(NEW YORK) — In recent years, tinted sunscreens have been rising in popularity, in large part because of their ability to better match a person’s skin tone without leaving a visible white film on the skin.
Responding to customer demand, large skin care brands have recently debuted new tinted sunscreen products that don’t leave a streaky white appearance on the skin.
With these sunscreens being tailored to blend in with the skin, experts are hopeful that this would encourage more people to use them, including those with darker skin tones.
“I think tinted sunscreen is absolutely changing the game in terms of inclusivity,” said Dr. Sonia Batra, a board-certified dermatologist in Santa Monica and a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Southern California. “It’s also easier to recommend and convince patients to use it as a daily form of protection when it doesn’t look so obvious on their skin and they’re able to blend it and they feel like there are formulations that have been created with them in mind.”
What are tinted sunscreens?
Unlike many traditional sunscreens, tinted sunscreens have the added benefit of protecting against visible light, which can accelerate skin darkening and pigmentation.
“By tailoring the sunscreen formulations to an individual’s skin tone, people are more likely to protect themselves from the sun, therefore reducing their risk of skin cancer,” Dr. Henry Lim, a board-certified dermatologist and the former president of the American Academy of Dermatology, said in a statement.
In a presentation on tinted sunscreens at the recent AAD Annual Meeting in Boston, Lim explained these new developments in sunscreen are now addressing the issue of sunscreen not matching some people’s skin tone.
Like traditional sunscreens products, they also help block ultraviolet radiation, which causes skin cancer and sunburn.
“It’s very important to protect against visible light because we know that in darker-skinned individuals once the skin becomes dark, for example from blemishes from acne, it will take a long time for it to go away,” Lim said. “So that is the reason that protection against visible light is important. That is the reason that tinted sunscreen is quite relevant now.”
Experts said the option of tinted sunscreens is making sunscreens more inclusive and usable for consumers.
“Accessibility has not been really appreciated for many years,” said Dr. Adam Friedman, a board-certified dermatologist, professor and chair of dermatology at George Washington School of Medicine. “But now I think that there is a real drive to make sunscreen use inclusive by providing sunscreens that are appropriate for everybody.”
What to look for in your sunscreens?
With the many new sunscreens on the market, there are some recommendations on what to look for when buying your next sunscreen.
Here are three tips:
1. If you want a tinted sunscreen, look for the word “tinted” on the label.
“Many of them, if they’re tinted will have on the front, a shade like light, medium, medium dark, or they may have a number which has like a little color associated with it,” Batra said.
2. Use a broad-spectrum, water-resistant SPF 30 or higher sunscreen. It is still important and recommended by dermatologists to use any sunscreens that are broad-spectrum, water-resistant and have an SPF of 30 or higher, in addition to wearing sun-protective clothing like breathable long sleeves and wide brim hats.
The SPF number or whether it’s broad-spectrum or water-resistant can also be found on the label. Importantly, everyone should wear sunscreen every day of the year, regardless of the weather and regardless of their skin tone.
3. Try a tinted sunscreen to see how it matches your skin tone. Experts said the appropriate tinted sunscreen shade varies from person to person, depending on each individual’s skin tone and undertone, which is the hue underneath the surface of the skin and affects the overall skin appearance.
The best way to find which one works best for you is trying it first, according to Friedman.
“I think a good rule of thumb whenever trying anything new is exactly that — do a trial, do an experiment,” he said. “Really, the best sunscreen is the one that you’re comfortable using again and again overtime.”
(WASHINGTON) — The White House says extending the federal mask mandate for airlines and other forms of transportation is still possible despite urging from GOP lawmakers and transportation industry leaders to end the measure, which is set to expire next week.
The decision could be influenced by an increase in COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and a large increase in travelers. The TSA screened 2.6 million travelers on March 20 — a record since the pandemic began and an upward trend many experts expect to continue as summer approaches.
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said extending the public health order is “absolutely on the table” on NBC’s “Today Show” on Monday. Dr. Jha was asked whether rising case numbers could justify extending the order.
“This is a decision that the CDC Director Dr. Walensky is going to make,” Dr. Jha said. “I know the CDC is working on developing a scientific framework for how to answer that. We are going to see that framework come out I think in the next few days.”
