Health

(NEW YORK) — States that imposed strict abortion laws this year were already more likely to have significantly higher maternal and infant death rates as well as fewer doctors providing care to women, according to an analysis released Wednesday by an influential nonprofit research group.

In 2020, for example, maternal death rates were 62% higher in the states that later passed or implemented abortion restrictions compared to the states where abortion remains accessible, the study by the Commonwealth Fund, which aims to address gaps in health care, found.

Those conclusions are likely to be cited by abortion rights advocates who have long argued that states leading the charge on abortion bans are also the least equipped to care for women giving birth.

“Compared with their counterparts in other states, women of reproductive age and birthing people in states with current or proposed abortion bans have more limited access to affordable health insurance coverage, worse health outcomes, and lower access to maternity care providers,” according to the study.

The study did not look at the impact on the abortion bans specifically — a much tougher metric that could take years to analyze. Still, the researchers warn that, according to their findings, abortion restrictions risk widening the existing disparities between states.

“The result is a deepening of fractures in the maternal health system and a compounding of inequities by race, ethnicity, and geography,” the researchers conclude.

Republicans including Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, whose state successfully challenged Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court case that guaranteed national abortion access — have argued that it’s possible to restrict the procedure while also improving care for pregnant women.

Earlier this year, Reeves said his state plans to improve its care system for pregnant women and infants.

“The pro-life movement must dedicate itself to ensuring mothers and their babies receive the support they both need during pregnancy and after,” he said in June.

So far though, such a system hasn’t fully materialized: Mississippi is among a dozen states that have declined to expand Medicaid, the government’s health care for poor and disabled Americans. Of those 12 states, 10 of them have also imposed strict abortion laws.

Republicans in those states contend that expanding Medicaid might not be financially sustainable. But Medicaid, its supporters say, expands health care access for struggling Americans who might otherwise forgo care entirely, including women who might not see a doctor until months into a pregnancy.

In an interview with ABC News, the lead researcher on the Commonwealth Fund study, Dr. Gene Declercq, said that lack of health coverage is a big reason why women living in certain states struggle with pregnancies and birth.

Declercq, a professor at Boston University, said his study found that many areas with abortion restrictions also had few or no providers caring for women.

“If you have a whole policy that’s geared toward not really taking care of women’s health, except when they might be pregnant and you want to support the health of a baby, we shouldn’t be surprised when we find out that there’s problems with women’s health,” he said.

The question for politicians, Declercq said, is whether or not a state’s health care system is set up to protect women and children — or if that’s just campaign rhetoric.

“And the answer remains to be seen,” he said.

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(NEW YORK) — More than 3,500 Americans have died from long COVID-related illnesses, according to new federal data.

The report, published early Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, looked at death certificate data from January 2020 through the end of June 2022.

The NCHS team looked for several key terms including “long COVID,” “long haul COVID,” “chronic COVID” and “post COVID syndrome.”

Results showed long COVID played a role in 3,544 deaths, with the condition listed as either an underlying or a contributing cause of death.

“This is the first time that we’ve used death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System to identify deaths with long COVID,” Farida Ahmad, a health scientist at the NCHS, told ABC News. “Because this is a new analysis and the first time we’re looking at long COVID in death certificates, I think a lot of the aspects of the report stand out as unique.”

While not an insignificant number, this means long COVID deaths made up less than 1% of the more than one million COVID-19 related deaths during this period.

Long COVID occurs when patients who have cleared the infection still have symptoms at least four weeks after recovery. In some cases, these symptoms can persist for months or even years.

Patients can experience a variety of lingering symptoms including fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the CDC.

It’s unclear what causes people to develop long COVID but research is ongoing.

The report found February 2022 was the month with the highest number of long COVID deaths with 393.

Additionally, the percentage of deaths linked to long COVID peaked in June 2021 at 1.2% and in April 2022 at 3.8%, both of which coincided with decreasing numbers of COVID-19 deaths, according to the report.

The team then looked at differences in COVID-19 deaths and long COVID deaths between males and females over a 12-month period from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.

