folks like me were able to stay home for the majority of the pandemic and work from home. I didn't need to use public transit whereas others did. What we found was that areas that had higher COVID inequity indices were also riding the subways more after the stay-at-home orders compared to folks that were low in the COVID inequity index.”