CEOs of airlines including Alaska Air, American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue Airways and United sent a letter to President Joe Biden in late March asking him to roll back the mask mandate on airlines as well as the testing requirements for passengers. They pointed to the efficacy of vaccines and to the “burden” enforcing such measures puts on airline staff.
“Now is the time for the Administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions – including the international pre-departure testing requirement and the federal mask mandate – that are no longer aligned with the realities of the current epidemiological environment,” the letter said.
“Importantly, the effectiveness and availability of high-quality masks for those who wish to wear them gives passengers the ability to further protect themselves if they choose to do so,” industry leaders said in the letter. “It makes no sense that people are still required to wear masks on airplanes, yet are allowed to congregate in crowded restaurants, schools and at sporting events without masks, despite none of these venues having the protective air filtration system that aircraft do.”
GOP Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Roger Wicker R-Miss., as well as Reps. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and Garret Graves, R-La., also called on the White House to roll back the order in a letter last week.
“At a time when operators across all modes of our Nation’s transportation system are grappling with skyrocketing fuel prices and the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the Administration’s policies should reflect nothing less than steadfast support for the transportation sector’s rapid recovery. To that end, we urge you to join us in supporting our Nation’s transportation operators, employees, and users by ending immediately the Federal transportation mask mandate, or allowing it to expire once and for all,” the letter from lawmakers said.
Airlines for America, a group representing major airlines, and other travel industry groups also sent a letter to Dr. Jha last week urging the administration to roll back the COVID mitigation measures.
“Simply put, the pre-departure testing requirement and the mask mandate no longer provide the public health benefits they once did,” the letter said. “Today, these measures are imposing significant costs on the traveling public, airline employees, and the American travel and tourism industries.”
(NEW YORK) — Opioid overdose deaths in adolescents rose far more rapidly than the general population between 2019 and 2021, according to a new study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
The study found that deaths from opioid overdoses in teens ages 14 to 18 increased by 94% between 2019 and 2020 and by an additional 20% between 2020 and 2021.
One specific driver of these deaths was fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that the Drug Enforcement Administration says is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine.
The researchers, who hailed from multiple institutions, found that adolescent fentanyl-related overdose deaths leapt 350% over the study period. Overall, fentanyl was associated with 77% of adolescent overdose deaths in 2021.
Additionally, specific youth faced elevated risk. Opioid overdose deaths were higher in adolescents from American Indian and Alaska Native and Latinx communities.
The findings come amid the widespread — and rapid — proliferation of fentanyl across the country.
According to the DEA, the number of forensic drug reports testing positive for fentanyl has skyrocketed in recent years from under 20,000 in 2015 to 117,045 in 2020. A recent study from the National Institutes of Health found that the number of individual fentanyl pills seized by law enforcement increased nearly 50-fold from the first quarter of 2018 to the last quarter of 2021.
Even though the adolescent rates outpaced them, adults haven’t been spared from the rising ubiquity of fentanyl. Provisional data released by the CDC in March showed that overdose deaths across age groups had reached record highs, taking the lives of nearly 106,000 Americans within the prior year.
These deaths were in large part driven by fentanyl.
A separate CDC study showed that of the more than 100,000 people who died from drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021, nearly two-thirds were linked to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
Overall, deaths linked to synthetic opioids have nearly doubled in Americans of any age over the past two years, the provisional data showed.
Advocates say that the record highs in overdose deaths highlight the importance of adopting new strategies to combat the opiate epidemic.
“Urgent action is needed to address America’s spiraling overdose crisis, including expanding access to opioid addiction treatment and investing in harm reduction,” the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health care research organization, wrote in a February report, “but these lifesaving tools continue to be underutilized and resistance remains strong in many areas of the country.”
The authors of the study echoed those recommendations for youth specifically.
“Increasing adolescent overdose deaths, in the context of increasing availability of illicit fentanyls, highlight the need for accurate harm-reduction education for adolescents and greater access to naloxone and services for mental health and substance use behavior,” the authors wrote.
According to guidance by the U.S. Surgeon General, individual citizens also have an important role to play. The guidance recommends that individuals learn the signs of opioid overdose — including slowed breathing and pinpoint pupils — and get trained in the use of naloxone, a potent antidote for opioid overdoses.