While a larger percentage of COVID-19 deaths, or 56%, occurred among men, long COVID deaths were more evenly split with 51.5% occurring among males.

Similarly to COVID-19, long COVID deaths were most common among elderly Americans.

Those between ages 75 and 84 accounted for 28.8% of long COVID deaths followed by those aged 85 and older at 28.1% and those aged 65 to 74 at 21.5%.

There were also disparities when it came to race. White Americans made up the most deaths from long COVID at 78.5% followed by Black Americans at 10.1% and Hispanic Americans at 7.8%

Comparatively, Asian Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives and other multiracial Americans made up less than 2% of long COVID deaths per group.

However, the long COVID death rate was highest among American Indian/Alaska Native people at 14.8 per 1 million. Meanwhile, white Americans had the second highest rate at 6.7 per 1 million.

Although Black and Hispanic Americans have traditionally higher COVID-19 mortality rates, they had lower long COVID death rates at 6.4 per 1 million and 4.7 per 1 million, respectively.

According to the report, this may be because Hispanic and Black Americans have higher COVID-19 death rates, meaning there are fewer survivors to experience long COVID, as well as fewer diagnoses due to less access to health care.

Ahmad said she hopes the report is a first step in being able to more accurately track long COVID deaths.

“We don’t use an official classification code for long COVID on death certificates and so this report is kind of that first step and if we do, it might be easier to track these kinds of deaths over time,” she said. “And if there is a need for kind of guidance for how deaths certificates should be filled out, when long COVID is suspected as a contributing cause of death, that might help have more accurate data on the death certificate.”

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(NEW YORK) — As the so-called “tripledemic” of flu, RSV and COVID-19 continues across the United States, health officials are encouraging people to wear face masks again, especially children.

Health officials in multiple states, including New York, California and Arizona, are strongly recommending people wear masks because of the ongoing threat of flu, COVID-19 and RSV happening all at once.

The U.S. has already surpassed 10 million cases of flu-like illnesses, leading health experts to warn this could be the worst flu season the country has seen in a decade. Currently, over 40 states are reporting high or very high rates of flu-like illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, COVID-19 cases and deaths rose by 50% over the past week, despite the rate previously remaining flat for a long period of time, according to the CDC.

The number of cases of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, hit a two-year high in November, leading the CDC to issue an official health advisory in response to the rise in respiratory infections in children.

The ongoing higher rates of flu, RSV and COVID-19 come at a time when children tend to be indoors more often due to colder weather, and when families tend to be busy with school activities and holiday gatherings.

With the ongoing surge, health officials highly recommend wearing a face mask when in crowded, indoor spaces to avoid both spreading and catching viruses.

The CDC continues to recommend mask-wearing for children and adults on public transportation, including trains, planes and buses.

ABC News’ Good Morning America spoke with Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a mom of two and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, to answer parents’ questions about wearing face masks once again.

1. When and where should kids wear face masks?

Both children and adults should wear face masks when possible in indoor, crowded settings, according to Murray, who is also a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In the absence of mask mandates, Murray said that families need to make the best decisions for themselves, knowing that each family and each individual child is unique.

“It would be so awesome and so easy if we could just kind of say, ‘You always do this,’ or, ‘You never do that,’ and it really is not at that point,” she said. “But as we head into the holidays and we want to make sure we’re healthy to see our families, now is the time to really take those precautions.”

Murray gave the example of her own family, noting that her oldest daughter, at age 13, can make decisions on her own about where and when a mask would help.

“She is able to, at her age, to kind of make decisions of, ‘I’m in a big group working close with a bunch of people, so now is a good time for me to wear a mask,’ versus, ‘I’m sitting in a study hall with three other students and we’re all spaced out so I probably don’t need to wear a mask at this point,'” said Murray. “She also is really active in a lot of extracurricular activities that are really important to her, so she is more comfortable wearing a mask during school or in large group activities because she wants to make sure that she stays healthy so she can participate in her cross-country meet and participate in her school play and things like that.”

