Health

(NEW YORK) — Nine months ago, near the end of August, Jonah Barrow, a high school senior, attempted to take his own life.

Now, the 18-year-old from Katy, Texas, is speaking out about his survival to share a message of hope amid a mental health crisis in the United States, particularly among teenagers.

“I hope that I can change the mind of at least one person. That’s all I care about,” Barrow told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “If I can change the mind of one person or encourage someone to speak out, relieve themselves of their suffering, that’s all I can hope to dream.”

Barrow said his mental health struggles began in middle school, as he faced difficulties transitioning to a new school and new friends.

When he entered high school a few years later, Barrow said he began to struggle with his mental health again. An accomplished piano, cello, ukulele and guitar player, he found his niche playing guitar in a rock band.

Yet on that day last August, Barrow said he struggled to see a future for himself.

“I felt lost, worthless,” he said. “After the suicide attempt, it’s kind of jarring to think that before that moment, I had thought that I didn’t have a future.”

Barrow said in the moment, he also struggled to see the support he had all around him, everyone from his therapist to his friends and family.

“That day, if I kept calling other people, other family members or other friends, if just one person had answered the phone, I would be in a much different place today,” he said. “It is so important to keep reaching out and keep talking about things.”

Barrow’s mother, Lori Barrow, said she remembers wishing too that her son had reached out and called even more people who love him in his most difficult moment.

“He could have called me, his grandmother, his aunts, his cousins, there’s so many people,” Lori Barrow told GMA. “That’s why it’s important to keep reaching out. Reach out to the people that you know are going to be available, and don’t stop trying.”

As a teen who has attempted suicide, Barrow is far from alone, data shows.

Last year, nearly 24% of female high school students and nearly 12% of male students in the U.S. reported making a suicide plan, according to the latest results of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although suicide is the 11th leading cause of death overall in the United States, it is the third among U.S. high school students between the ages 14 and 18, accounting for one-fifth of all deaths among this age group, according to the report.

While the past three years of the coronavirus pandemic have put a spotlight on teens’ mental health struggles, particularly when it comes to suicide, the issue has been a concern for many years, data shows.

“In the decade prior to the pandemic, there was a 57% increase in the suicide rate among young people,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an April 30 interview with GMA. “And today, nearly half of high school students are telling us that they feel persistently sad or hopeless.”

A CDC report released last year, just one month after Barrow’s own suicide attempt, found an 8% increase in the suicide rate among males ages 15 to 24 from 2020 to 2021.

Common risk factors for suicide include a history of depression and other mental illness, bullying, loss of relationships and social isolation, according to the CDC.

Jonah Barrow said that through his own journey, he has learned that simply speaking out loud about his mental health struggles has helped.

“The second you start talking about it, it gets easier,” he said. “I would say that’s the most important thing.”

Experts too say one of the most important suicide prevention steps parents can take is to talk to teenagers about suicide.

“Talk with your kids about suicide because there is a big misconception that we’re going to somehow put an idea in our kids’ heads and it’s going to make them more likely to do something risky or bad. That is absolutely incorrect,” Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., chief science officer for the American Psychological Association, told GMA earlier this month. “You’re not putting an idea in their head, but what you are doing is communicating when they talk with you about it, they’re going to feel safe and they’re going to feel like they can open up to you.”

Lori Barrow noted she has seen the importance of not just talking to kids about mental health and suicide, but also listening to their replies.

“The biggest thing that I think parents can do is to listen, to not talk at them, to not talk about their experiences,” she said. “Because it’s easy for somebody to say, ‘I know how you feel. I’ve been there,’ but we really haven’t. Their experience is completely different from our experiences.”

Finding hope in music

In addition to finding healing in talking about his mental health, Jonah Barrow said his passion for music has restored hope in his life.

After suffering multiple injuries in his suicide attempt, including being temporarily paralyzed, Jonah Barrow has spent much of the past nine months hospitalized and undergoing rehabilitation.

While recovering at TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation center in Houston, he began working with Ty Walcott, a board-certified music therapist.

“I remember I was challenged with trying to stand on my feet for as long as I could and could only stand for about three minutes,” Jonah Barrow said. “But when Ty Walcott came to visit me and we started playing songs and listening to music, I was able to stand for about 15 minutes.”

“It’s like magic,” he said of the effect music has had on his recovery.