“Knowing how to use naloxone and keeping it within reach can save a life,” the guidance reads.
Eli Cahan, MS, is a contributor to the ABC News medical unit. He is a fourth year medical student at NYU School of Medicine and will be starting his residency in pediatrics at UCSF in June.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Health officials are warning Florida residents about a “large” outbreak of a potentially fatal bacterial illness known as meningococcal disease that’s primarily affecting gay and bisexual men.
So far this year, there have been 21 confirmed cases of meningococcal disease as of Monday, according to Florida Department of Health data. That’s higher than the state’s five-year average of cases of the disease.
“[Florida Department of Health] epidemiologists are investigating each case as well as contacting people with potential or direct exposure to known cases to provide them with information and treatment options,” the department said in a statement.
Most of the cases are in central Florida, and more than half are in people between the ages of 20 and 39, according to state health department data.
The “large, ongoing” outbreak is primarily among men who have sex with men, including those living with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC recently issued an alert on the outbreak, urging gay and bisexual men and men who have sex with men who live in Florida or who plan to travel to the state to get vaccinated against the disease. The outbreak is primarily among residents, though it has affected some people who have traveled to Florida, the CDC said.
There also have been cases of meningococcal disease reported among Florida college students in recent months, though “there is no evidence to suggest that the cases among college students are related to the larger outbreak,” the CDC said.
Meningococcal disease is a rare but serious disease that is primarily spread by close or direct contact, such as kissing. Symptoms include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity, confusion and rash.
Meningococcal disease can commonly lead to two potentially fatal infections: meningitis — when the lining of the brain and spinal cord become infected — and bloodstream infection.
Those who contract the disease could suffer from hearing loss, brain damage, kidney damage, loss of limbs or nervous system problems.
“Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect against meningococcal disease,” the Florida Department of Health said.
Florida health officials are encouraging men who have sex with men, people living with HIV, immunocompromised individuals and college students to get vaccinated against the disease amid the outbreak. Anyone in those groups who more than five years ago received their MenACWY vaccine — one of two types of meningococcal vaccines available in the U.S. — is also encouraged to get vaccinated.
People planning to travel to Florida should get vaccinated at least two weeks before traveling, the CDC advised.
College students may choose to get a MenB vaccine, which is available for those between the ages of 16 and 23, to protect against meningococcal disease, the CDC said.
(NEW YORK) — Cases of several sexually transmitted diseases continued to increase during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new federal report.
Published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tuesday, the report found STD cases fell during the early months of 2020 but resurged later in the year.
Overall, 2.4 million STD cases were reported in the U.S. in 2020, a slight decrease from the 2.5 million cases reported in 2019.
However, the decreases observed in early 2020 may have been a result of significant reductions in screening and reporting associated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC noted.
“Many jurisdictions reported critical effects on staffing and testing and treatment supplies, straining an already crumbling public health infrastructure,” the agency wrote in the report, meaning “COVID-19 significantly affected STD surveillance and prevention efforts.”
Specifically, cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and congenital syphilis were higher than levels seen in 2019 despite lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and school closures.
Cases of chlamydia — which represent about two-thirds of total STD cases — were lower in 2020.
“There were moments in 2020 when it felt like the world was standing still, but STDs weren’t,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said in a statement. “The unrelenting momentum of the STD epidemic continued even as STD prevention services were disrupted.”
In terms of specific diseases, the report found cases of gonorrhea were up 10% in 2020, from about 616,000 to more than 677,000. Additionally, cases of syphilis increased 7% from nearly 39,000 to more than 41,000.
Cases of congenital syphilis, which occurs when a mother passes on the disease to her baby during pregnancy, spiked 15% from about 1,900 in 2019 to more than 2,100. This occurred in the broader context of what the CDC has called a “resurgence” in congenital syphilis with annual case counts skyrocketing 235% since 2016.
The CDC said these increases are particularly “worrisome” because congenital syphilis — which is easily preventable with screening and treatment — has serious risks including life-long physical and mental health risks for babies, miscarriage and stillbirth.
Because congenital syphilis occurs in communities of color at rates several times higher than among whites, officials fear the rises in the disease spreading from mother to child will perpetuate health disparities.