On the other hand, Murray said her 6-year-old daughter struggles with wearing a face mask in school, where it is not required.

“We found that [wearing a mask] is really not something we were able to do with her because nobody else is doing it,” Murray said. “So for her, we’re focusing on other things like making sure she does a really good job of washing her hands. At any sign of an illness, we’re making sure we’re keeping her home so she won’t be spreading illness. And we do outdoor activities or other things with smaller groups of people where she’s not having as many exposures.”

2. Did wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic cause the surge of illness now?

According to Murray, children’s immune systems were not permanently damaged by wearing masks during the pandemic.

“The mask just helps to decrease transmission of a lot of the common illnesses,” said Murray. “Now that people are not wearing masks anymore, now that schools are back in an in-person setting and now that it’s fall and winter when we see some of these germs start to come around, it makes sense that everything is back.”

She continued, “We had years when kids just were not seeing as much illness and now everybody’s getting sick because all of the germs are back at once.”

3. What type of face masks should children wear?

Murray recommends that children wear “high-quality” masks that they feel comfortable in and will wear.

“There are different styles that can work equally well, so really making sure that you have a mask that your child likes and fits comfortably on their face is important,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to find smaller masks but there are good resources out there.”

In order for a mask to be effective, it needs to fit over the nose and cover under the chin and should lay flat on the skin.

Experts say it is fine for kids to use clips or bands to relieve pressure on their ears when wearing a mask.

One technique to check the quality of your child’s mask is to hold the mask up to the sun. If you can see light through the mask as you hold it stretched, it’s not thick enough.

4. At what age can a child start wearing a face mask?

Children can start wearing face masks starting at age 2, according to both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

5. Do adults need to wear face masks too?

Yes, adults are also encouraged to wear face masks in crowded, indoor settings. Murray said it is especially important for parents and caregivers to wear masks in order to set an example for their children.

6. What else can parents do to protect their kids from flu, RSV and COVID-19?

Murray said it is critical that children and adults are up to date with their vaccinations.

Children ages 6 months and older are eligible to get a flu vaccine as well as a COVID-19 vaccine, with “rare exceptions,” according to the CDC. Both vaccinations are free and are widely available at doctors’ offices and local pharmacies.

Murray said she also encourages her patients and others to stay home if they are sick and to keep their children home from school and activities if they are showing symptoms of illness.

“I think people have a lot of pressure to get back to work and all of those things, but still we really need to make sure that regardless of what you’re sick with, when people are ill, they need to stay home,” she said.

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(NEW YORK) — Maintaining a healthy weight has numerous health benefits, but primary care doctors may not always give specific, effective weight loss advice to their patients, according to a new study in Family Practice.

The study, which was led by researchers in the U.K., analyzed over 150 audio recordings from primary care visits, finding doctors often vaguely encourage patients to “eat less” or “do more” rather than recommending tried-and-tested weight loss strategies. Only 20% of visits included specific, actionable instructions for patients.

Although the study was based in the U.K., doctors say it has broad implications in the United States and beyond. In both countries, roughly two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.

Dr. Selvi Rajagopal, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics who specializes in obesity medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said telling patients they need to lose weight by moving more or eating less is not helpful and can be harmful.

“It puts a lot of the blame on the patient. And it also gives them no really clear tangible action plan of what to do,” Rajagopal told ABC News.

The study authors suggest that more specific clinical guidelines on effective weight loss counseling would better support primary care doctors who are trying to help their patients lose weight.

The National Institute of Health encourages health care providers to partner with their patients who want to lose weight to make an individualized plan together, but a study in 2020 also found that primary care providers often said they have a lack of confidence in weight loss treatments and lack of knowledge about effective weight loss methods. Doctors also have a lot of time-constraints that can limit adequate patient counseling.

“There’s just so little time. There are so many other tasks, [doctors] feel overwhelmed,” Rajagopal said.

Research has shown that setting goals can be an effective weight loss method that health care providers can incorporate into patient visits. Weight loss goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-sensitive (S.M.A.R.T.) as opposed to advice that is too broad or vague.