Walcott said she used music as a way to help Jonah Barrow regain his mobility and endurance in relearning how to talk, in addition to using it as a tool to help regulate his emotions.

“Music acts as a medium for processing those emotions and trauma and grief,” Walcott told GMA. “And it helps as a calming agent just because of the way that it affects the brain. It’s affecting all parts of the brain differently, as opposed to us trying to do it by sheer will.”

Over several months of therapy with Walcott, Jonah Barrow went from not being able to sit up in bed long enough to play an instrument to performing onstage with Walcott at a local music festival.

“Not being able to hold your instrument is like losing an arm, losing your hands, losing your feet, because it’s a part of you. It’s what makes you you,” Walcott said. “So it was a huge milestone for him to not only be able to play, but to be able to play for other people, because that’s what he wants to do.”

Jonah Barrow said he sees reconnecting with music as a turning point in his recovery.

When he arrived at TIRR Memorial Hermann, he said he was still struggling with the “internal conflict” of his feelings over the fact that he had survived.

“Because I was still depressed, part of me was still battling with ‘I wish it worked,’ ‘I’m happy that it didn’t,'” he said, adding, “But when I started working on myself every single day, and knowing that if I just keep trying and go with this with a positive mindset and a goal to get better, it worked wonders for me.”

Jonah Barrow will graduate from high school this month, and has plans to attend college, with a goal to work in music as a career.

He said he wants people to know that suffering looks different for different people, and that there is no shame in speaking out about mental health struggles.

“I believe many people suffer in silence,” he said. “And I can only encourage them to just speak their truth, whatever that may be.”

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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(NEW YORK) — Most women with average risk should start screening for breast cancer at age 40, and they should get screened every other year through age 74, according to new draft guidance Tuesday from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally appointed group whose decisions guide insurance policies.

Prior task force recommendations said women should start screening at age 50 but said women in their 40s with higher risk factors should consider screening at younger ages.

The new guidance comes on the heels of mounting evidence showing higher rates of breast cancer among women in their 40s, including a sharp 2% annual increase from 2015 to 2019.

“Whenever you have more people in a given decade getting a condition, then the value of screening at a younger age goes up,” said Dr. Carol Mangione, immediate past chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

“The goal is to find cancer earlier, when it’s treatable and curable,” said Dr. Maxine Jochelson, chief of the breast imaging service at Memorial Sloan Kettering. “I do think that by screening women earlier and more frequently, we will find smaller cancers more frequently.”

Breast cancer outcomes are not felt evenly across society, with Black women more likely to get aggressive cancers at a younger age and 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women, according to a recent study.

The new guidance seeks to drop the screening age for women of all races to help ease this disparity — although Mangione cautioned that screening alone won’t be enough to eliminate inequities.

The new draft recommendation applies to cisgender women and all other people assigned female at birth who are at average risk of breast cancer. It does not apply to people who have a significantly higher-than-average risk of breast cancer, including breast cancer survivors and those who are predisposed because of their genetics, family history or personal medical history.

Medical experts say there are risks to screening too early or too often, including the risk of false positives.

Still, the updated task force guidance may bring it more in line with guidance from other major medical groups, which already recommend that women start getting screened at a younger age.

The American Cancer Society, for example, says mammogram screening is optional for those ages 40-44. They say women ages 45-54 should get mammograms every year and after that, women can choose to drop down to every other year if they wish.

“We’re very happy that the [task force’s] age to begin screening for mammography has been lowered to 40. We do think that’s wonderful news,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society.

Dahut said women should “be aware that these guidelines, again, are just guidelines for average risk,” and it’s important for women to understand their own individual risk and “not be afraid to advocate for screening when it’s appropriate for them.”

Mangione agreed that any woman with symptoms, including a lump or change in the nipple, should get screened immediately, even if she is younger than 40.

“It’s really important that primary care doctors understand [these] recommendations are for average-risk women without symptoms,” Mangione said.

The task force said more research is urgently needed about the benefits of additional screening for women with dense breasts.

About half of women have dense breast tissue, which increases cancer risk and means mammograms may not work as well for them.

The task force stopped short of a recommendation, but other experts interviewed by ABC News said they recommend additional imaging for their patients with dense breasts, which can include ultrasound or MRI.

The task force also said more research is needed about the benefits and harms of screening in women 75 and older. Currently, there isn’t enough evidence for the task force to recommend for or against screening after 74.