“This … highlights the nation’s failure to provide sufficient, quality sexual health care for everyone who needs it,” Dr. Leandro Mena, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, said during a media telebriefing Tuesday.
On its face, the one silver lining of the report found chlamydia cases decreased 13%, to about 1.6 million from 1.8 million.
However, the CDC cautioned that, because the disease is typically asymptomatic, these decreases were more likely due to screening shortfalls than to drops in infections.
During the telebriefing, the agency elaborated on some of the causes of the shortcomings in screening.
Mermin said “STD program resources were heavily diverted to address COVID-19” — including shunting of contact tracing staff. Half of programs discontinued STD prevention field work during most of 2020.
Additionally, Mena said more than half of the programs reported shortages in testing and treatment supplies during the pandemic.
The report also addressed which groups saw the highest rates of STDs.
Half of all STDs reported in the U.S. in 2020 were among 15-to-24-year-olds.
STD rates were also higher across the board among certain racial and ethnic groups – including Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaskan Native – compared to white and Asian Americans.
Gay and bisexual men were also disproportionately affected — particularly by syphilis — than other groups.
Rates in certain regions also soared far above the national average. For example, in Mississippi, rates of chlamydia were 167% higher than the national average, and rates of gonorrhea were 224% higher.
Similar patterns were seen in other states throughout the South, including Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
If the country fails to “rebuild, innovate, and expand” STD prevention resources in the coming years, Mermin said he expects STD rates will continue to rise.
“STDs are not patiently waiting for the pandemic to end, and neither can we,” the agency wrote in its report.
(OKLAHOMA CITY) — It will now be a felony to perform an abortion in Oklahoma under a bill signed into law Tuesday by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.
The bill passed in the state House last week without any debate after passing the Senate last year.
Under the bill, any medical provider who performs an abortion would face a fine of $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. The only exceptions for performing an abortion would be if the mother’s life is in danger.
The new law is scheduled to take effect in August, but it is expected to be challenged in court.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Center for Reproductive Rights have said they will “challenge any ban that is signed into law in Oklahoma this session.”
“The law signed today is not yet in effect, and abortion remains legal in Oklahoma,” Emily Wales, interim CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said in a statement.
The new abortion restriction in Oklahoma is particularly significant because of the outsized role the state has played in providing abortion access to women in the region since last year, when Texas enacted a law that bans nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
So far in 2022, the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Oklahoma that offer abortion services have seen more patients from Texas than from Oklahoma, according to Wales.
“We know that patients who need abortion are not going to stop seeking it, it’s just going to get harder and harder for them to access,” Wales told ABC News last week, when the bill passed the Oklahoma state House.. “Right now, patients may be traveling a few hundred miles from home, five or six hours, they’re going to add another five or six hours to get to the Kansas City area or to Wichita, and for some patients, that won’t be feasible.”
Dr. Christina Bourne, medical director of Trust Women, which operates an abortion care clinic in Oklahoma City and one in Wichita, Kansas, said the clinics are having to turn people away because of the demand.
“We are essentially having to turn the vast majority of people away from getting abortions because we just cannot keep up with the volume,” Bourne said last week. “We could be doing abortions 24 hours a day and not keep up with the volume that is demanded of us.”
The Oklahoma legislature is also still considering more legislation to restrict abortion access, including a bill that passed the House last month that is modeled after Texas’s law and allows for citizens to sue for up to $10,000 anyone who performs or “aids and abets” an abortion. The Oklahoma Senate has also passed several anti-abortion measures recently, including a bill that allows for private lawsuits.
Abortion access at a greater distance
Experts say that in light of more restrictions, women who have the means will have to travel further for abortion care, while those who don’t will not get care.
“We expect that the facilities that remain open in other states will be overwhelmed, as we have already seen with Senate Bill 8, with residents from other states coming in to get care,” said Dr. Kari White, an associate professor and faculty research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. “And there are some people for whom these longer distances are are just going to be impossible, and they will consider either other ways to try to end their pregnancies by ordering medications online or potentially doing something unsafe, and other people will be forced to continue their pregnancies.”
White, who is also the lead investigator of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, has studied the impact of Texas’ six-week abortion ban. According to her research, around 1,400 Texans have gone to another state for abortion care each month since SB8 went into effect in September, with 45% traveling to Oklahoma.