An example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal is telling someone who drinks two sugary beverages a day to aim for just one sugary beverage a month. This is more actionable than simply making it a goal to drink less sugary drinks. But Rajagopal also emphasized that only the individual can decide what is realistic and achievable for them.

“If it’s something that just isn’t within their bandwidth for whatever reason, whatever life circumstances, telling them to do something unachievable is not going to happen,” said Rajagopal.

Jade A Cobern, MD, a board-eligible in pediatrics and MPH candidate, is a member of the ABC News Medical Unit and general preventive medicine resident at Johns Hopkins.

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(NEW YORK) — After 50 years, serving seven presidents, spearheading a response to HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola and a novel coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci is stepping down from his role in the federal government at the end of December.

Despite being 81 years old, Fauci said he has the energy to still contribute and plans to announce his next career chapter in 2023.

“I would say I feel about 40, and maybe the most, 45,” he told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Jennifer Ashton in a power walk around his neighborhood.

Fauci credits his passion for his work as one reason he’s been able to stay active in the federal government years past someone else may have gracefully bowed out.

“A purpose of what you’re doing, where you feel like you’re doing something that has an impact and you get very energetic about it, and that kind of sustains you,” he said. “I don’t get bored. I don’t ever get bored.”

But passion alone can’t keep someone active into their 80s. Fauci also has good genetics to thank for his mental sharpness, he said.

“My father was very, very much like me. He died when he was 97,” Fauci said. “And he had all his smarts at the time he died.”

He’s also stayed active. Fauci has been an athlete all his life — he played basketball in high school, and intramural sports through college and medical school. Then, in his late 30s, he started to run.

“I started to train and then I got really interested and I ran four marathons,” Fauci said.

He loves 10k races as well.

“I’m more of a sprinter,” he said.

Now, he walks every day.

Fauci also tries to stick to good nutritional habits. He said he gives himself a “B minus” on his diet.

“The one good thing about it is I don’t do anything in excess,” he said. “I don’t drink a lot, a glass of wine or a beer in the evening at the most.”

He loves sweets, but tries to keep those cravings under control.

“I could eat 20 chocolate chip cookies if I had to. And I love New York cheesecakes, but again, I try to control it. I would think among all the health things of exercise, moderation, things like that, my diet is the only one that I’m mediocre on and not really good,” he said.

Despite his commitment to a healthy lifestyle, Fauci said the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll.

In January and February 2020, he was only sleeping three-and-a-half or four hours each night. He lost weight, and wasn’t feeling well. That’s when his wife, Christine — who’s the chief of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health — stepped in.

“One evening when I just could barely stay awake when I came home, she went, ‘All right, that’s it. We’re going to stop this now. You’re going to eat, you’re going to drink water, you’re going to stay hydrated, and you’re going to sleep.’ And since then I’ve been okay,” he said.

The pandemic was an emotional challenge, too. Fauci tested positive for COVID-19 two days before his daughter’s wedding, which was devastating. Luckily, he was still able to FaceTime into the wedding.

“It wasn’t the real thing, but it was not bad,” he said.

After all the decades in public service, Fauci said he’s looking forward to the next stage. He’s about to be a grandfather for the first time. He’s excited to spend more time with his children. And he’s taking everything day by day.

“You’re very cognizant of each day is sort of like a blessing,” Fauci said. “Each day, take each day and don’t say jump ahead by a month ’cause jump ahead by a month — you do the math — it’s a certain fraction of what you have left.”

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(NEW YORK) — After over 50 years working in public service, Dr. Anthony Fauci is stepping down at the end of the month, though he’s not retiring. Fauci told ABC News he wants to do something outside of federal work while he still has the health, vitality and drive to do so.

And as he gets ready to leave as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, one of the things that worries him the most about the state of science and medicine in the U.S. is misinformation.

“Misinformation and disinformation is really hurting so many things, including people’s trust in science,” Fauci told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Jen Ashton at the NIH lab. “It becomes very difficult to get people to fully appreciate the truth of what’s going on — which will ultimately impact how we respond, in this case, to a pandemic, like COVID-19.”