The task force will hear comments until June 6 and finalize its guidance after.

“Science is not stagnant,” Mangione said. “It would be irresponsible if we saw evidence that we could save lives and we didn’t change the recommendation.”

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(NEW YORK) — Advisory committees of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to review the first-ever application for an over-the-counter birth control pill.

At a joint meeting, the Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee and the Obstetrics, Reproductive, and Urologic Drugs Advisory Committee will discuss whether pharmaceutical company Perrigo can make its oral contraceptive Opill, which currently requires a prescription, to be available on store shelves.

First approved by the FDA in 1973, Opill is type of hormonal birth control pill known as the “minipill,” which some experts say poses fewer risks than combination pills that rely on estrogen.

Still, buyers would have to screen themselves for any health risk factors, much as they would other OTC medications.

During the meeting, the FDA will hear from the company as well as speakers who will advocate for the need of nonprescription birth control.

Committee members will debate the results of a study Perrigo conducted and there will be an opportunity for open public comment. A vote from the advisory committees is expected to come Wednesday.

If the advisory committees do recommend approval, the next step is approval from the FDA. Although the agency is not bound to follow the advisory groups’ recommendations, the FDA typically does not go against their guidance.

The FDA is expected to make a decision by the summer. If the OTC pill does get greenlit, it would not become available as quickly as COVID-19 vaccines, which were speedily rolled out after the advisory committee meeting to approve them due to the global emergency.

Perrigo, which filed the application in July 2022, argued that changing its pill from prescription to OTC use will improve access to affordable birth control.

“Women’s needs are nuanced, and it’s about time their health options reflect that,” Frederique Welgryn, global vice president for the Women’s Health initiative at Perrigo, said in a statement in March. “At Perrigo, we’re not only committed to prioritizing women’s health — we’re committed to being active champions for it. We’re reimagining a new world where people are empowered to determine their own sexual health journey and access the solutions they want.”

Groups such as the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists support making OTC birth control available to improve access, such as for those living in contraceptive deserts, where access to birth control is lacking.

“We know that barriers to accessing contraception contribute to non-use or inconsistent use of contraception,” Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, CEO of nonprofit group Power to Decide, said a statement. “For people to achieve reproductive well-being and have the power to decide when and whether to become pregnant, we need to dismantle those barriers.”

She added, “As a practicing OB-GYN, I know that people can safely and effectively use a birth control pill without a prescription and without a doctor’s visit.”

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(NEW YORK) — Angelina Jolie paid tribute to her late mother this week, 15 years after her death from cancer, and encouraged other women to “go for mammograms and blood tests or ultrasounds.”

Mammograms are the recommended tests to screen for breast cancer in average risk women. Though there are currently no known effective screenings for ovarian cancer, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommends ultrasounds and blood tests for patients with BRCCA1 or BRCA2 gene variants.

In an Instagram post she shared on Monday, the actress and humanitarian brought awareness to breast and ovarian cancer by reminding women to “look after themselves.”

“Tomorrow would have been my mother’s 73rd birthday,” Jolie began. “She passed away 15 years ago, after a long struggle with breast and ovarian cancer. In June, I will be a month away from the age when she was diagnosed. I have had preventive surgeries to try to lessen chances but I continue to have check ups.”

“Sending my love to those who have also lost loved ones and strength to those who are fighting at this very moment for their lives and the lives of those they love,” she continued. “And to other women, please take the time to look after yourself and go for your mammograms and blood tests or ultrasounds, particularly if you have a family history of cancer.”

Jolie shared the post on World Ovarian Cancer Day, which aims to bring awareness about the disease.

In a 2015 op-ed for the New York Times, Jolie announced that she underwent surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes as a preventative measure to lower her risk of cancer. For women like Jolie, who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic variants, surgery is one method to prevent cancer, though it is not recommended for women with average risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 55-72% of women with the BRCA1 variant, like Jolie, develop breast cancer by age 70-80, and 39-44% develop ovarian cancer by age 70-80.

“I lost my mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer,” she said at the time. “I wanted other women at risk to know about the options.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer is markedly increased if she inherits a harmful variant in BRCA1 or BRCA2.

The institute encourages those who are concerned about the possibility of having the harmful variant in either gene to discuss those concerns with their health care provider or a genetic counselor.