“We’ve certainly heard from some of the people we’ve interviewed in our study that they were willing to wait a little bit longer to get an abortion in Oklahoma because they could travel to Oklahoma, but it was too far for them to go to a state like New Mexico,” she said. “They just couldn’t make it work in terms of the additional cost, the time away from work or their child care responsibilities.”
New Mexico and Colorado, which have less stringent abortion restrictions, are likely to become hotspots for women in the region who have the means to travel for abortion care.
Those states have also felt the impact from SB8, according to Planned Parenthood, which reported a more than 1000% increase in abortion patients with Texas zip codes at Planned Parenthood health centers in Colorado and a more than 100% increase at Planned Parenthood health centers in New Mexico compared to the previous year.
Other states that surround Oklahoma — Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas — face their own restrictions on abortion access and are dealing with already overwhelmed systems, experts say.
The two Planned Parenthood clinics that provided abortion care in Missouri have been closed in the law few years due to state restrictions, according to Wales, who added, “Missourians for a long time have been living the Texas crisis, where the majority of them are forced to flee their home state for care already.”
Arkansas has around three abortion clinics statewide currently, while Kansas has four, according to Sandy Brown, president of the Kansas Abortion Fund, a volunteer-run, nonprofit organization that helps fund Kansan women seeking abortion care.
“Our clinics here have been swamped,” Brown said. “They just can’t absorb the volume of people coming in from other states. Now, if Oklahoma happens, it’s really, really going to be bad, because we already can’t almost handle the patients that are coming in now.”
More states expected to act after anticipated Supreme Court ruling
Currently, it is unconstitutional to pass abortion bans before a fetus is viable — anywhere from 22 to 26 weeks.
In May or June, the Supreme Court will announce its ruling on a 15-week ban in Mississippi and whether or not it is constitutional. If the Supreme Court determines the ban is constitutional, it could mean Roe v. Wade is either overturned or fundamentally weakened.
More than half of the nation’s 50 states are prepared to ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.
If that happens, another factor to watch will be whether states that have banned abortion make it increasingly difficult for their residents to obtain abortions in other states, Mary Ziegler, visiting professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and author of “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present,” told ABC News earlier this year.
In the meantime, abortion rights advocates and providers say they worry that the far distances people are having to travel to seek abortion care means the most vulnerable people, such as those without the financial resources to travel, are being left behind.
“Traveling is an option and has always been an option for affluent white people,” Bourne said. “Through abortion restrictions, we are legislating people who experience intersecting identities, poverty, people of color, queer folks, people with many children, people with busy lives who are going to be left out of that and forced to carry a pregnancy to term that perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have.”
Wales, of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said that as clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas have seen increased demand for abortion services, that has resulted in a delay in services for the type of general reproductive health care, like contraception and cancer screening, that makes up the majority of the clinics’ work.
“The increased need in abortion and the restrictions from the states … those things have pushed family planning patients and other types of care back,” Wales said. “It also means our family planning patients are coming in more concerned, more confused about what is available to them, because they just understand that rights are being restricted.”
“It has created a great deal of fear, I think, among the people we see,” she said.
ABC News’ Mary Ketakos contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A 27-year-old New York man can walk less than two years after being paralyzed when he was hit by a car while on a bicycle.
Cory Moses, of Brooklyn, was on his way to meet his then-partner on Oct. 25, 2020, when he said someone in a parked car opened a car door into him, sending him flying into the street, where he was hit by another car.
As a result of the accident, Moses, who had just celebrated his 25th birthday, suffered six fractured ribs, two broken arms and a fractured spine, which caused paralysis.
“I remember not wanting to look down. I thought my lower half had been severed,” Moses, who said he eventually looked down at his legs after a bystander told him he was not bleeding, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “The lower half of my body was at a weird angle and I definitely knew something was wrong.”
“I felt the feeling drain from my legs,” he said.
Moses said he underwent three surgeries and spent two weeks in the intensive care unit. Before his first surgery, Moses said he was told he may never walk again.