Some of that misinformation directly centered around Fauci. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when officials first introduced mask mandates and stay-at-home guidelines, Fauci was a target for conservatives opposed to public health measures. He was falsely accused of wanting to “microchip” Americans with vaccines, of lying to Congress, and trying to amass political power.

Just this past weekend, new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted Fauci should be prosecuted.

Fauci faced threats starting in 2020, and health department leaders were worried enough about the risk that he got a beefed-up security detail.

“It’s preposterous, how someone who’s done nothing but encourage the population of this country and the world to abide by good public health practices — like getting vaccinated, and keeping up to date on your boosters, and to be careful, such as with indoor congregate settings — that person, i.e. me, all of a sudden becomes the object of vicious attacks,” he said.

Fauci said the most upsetting aspect is the threats to his family.

“What really bothers me is harassing my children and my wife. Give me a freaking break,” he said.

The COVID-19 vaccine is one of the major targets of disinformation, and Fauci was intimately involved in the process. The National Institutes of Health partnered with Moderna on developing an mRNA vaccine, despite the fact that there had never been an approved mRNA vaccine and that Moderna had never put a product on the market.

Fauci said there was some pushback within the government around that decision. But he was confident it was the right call.

“A lot of people, as you might imagine, were saying, ‘Well, why are you doing this? This has never been proven before,'” he said. “And yet, because of the confidence we had in the science, we went with it, and it turned out to be the right choice.”

COVID-19 vaccinations saved more than three million lives in the U.S., according to data released Tuesday from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit that researches the healthcare system

There’s also been swirling misinformation in and around conversations about the origins of the coronavirus. Scientists may never have a clear-cut answer, and if they ever find one, it could take years, Fauci said. But right now, the data strongly suggests a natural origin for the virus, likely in a bat, he said.

Still, he said he has an open mind about the possibility the virus escaped from a lab — even though he thinks the preponderance of evidence so far suggests that’s not likely.

He said that one of the challenges of getting clear answers is the complexity of the relationship between American and Chinese scientists.

“The hostility and the accusatory nature of it, unless that changes dramatically, I don’t think we’re going to get the information that we need,” Fauci said.

Despite the backlash around public health officials’ actions at the start of the pandemic, Fauci said it’s hard to say if officials should have done anything differently.

“We were dealing with a moving target, where things were different from January, to February, to March, to April, to a year later,” he said. “To have a redo would be to have a magic wand and say from day one, we knew everything we needed to know about the virus.”

The misinformation and attacks aren’t why Fauci is leaving public service — he said he tries to just tune it out.

But the challenges around health misinformation aren’t going away. Twitter said last month that it would stop enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policies, even as cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the disease in the United States climb.

That’s one reason why Fauci said he might consider joining social media. Without the pulpit of the federal government, he might need to find another way to communicate with the public.

“I do want a venue, or a forum, to be able to express some ideas,” he said. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Republican lawmakers have promised to call Fauci back on the record to defend the government’s response to the pandemic. Fauci, who has testified before Congress hundreds of times over the past decades, said he welcomes the opportunity.

“It’s a little bit dicey now because there’s such a degree of divisiveness that’s non-productive,” he said. “All of a sudden … it became normalized to just say things that were completely not true. I hope we get back to differences that are constructive, and part of the greatness of our country.”

Watch Dr. Ashton’s interview with Dr. Fauci on GMA3, Tuesday, Dec. 13 (check local listings) and on ABCNL Prime at 7 p.m.

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(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 hospitalizations among seniors are at least three times higher than any other age group, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Dec. 7, new hospital admissions per 100,000 for those aged 70 and older sits at 6.93 per 100,000.

The next highest rate is among those between ages 60 and 69, which sits at 2.21 per 100,000, as of Dec. 6.

When looking at rates for younger age groups, the disparity is even greater. Among those aged 17 and younger, the new hospital admissions rate is 0.28 per 100,000.