Two years prior to opening up about her surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, Jolie wrote in another op-ed that she had a preventive double mastectomy.

In her op-ed, she echoed what she shared in her recent Instagram post and said that she hoped other women could “benefit from my experience.”

“Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness,” she wrote in the op-ed. “But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer and take action.”

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(ATLANTA) — As the U.S. moves into a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the public health emergency ending May 11, it also signals the end of some COVID data sharing.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it would be transitioning certain COVID metrics to other sources or discontinue them entirely once the emergency expires.

Additionally, earlier this year, several data trackers — including the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Survives dashboard — shut down.

Public health experts say that rich data collection has been essential for public health officials and lawmakers to develop and adjust COVID measures, and not having as much data available may limit the ability to track the virus in the future.

“I think the interest in the data has definitely gone down so, in some ways, the CDC is sort of focused on meeting people where they are,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “But the concern is always that we should be erring on the side of providing more information and making more data available because, of course, there’s absolutely always the potential for us to be caught flat-footed again, when it comes to COVID.”

He continued, “There’s always that concern that we have not actually improved our ability to monitor these viruses as opposed to sort of going back to where we were pre-pandemic.”

CDC changing COVID-19 surveillance methods

The CDC announced Friday it was changing some of the ways it surveils COVID-19 with the expiration of the emergency.

One of the biggest changes is that the agency will stop sharing data about COVID-19 transmission levels and community levels and is switching to COVID-related hospital admissions as the primary metric to measure virus spread.

During a media call with reporters Thursday, Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said since Feb. 2022, the community levels and the hospital admissions have matched up the majority of the time.

Shah said the hospital data will be an early indicator of whether COVID-19 is rising in certain areas and will give public health officials notice of a potential spike.

“We have to recognize the amount of resources that are required to capture some of this data are significant, and so it makes sense that the CDC is going to try to aim to focus on data sources that are a little bit more automated, like hospitalization data,” Brownstein said.

However, he noted that COVID-19-related hospitalizations is a lagging indicator, because people infected with the virus are often not hospitalized for several days — and in some case weeks.

“So, if there’s a new variant, we may not have as much early insight into what’s happening at the community level, based on just focusing on hospital data,” Brownstein said. “The hope is that the results of the pandemic should allow us to improve our ability to monitor, whether it’s COVID or other viruses, in ways that are much more real time.

He added, “So there is a concern that we’re now focusing back on types of data that are less real time and provide us less of an early step in what’s actually happening as far as transmission.

Patchwork of data collection

The CDC said it is ending the community levels and transmission levels because they are reliant on aggregate case data, which is not required to be reported by jurisdictions once the emergency ends.

Experts agree that case data is no longer an accurate metric for COVID-19 due to the lack of people getting tested and, those being tested at-home not always sharing results with health officials.

However, they say it still means another source of data won’t be table to be tracked.

“The idea of having better, more voluminous data that’s more comprehensive on cases, hospitalizations, even infection and deaths in a timely manner for diseases is something that, we’ve really talked about and advocated for a long time,” Dr. Jeff Shaman, a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, told ABC News.

“We have typically suffered from a lack of that kind of information at the level of granularity and with a level of temporal frequency that really allows us to better understand the diseases, track them, monitor them, forecast and come to a greater understanding of how and why they’re getting around and how we might better control them.”

Shaman said with the various data trackers, it provided a wealth of information that was able to accelerate our understanding of how the pandemic was progressing.

He worries that with jurisdictions not being required to report data to the CDC, there will be a patchwork approach to what data we have from various parts of the country.

“That being peeled away, we’re going to go back to something that’s more piecemeal, that’s more reliant on local fundings and abilities to actually provide the information,” Shaman said. “But we’re going to be moving back to an environment that isn’t as data rich. It’s hard to anticipate exactly what the consequences of that are, but it will make things more difficult.”

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(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday it is changing the way it does surveillance of COVID-19 in the United States as the emergencies related to the virus come to an end.

In January, the Biden administration told Congress that it would let the COVID-19 national emergency and the public health emergency expire on May 11.

Accordingly, the CDC said it plans to either transition certain categories of COVID-19 national reporting to other sources or discontinue them entirely.

“Although next week marks the end of the public health emergency, it is not the end of COVID-19,” Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a call with reporters Thursday. “COVID-19 remains a risk and CDC remains committed to preventing severe illness and death associated with COVID-19, particularly for those who are at higher risk.”