“My first surgeon said she’d stabilize my spine as much as she could but from the damage I probably wouldn’t be able to walk or move my legs again,” he said. “They added two rods and eight screws to my back to stabilize it, which took about 12 to 13 hours in total because of how severe the damage was.”
After the surgery, Moses said he was not able to move his left leg at all but could very slightly move his right leg, which gave him and his medical team hope.
“[The surgeon] said that with that, there was still some connection,” Moses said. “They couldn’t tell me how much of a recovery I’d make, but I’d get something back.”
After his first three surgeries, Moses was transferred to The Mount Sinai Hospital, where he underwent two more surgeries and spent nearly three months recovering.
Moses said he realized how severe and life-changing his injuries would be, but he remained determined to overcome them.
“Within my first week or so at Mount Sinai is when I got myself into a place of peace and an understanding that if I’m going to get out of the hospital and into rehab that my mind and my focus has to be there. I can’t lose that to my feelings or depression,” he said.
Moses, who was working as a contractor for a construction business at the time of his injury, took on his rehabilitation work as a full-time job. He learned how to navigate life in a wheelchair, while also practicing on an exoskeleton program, which is a machine that helps patients with spinal cord injuries relearn how to walk.
“I put a lot of work into making my recovery fun,” he said. “I never wanted it to feel like a chore.”
Even after Moses was discharged in January 2021, three months after his accident, he went back to the hospital several days a week for physical therapy, according to Dr. Liz Pike, physical therapist with the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance at The Mount Sinai Hospital.
“It takes a lot of time for the body to heal just from a neurological injury and he put in the work and really listened to his body and did all the steps and kind of built the foundation blocks to get to the bigger movements, like walking and balancing,” said Pike. “He took his off time to work on strengthening and stretching and just being healthy in general, like eating well.”
Moses set a goal for himself to be able to walk before the one-year anniversary of his accident. He reached that goal last October, taking his first steps on his own in his apartment.
“I remember feeling really proud of myself,” he said. “It just reassured me that really having a strong mentality makes a difference.”
Dr. Angela Riccobono, rehab psychologist with the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance at The Mount Sinai Hospital, who worked with Moses, said in her 20-plus years of experience, she’s never seen someone overcome adversity with “such grace and a positive mindset.”
“He understood early on that with the right mindset and the right people around you, there was little that could stop him,” Riccobono said of Moses.
Defying the odds, Moses has progressed to being able to walk as far as 10 city blocks on his own, according to Pike.
“I think they were hopeful he would be able to use some assisted device to do some standing and some activities like that but were unable to say how far he’d be able to walk, like he is now,” Pike said.
Moses still utilizes crutches and leg braces to walk if he is going a longer distance, and relies on his wheelchair at times, too, as he continues to build his strength.
He lives on his own and works at a local school while also working to fulfill his next dream, competing in the Paralympic Games in fencing, a sport Moses said he had always wanted to play as a kid but was never able to because it was not accessible.
After the accident, Moses got a chance to try fencing thanks to his friend, Curtis McDowald, a member of the U.S. Fencing team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, who invited him to a training facility in New York City.
Moses committed himself to the sport and took home two medals in his first competition in January in California.
“The goal is Paralympics,” said Moses. “I’m the type that whenever I do something, I want to do it to the maximum.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — Philadelphia has become the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate, following an increase in COVID-19 infections, in recent weeks.
Beginning April 18, masks will be required in all indoor public spaces, including schools, child care settings, businesses, restaurants and government buildings.
“I sincerely wish we didn’t have to do this again. I wish this pandemic was over just as much as any of you, but I am very worried about our vulnerable neighbors and loved ones. My hope that our actions today will slow the spread of COVID and help us avoid seeing our ERs, once again, gets so crowded, that people can’t get timely care when they need it,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said during a press conference on Monday.
The city will implement a one-week “education period” to ensure that all residents are made aware of the change in protocols. For now, however, there is no vaccine or testing requirement for establishments that serve food or beverages.
Over the last week, new cases per capita have increased by more than 50%, and daily case rates have risen past 100, according to city data. However, overall, COVID-19 related hospitalizations remain low.
“We hope that by having folks masks up whenever they’re in public indoor spaces, we can get ahead of the wave and keep it from reaching a peak like we saw in January with the omicron variant. If we could do that we can literally save the lives of vulnerable Philadelphians,” Bettigole said.