It comes on the heels of data from the CDC showing that more than 90% of COVID-19 deaths, as of Dec 7, have occurred among those aged 50 or older.

“It sort of really highlights both that this virus is still around and is causing significant illness in our communities, impacting our most vulnerable population, which is the elderly population,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

Brownstein said the rising hospitalization rates showcases the lack of booster shots received by the older population.

Although the majority of seniors aged 65 and older are fully vaccinated at 93.8%, only a little more than one-third have received an updated bivalent booster dose, according to CDC data.

“The reason we haven’t seen an uptake in this population is probably multifactorial,” Brownstein said. “There’s likely misinformation or misunderstanding about the benefits of boosting.”

He continued, “You know they may have gotten the original vaccine and then the virus, so they feel like they’re [protected]. Additionally, we don’t have the same level of messaging we once did about vaccines.”

Brownstein said there is already evidence that COVID hospitalizations are trending upwards, which could continue with the upcoming holiday season as more people gather indoors — potentially unmasked — and travel.

Additionally, hospitals are feeling the crush of an early respiratory season with both flu and RSV cases filling up emergency rooms and hospital beds — and also mostly affecting seniors.

Data from the CDC shows that as of the week ending Dec. 3, the latest date for which data is available, adults aged 65 and older are being hospitalized for RSV at a weekly rate of 3.5 per 100,000.

What’s more, over the same period, for flu, senior citizens are being hospitalized at a weekly rate of 18 per 100,000, also higher than any other age group, according to the CDC.

Brownstein stressed the importance of making sure seniors are boosted, especially ahead of the holiday season, but also that they received their primary series if they haven’t already.

According to the CDC, as of Sept. 25 — the latest date for which data is available — unvaccinated seniors aged 80 and older are dying at the highest rate of 14.16 per 100,000 followed by unvaccinated seniors aged 65 to 79 at 5.68 per 100,000.

“Vaccination really remains the cornerstone of the response,” Brownstein said. “Trying to improve education and access, combatting misinformation and getting information out ahead of the holiday season.”

He added that although it’s important for this group to get the shots themselves, the rest of the community also needs to do the same, particularly because children can unknowingly pass the virus to their parents or grandparents.

“Ultimately we need to do what we can to protest our most vulnerable, the ones who may not be able to mount a good immune response to vaccines,” Brownstein said. “Of course, we also need to be appropriately cautious, making sure we’ve acting responsibly.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — Dr. Santosh Pandipati has seen up close the impact of climate change on his personal and professional life.

“I’ve taken care of patients who’ve had to flee wildfires,” the San Francisco-based physician told ABC News. “The same wildfires that led to the terrible air quality that my family and I had to breathe.”

“We understand that excess heat exposure, air pollution, particulate air pollution, especially, has adverse impacts on pregnancy outcomes and not just pregnancy outcomes,” said Pandipati, who is a maternal fetal medicine specialist in the Bay Area and has been researching the connections between climate change and health for the past five years.

Studies have found that high ambient temperature can increase the risk of preterm births and that ambient air pollution can decrease birth weight in some populations.

When speaking with new and expectant mothers, Pandipati said he leans on the studies’ findings when he discusses the spread of infectious diseases, heat and air pollution avoidance as well as disaster readiness.

“This is a topic that’s unfortunately going to impact your family,” he said. “It’s going to impact everyone’s family.”

A scientific review published in 2015 found a relationship between climate change exposure and several adverse pregnancy outcomes including eclampsia, preeclampsia, cataracts, low birthweight, preterm birth and hypertension.

A study published in 2020 found that heat exposure may have attributed to an estimated 25,000 early births per year between 1969 and 1988.

“There are significant mental health harms: anxiety, depression [and] PTSD,” Pandipati added. “We also understand that the offspring, the babies, are at risk for lower birth weight, stillbirth [and] premature birth.”

Pandipati and another researcher, David E. Abel, predict climate change and extreme weather events may be linked to increase anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders and effect women disproportionately. Research has shown that in addition to lower birthrates and preterm births, climate change can be linked to an increase in the likelihood of stillbirths due to extreme heat.