He continued, “We will continue to keep our eye on the COVID-19 ball, and we will do so through a multitude of metrics.”

In one of the biggest moves, the federal health agency will stop sharing data about COVID-19 transmission levels and community levels and use COVID-related hospital admissions as the primary metric to measure virus spread.

Shah said this is because community levels rely on aggregate case rates, which are ending when the public health emergency expires, and those case rates may not be reported to CDC by jurisdictions after May 11.”

The CDC has noted that as the pandemic has progressed, case data has become less reliable because of increases in home testing, with results often not reported to public health officials.

“Since February of 2022, there has been a 99% accordance with the CCL, the community levels — which are being retired — and the new hospital admission-driven metrics,” Shah said. “In short, we will still be able to tell that it’s snowing, even though we’re no longer counting every snowflake.”

Hospitalizations will move from being reported daily to weekly, while keeping track of demographic data, such as age and race/ethnicity, as well as data on the treatment being received by patients.

Dr. Brendan Jackson, lead of the CDC’s COVID-19 Response, said there are other metrics the CDC will continue to monitor that can give notice before a potential spike.

“Hospitalizations provide the best national level view of COVID trends,” Jackson said during the media call. “There are also metrics that provide earlier signals of change in COVID activity.”

For example, “CDC reports emergency department visits for COVID-19 on our COVID data tracker website down to the state level. This is a key early indicator of evolving trends,” he added.

Additionally, the CDC is switching its test positivity data to a surveillance system, which is based on voluntary reporting from over 450 laboratories nationwide.

Also seeing changes is V-safe, a smartphone tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide check-ins after people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Starting May 19, people who participated in v-safe will not be able to add new COVID-19 vaccine doses to their account. People who received doses that were added before May 19 will have health check-ins until June 30.

“At this point in the program, very little new data are being reported to the v-safe system,” the CDC said in a press released. “V-safe was developed specifically for COVID-19 vaccines and has been an essential component of the pandemic vaccine safety monitoring systems that have successfully and comprehensively characterized the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States.”

The CDC said it is developing a new version of v-safe, expected to launch later in 2023, which will allow users to share post-vaccination experiences with new vaccines.

However, there are certain activities that will be unaffected by the CDC’s change in reporting and the end of the emergencies.

These include case data broken down by demographics as well as CDC’s work on long COVID, vaccine effectiveness and wastewater surveillance.

Shah said there is still a need within the agency to modernize the way they collect and monitor disease, so it does not take as long to do so as it did with COVID-19.

“In the next pandemic, we shouldn’t wait six months to have complete hospitalization data,” Shah said. “We shouldn’t need dozens of data use agreements to understand the demographics of who’s getting vaccinated.”

He continued, “We should have access to robust data before a pandemic. We should be ready, so we don’t have to get ready. That is the work ahead of us and the work we are committed to doing.”

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(GENEVA) — The World Health Organization on Friday said it was downgrading COVID-19 and no longer characterizing it as a global health emergency.

The U.N. health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on Jan. 30, 2020.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the change during a media briefing held with reporters at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

But he clarified that this does not mean the pandemic is over.

“It is with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” he said. “However, that does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat. Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes — and that’s just the deaths we know about.”

The downgrade comes with the pandemic on a “downward trend” for more than a year due to growing immunity among the global population — both from vaccination and infection — as well as a decreasing number of deaths, according to Tedros. This has also led to health systems no longer feeling as a much of a burden as they once did.

“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before,” he said.

Tedros recounted the early days of the pandemic, noting that when it first declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency, China reported fewer than 100 cases and no deaths.

He said that seven million COVID-19 deaths have been reported to WHO, but officials believe the true toll to be at least 20 million. In the U.S., more than 1.1 million deaths have been recorded, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“But COVID-19 has been so much more than a health crisis,” Tedros said. “It has caused severe economic upheaval, erasing trillions from GDP, disrupting travel and trade, shuttering businesses and plunging millions into poverty.”

He continued, “It has caused severe social upheaval, with borders closed, movement restricted, schools shut and millions of people experiencing loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression.”

And despite the downgrade, there are still thousands of people dying every day as well as being hospitalized due to complications from the virus.

Tedros warned against countries letting their guard down and said they must remain vigilant in case a new highly infectious variant emerges.