Bettigole said that at this time, there is no reason to “panic or to avoid activities.” She stressed that the city remains open, but wearing masks will allow those activities to continue, while keeping all residents safe.
“If we start to see a different pattern than that of previous waves of the virus, we’ll review our metrics to see if there are opportunities to be less restrictive,” Bettigole added.
Several colleges and universities have also moved to reinstate masking requirements, given the increasing number of students and staff testing positive on-campus.
On Sunday, Columbia University in New York City announced it would require masks again in classrooms — a policy that is expected to last through the end of the semester.
“Continued caution in certain situations remains extremely important, particularly in indoor social settings when the vaccination status of attendees is unknown or uncertain,” Donna Lynne, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said in a statement.
Between Apr. 4 and Apr. 10, 133 students have tested positive — the highest weekly total since mid-January, according to university data.
Last week, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., temporarily reinstated an indoor mask requirement for its main and medical campuses, after seeing a “significant increase” in COVID-19 cases on-campus.
“This increase is partly due to the impact of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant. BA.2 is now the dominant strain in the United States, including in DC and on our campuses,” school officials wrote in a statement last week. “These circumstances present a challenge, but we have learned to adjust our mitigation measures to respond to changing conditions throughout the pandemic. Another adjustment is needed now to curb transmission on campus.”
In recent weeks, a flurry of positive COVID-19 infections has disrupted life in Washington, D.C., as many top officials and politicians have tested positive for the virus.
American University, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, have all also issued similar masking requirements.
However, school officials reported that there have been no known cases of serious illness.
(NEW YORK) — April 11-17, 2022, is Black Maternal Health Week, a time to put a spotlight on and have a national conversation about Black maternal health in the U.S., according to Black Mamas Matter Alliance, a nonprofit organization that founded the initiative five years ago.
Naomi, a 37-year-old Black woman from Portland, Oregon, will have a doula by her side when she gives birth to her seventh child, a daughter, later this month.
By using a doula — a trained professional who provides support to moms before, during and after childbirth — Naomi is part of a growing trend of Black women who see having a doula, particularly a Black doula, as a potentially lifesaving advocate during birth.
“I know the intensity of what’s happening can lead to a lot of complications,” Naomi, who asked that only her first name be used, told Good Morning America. “When you’re tapped out because you’re having contractions that take your breath away, you want someone who can step in and knows what to do and knows what you want.”
As a Black woman in the U.S. — which continues to have the highest rate of maternal mortality among developed nations — Naomi is more than twice as likely to die during childbirth or in the months after than white, Asian or Latina women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Black women like Naomi are also more likely than white, Asian or Latina women to die from pregnancy-related complications regardless of their education level or their income, data shows.
Naomi said she only learned about doulas eight years ago, when she was pregnant with her sixth child and needed someone to be a support person in the delivery room. She was able to access a doula free of cost thanks to a local nonprofit organization, Black Parent Initiative (BPI), that matches Black women with Black doulas in hopes of improving their odds during pregnancy and delivery.
“All those times I gave birth, I wish I would have had a doula,” said Naomi, who had her first child in her late teens. “I wish it was available 20 years ago like it is now.”
Linda Bryant-Daaka, a labor and postpartum doula and manager BPI’s doula program, said interest in the program has increased every year since its founding in 2016, and especially during the past year of the coronavirus pandemic, which both disproportionately impacted Black people and put a glaring spotlight on racial disparities in health care.
“What we’ve heard from women is that there was so much stress around the pandemic and they had so many family members pass away, they now want to use these services,” said Bryant-Daaka. “And they want someone who has that shared, common background or lived experience as them.”
How doulas can help Black pregnant women
Why Black women die at a higher rate than any other race during childbirth is the result of a web of factors, experts say.
Pregnancy-related deaths are defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or within a year of the end of pregnancy from pregnancy complications, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiological effects of pregnancy, according to the CDC.
One reason for the disparity is that more Black women of childbearing age have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which increases the risk of pregnancy-related complications like preeclampsia and possibly the need for emergency C-sections, according to the CDC.