Esther McCant, a Miami-based doula, told ABC News she regularly gives her clients information about climate change and specifically how it might impact their pregnancies. A doula assists pregnant women by offering information, as well as emotional and physical support during labor.

The advice she gives expectant mothers, based in part on guidance from the Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, include hurricane preparation, the importance of hydration, how to manage extreme heat as well as tips for getting government and employer support.

In one example she gave, she evacuated from Florida to Georgia along with her expectant client and their respective children when Hurricane Irma hit Florida in 2017.

Her client was “already dealing with issues with her housing,” McCant told ABC News, and “didn’t feel safe to stay in her home.”

During the experience of evacuating, McCant realized, “that pregnancy is not often seen as a special circumstance to pay attention to during a hurricane,” she said.

For McCant, it’s a part of her work that she is expanding. “I’m actually working on training other doulas about climate change,” she said.

Despite the obstacles to climate change reduction, Pandipati is hopeful.

“We are not too far gone,” he said. “We absolutely still have the ability to mitigate and reduce the impact that we have had and to course correct.”

“I think this is an opportunity for the health care community to really speak up,” he said. “I think we can do it. It just takes the right will, and I think we can find that will.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — Justice Brooks is 19 years old and a majority of his lifetime has been spent searching for a bone marrow donor.

“I always knew that I had a medical condition and that … my life was a little bit different,” Brooks told Good Morning America.

Brooks was diagnosed with sickle cell disease when he was 11 months old. His mother Raychelle Brooks said she knew early on that something was not right.

“My child was so swollen, his face was glassy, and when I touched him, he moaned,” said Raychelle Brooks. “I was crying because my touch would make him cry louder.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sickle cell disease is made up of a group of inherited red blood cell disorders, when abnormal protein in the blood causes red blood cells to become hard, sticky and like a C-shaped farm tool called a “sickle.” As a result, the blood cells will get stuck and clog blood flow, causing severe pain.

Dr. Michelle Schoettler is a pediatric hematologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and treats patients with the disease. She said many of her patients report pain outside of the widely-used 1 to 10 pain scale.

“Many of my patients would say they have pain at 11 – beyond the scale,” said Schoettler.
To help continue to raise awareness of the bone marrow registry, GMA is partnering with Be The Match in our “One Match, Second Chance” series from September 20 through February 20 to continue to raise awareness and to help save lives. Learn how to take the first step to sign up to become a donor today.

Raychelle Brooks is the mother of Justice Brooks.

Brooks nearly came close to having a life-saving bone marrow transplant last summer, but because his donor wasn’t a perfect match, there was a complication that stopped the process.

“While I was going through the process, I caught a lung infection and they had to stop it immediately,” said Brooks.

After years of waiting, Raychelle Brooks said that moment felt like when the “Earth stopped moving.”

“I normally am very strong for my baby, but I couldn’t even look at him. It took everything out of me. It was hard to breathe,” said Raychelle Brooks. “I’ve never felt so hopeless in life. But I was so happy he pulled through.”

Sickle cell disease is most common among those of African American descent, occurring among about 1 out of every 365 Black or African-American births, according to the CDC.

Only 7% of the 9 million U.S. donors in the match registry are African American, according to Be The Match.

“If you are a Caucasian – from European descent, you have an 80+ percent chance of finding an excellent match in the registry. And if you are Black or African American like Justice, your chances are much lower – 30 percent,” said Schoettler.

As Brooks gets older, his chances in finding a successful bone marrow transplant decreases even further.

But there is still hope. This fall, NBA Celtics star Marcus Smart became an advocate for “Be The Match,” to help spread the word of people like Brooks.

Smart said the cause “hits home” because he lost his oldest brother and mother to cancer.

“So for me to be able to join and educate people and get that notice out there, that we need this to increase when it comes to getting matches,” said Smart.

Brooks and Smart were able to meet up and discuss ways to further raise awareness for the registry.