“I emphasize that this is not a snap decision. It is a decision that has been considered carefully for some time, planned for, and made on the basis of a careful analysis of the data,” he said. “If need be, I will not hesitate to convene another Emergency Committee should COVID-19 once again put our world in peril.”

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(NEW YORK) — Christina Applegate is opening up about how multiple sclerosis has taken a toll on her life.

The actress, who is known for her roles in Dead To Me, The Sweetest Thing and Anchorman, said having MS “f—ing sucks.”

“With the disease of MS, it’s never a good day,” she said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “You just have little s—– days.”

Applegate said that the simplest tasks can be “frightening” like getting in the shower.

“You can fall, you can slip, your legs can buckle,” she said. “Especially because I have a glass shower. It’s frightening to me to get in there. There are just certain things that people take for granted in their lives that I took for granted. Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore.”

“Gravity can just pull you down and take everything down with you,” she added.

Applegate revealed on social media in 2021 that she was diagnosed with MS.

The disease affects the brain and spinal cord (or central nervous system), according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke .

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society says that women are more likely to have MS, but men can get it too.

Since MS makes patients susceptible to infections, according to the National Library of Medicine , Applegate says she doesn’t “want to be around a lot of people.” She said she also doesn’t want a lot of stimulation of the nervous system so she likes to “keep it as quiet and mellow as possible.”

“It’s exhausting,” she said. “Imagine just being in a crowd of people and how loud that is. It’s like 5,000 times louder for anyone who has lesions on their brains.”

Applegate said she found out while filming the final season of Dead To Me. She told Vanity Fair that the show may be her last time acting on camera.

While she remembers how taxing it was to film during that time and feels relieved that she “no longer has to push so hard to get through my day,” she said she misses her co-stars the most, including Linda Cardellini , who plays Judy Hale in the series.

“Linda and I, from day one, were in love with each other and trusted each other and supported each other,” Applegate said. “I’m probably not going to work on-camera again, but I’m so glad that I went out with someone who is by far the greatest actress I’ve ever worked with in my entire life, if not the greatest human I’ve ever known.”

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(NEW YORK) — While COVID-19 ebbs — and many of the pandemic-era policies on surveillance data and funding wind down with it — the nation’s public health leaders warned senators on Thursday that a return to “normal” should not mean forgetting the hard lessons learned over the last three years.

When the federal government’s public health emergency expires next week, COVID-19 data collection tools will also end. Those tools have been described as vital to staying vigilant and preparing for emerging health threats.

“Infectious disease threats have been emerging at an increased pace and are increasingly complex,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. “These diseases don’t respect national or state borders, and the increased frequency of outbreaks means that we should not be asking if we will face another serious public health threat — but when.”

Though “for many life has turned to normal after three years of COVID-19,” Walensky said it’s the mission of public health to “remain response-ready to protect Americans from any resolving or emerging health threat,” which can only be done by “actively supporting the core capabilities of public health.”

Thursday’s hearing was part of the process to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which was first signed into law in 2006 and has been regularly reauthorized since then.

“The approaching end of the public health emergency once again reminds us that policy changes and funding are essential to the readiness of future bio-threats. The CDC will continue to closely monitor COVID-19 and provide the information to which we have access,” Walensky said.

She and other panelists emphasized that caveat: The limited access to data that comes along with a return to “normal” threatens to kneecap future surveillance efforts.

“We will adapt to limitations and utilize tried-and-true systems to monitor other respiratory diseases, to keep our eye on COVID-19,” Walensky said, “but there are data we will no longer have available because they will no longer be submitted to us. For example, certain data for a national picture of health disparities both for race and ethnicity and along urban and rural lines.”

“We will make do,” the CDC director said. “However this should worry us all, primarily because of what it says about the visibility we will have into the next outbreak. We will be back to square one — having to build and negotiate surveillance capacity while we fight a pathogen.”

Dawn O’Connell, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said that the U.S. actually was more prepared for COVID-19 than it would’ve been for other types of pandemics because of two prior respiratory outbreaks.

Neglecting to further that work would put the country at a big risk, O’Connell said.

“This is one of my biggest worries, is that we are losing time in preparing for the next pandemic,” she said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but the one place we were lucky when it came to the coronavirus is we had already done a lot of the early work on that because of SARS and MERS. We need to get the same head start.”

That’s something some senators looked to explicate in their line of questioning, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., interjecting: “Are you telling us that we have not done the kind of work you would like to see done in preparation for what might be coming?”

“Correct,” O’Connell said.

Another tragedy briefly cast a shadow over Thursday’s hearing, as Walensky opened her remarks by noting that one of the CDC’s employees was killed Wednesday in a mass shooting in Atlanta.

Amy St. Pierre “was a valued member of our team at the Division of Reproductive Health where she worked every day to save the lives of mothers and infants,” Walensky said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Angela Maske was a college freshman in Washington, D.C., when she first had trouble getting a prescription for birth control pills.

Her Catholic-affiliated university wouldn’t prescribe the medication to students as a sexual contraceptive, so Maske spent three months looking for another doctor’s appointment.

More recently, her telehealth provider stopped servicing her area, sending Maske scrambling to find another provider and a new prescription on short notice while juggling a full-time job.

Maske now works with Free the Pill, a coalition of advocates that’s spent years dedicated entirely to increasing public access to contraception — a goal they say is critical to people already struggling to access health care, find time off work or arrange for child care to make a doctor’s appointment.

“It’s just frustrating because (getting a prescription) feels like yet another barrier that people have to go through to access essential care to control their reproductive and sexual autonomy,” said Maske.

The Food and Drug Administration is on the cusp of deciding whether at least one type of hormonal birth control — a progestin-only drug called “Opill” by French drugmaker HRA Pharma — is safe enough to be sold over the counter without a prescription and without age restrictions.

First approved by the FDA in 1973, Opill is type of hormonal birth control pill known as the “minipill,” which poses fewer risks than combination pills that rely on estrogen. Still, buyers would have to screen themselves for any health risk factors, much as they would other over-the-counter medications.

FDA’s panel of scientific advisers are expected to meet next week to discuss the application, and if the agency signs off the drug in coming weeks, the product could be on shelves this summer.

“It is just super exciting that we’ve gotten here at this moment. It’s really historic,” said Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, an advocacy organization that has long called for over-the-counter birth control pills.

Blanchard said she hopes other types of birth control pills will follow suit and that states embrace laws requiring insurance companies to cover the costs. Currently, federal law requires free contraception “as prescribed” by a health care provider, although some states have pushed their own mandates for insurance to cover over-the-counter options as well.

The question over increased access to birth control comes amid a heated national debate on women’s reproductive rights with the overruling of Roe vs. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. At least 15 states have barred nearly all abortions so far.

This week, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law that authorizes pharmacists to dispense hormonal birth control. Patients there can now rely on a single long-standing order from a doctor, rather than having to return for an updated prescription; if the person does not have a health care provider, the pharmacist could dispense the drug anyway with instructions to consult a doctor.

The vast majority of Americans back widespread access to birth control. Two-thirds of adult women under 50 say they are using some form of contraception, with a third of those relying on birth control pills, according to a 2022 KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) survey.

Most patients also believe they can screen themselves for risk factors when it comes to hormonal birth control. According to KFF, an estimated 77% of women under 50 say they want birth control pills available without a doctor’s prescription if research shows it’s safe and effective.

One concern is that patients will forgo routine examinations if doctors can be cut out of the process. Still, HRA Pharma’s federal application for Opill solicited significant support from the medical community, anti-poverty organizations and reproductive-rights advocates that say increasing access to family planning will benefit millions of people, particularly those in rural areas and people of color who struggle to access any health care.

The American Medical Association, for example, told the FDA that decades of data shows the benefits of “widespread, nonprescription availability far outweigh the limited risk associated with their use.”

In a separate filing, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said a patient doesn’t need to be examined or tested before taking the drug and that the birth control pill was overwhelmingly safe for most people to take on their own. And while routine exams are critical to a person’s overall health, the group says that shouldn’t be a reason to make birth control harder to access.

Opponents of the move cited medical risk and teen access as a reason to limit access.

“Even if they read the package insert, evidence documents that teenagers take risks disproportionate to their own safety needs. When this is compounded by the lack of parental notification or health provider supervision, the results could be catastrophic,” wrote an objection signed by several Catholic groups, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Maia Lopez, a 17-year-old high school junior living outside Dallas, Texas, who now works with Free the Pill as a youth advocate, said teens will have sex anyway.

Easier access to contraception and quality education about reproductive health would go farther to protect young people, she said.

“I think they underestimate teens,” Lopez said.

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