“It’s just really great to see the work that he’s doing and continuing to stay positive with everything he’s going through in life,” said Smart. “To this day we still check up on each other.”

Brooks said he’s grateful for how far he’s come, but continues to look at the future.

“I’ve just made a bunch of memories. I’ll never forget these things, so I really appreciate Marcus,” he said. “I feel hopeful that one day I’ll have that perfect match.”

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(NEW YORK) — A couple of months ago, the mpox outbreak seemed poised to overwhelm the United States. Cases were, in some instances, doubling every week with no signs of slowing down.

However, the outbreak has taken a dramatic turn in the right direction.

The average number of daily cases has fallen to six, as of Dec. 7, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What’s more, the Biden administration announced last week it would let the emergency declaration expire in January.

Public health experts told ABC News that the combination of people changing their behaviors and a strong vaccination campaign helped beat back the disease.

“This really, I think, is a good success story of patients, and really the general public, taking steps to protect themselves,” Dr. Dana Mazo, an infectious diseases specialist and clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health, told ABC News. “For patients, hearing what the data is, hearing what the recommendations were and really doing what they could to protect themselves and their communities.”

Vaccine rollout

Currently, the JYNNEOS vaccine, a two-dose vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent smallpox and mpox, is the only vaccine being used in the U.S.

Data from Africa has shown two doses of JYNNEOS are at least 85% effective in preventing mpox infection.

To increase the number of JYNNEOS doses available, the FDA authorized a proven strategy in August to inject the vaccine intradermally, just below the first layer of skin, rather than subcutaneously, or under all the layers of skin.

This allows one vial of vaccine to be given out as five separate doses rather than a single dose.

Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told ABC News that during the early weeks of the outbreak, there were concerns around vaccine supply, so only those with limited or suspected exposures were recommended for vaccination.

“But then as the supply was expanded through the intradermal dosing, it became more feasible, especially in those cities where there were the highest numbers, to broaden vaccination to people potentially at risk, and even without known exposures or suspected exposures,” he said. “And I think that did play an important role.”

As of Dec. 6, more than 1.1 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the U.S., CDC data shows.

Public changing their behaviors

The experts said another reason for the decline is that Americans who were the most at-risk changed their behaviors.

“The most important [factor] was really effective messaging by public health authorities in close collaboration with affected communities, to help educate people about mpox in a way that wasn’t stigmatizing,” said Kuritzkes.

He continued, “And in order for people to be able to both recognize the signs and symptoms of infection, and then not only get treatment for themselves, but take appropriate measures to prevent transmission to others, but also ways in which people if not yet exposed and not yet infected, could minimize their chances of becoming infected with mpox.”

The outbreak has primarily been concentrated in men who have sex with men, a group that includes people who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary, although health officials have said anyone — regardless of sexual orientation — is at risk if they have direct contact with an infected patient.

But this group listened to doctors’ advice on how to lower their risk and followed suit, experts said.

A joint survey from the CDC, Emory University and Johns Hopkins University found about one-half of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men reduced their number of sexual partners, one-time anonymous partners, and reduced use of dating apps.

“So really, people responded to the data that was coming out saying that this bulk of the transmission is from casual sexual encounters, and really changed their behavior,” Mazo said.

Not taking foot off the gas

Experts told ABC News even if the number of cases has substantially declined, it doesn’t mean that the threat of mpox has been eliminated.

“I would be cautious about claiming victory, I think it would mean that we were really successful in bringing this epidemic to a close, but we need to remain vigilant,” Kuritzkes said.

They also encourage Americans to get vaccinated against mpox if they are at risk.

Although the disease does not spread through airborne droplets but rather from close, personal, often skin-to-skin interactions, including hugging, touching and prolonged face-to-face contact, the risk is still higher as Americans gather together for the holidays.

Vaccination “is still important, especially because we will see what happens, in the wintertime, when people perhaps are going to be inside more and sort of sharing spaces, again, holiday parties, other things,” Mazo said. “I would still recommend to my patients who are at risk to consider vaccination and discuss vaccination with them, because it would be the best way to protect themselves.”

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