But there are socioeconomic circumstances and structural inequities that put Black women at greater risk for those chronic conditions, data shows. And Black women often have inadequate access to care throughout pregnancy which can further complicate their conditions, according to a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Anecdotal reports also show that the concerns of Black women experiencing negative symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum are specifically ignored by some physicians until the woman’s conditions significantly worsen, at which point it may be too late to prevent a deadlier outcome.
That is where doulas come in, according to Tracie Collins, a doula and CEO and founder of the National Black Doulas Association (NBDA), a nonprofit organization that connects Black birthing families with Black doulas.
“Black women hire doulas because they want to make sure that they live,” said Collins. “It’s not a status quo for us.”
“It’s about, ‘I’m getting ready to go into an experience that I know I need support in and I’m unfamiliar with processes. I’m unfamiliar with what I’m about to face. I’m unfamiliar with bureaucracy and the hospital procedures. I’m unfamiliar with the personnel. I’m just unfamiliar and I want to make sure that not only are my voice and my wishes respected, but that I have somebody there to help advocate so everybody can be healthy on the other side,'” she said.
Dr. Ashanda Saint Jean, a board-certified OBGYN and chair of OBGYN for the Health Alliance Hospitals and Westchester Center Medical Health Network in New York, notes that doulas are a source of non-medical support for pregnant women before, during and after childbirth.
“A doula is a support person who has been trained and educated in labor and delivery,” said Saint Jean. “I’ve had a number of Black patients feel that having a doula is an extra layer of support where they’re able to more ask questions about their birthing experience and explore all measures to ensure a healthy outcome.”
In Naomi’s experience, she and her doula created a birthing plan so that Naomi’s doctors and partner would know what she wanted, and the doula made sure the plan was executed during labor.
“With a doula, I can relax and focus on labor,” said Naomi. “She can even tell my partner things like, ‘Rub her back right here.'”
Dr. Jacquelyn McMillian-Bohler, a certified nurse-midwife and assistant professor in Duke University’s school of nursing, describes doulas as bridging the communication gap between health care providers and Black female patients.
“Our health literacy is poor across the board, and then when you add racism on top of that, it just creates another layer,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing with the doula, we’re trying to attack that health literacy piece that really affects outcomes.”
Studies show that continued support like doulas for pregnant women can help reduce the rate of C-sections, which are higher among Black women.
The postpartum care offered by doulas also helps to increase the rates of breastfeeding, which improves health outcomes for new moms and babies, and decreases the rates of postpartum complications, like blood clotting and blood hemorrhaging, both of which impact Black postpartum women, data shows.
Stephanie Devane-Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor at Vanderbilt University’s school of nursing, said she sees doulas as filling a lifesaving role in the birthing process for Black women.
“It takes a village not only to raise a child, but also to give birth,” said Devane-Johnson. “What we’re trying to accomplish here is to create the village to support Black mothers.”
An effort to get more Black doulas for Black women
Devane-Johnson and McMillian-Bohler are among the health experts leading the fight to get more Black doulas trained to meet the need of expectant Black women.
They and other experts point to the issue of racial bias in medicine and say it is critical to have doulas who understand and share the same lived experiences as their clients.
“It’s very important that we have health care providers that look like the community we serve and birth workers that look like the community that we serve,” said Devane-Johnson. “I still actively practice at Vanderbilt University and it’s amazing how Black patients, whenever I walk into a room they’re like, ‘Where did you come from?'”
“It gives them a sense of comfort,” she said.
Venus Standard, assistant clinical professor in the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine’s department of family medicine, recently received a $75,000 grant to train Black doulas, a program she is working on alongside Devane-Johnson and McMillian-Bohler.
The funding will allow the trio to recruit and train 20 Black women to earn doula certification — which can cost hundreds of dollars and is often a barrier to entry for Black women — and also provide business and marketing seminars to “help the newly-trained doulas establish viable businesses,” according to UNC.
“There’s a lack of trust in within the Black community toward the medical community,” said Standard. “There is a better trust value when [a Black pregnant woman] knows that you’re going to give them accurate information and information that’s needed for them and their particular situation, especially if her provider team does not look like her.”
McMillian-Bohler pointed out the trust factor between doulas and patients is especially important because the birthing process is so personal.
“You think about someone being in your intimate space, being with you in your home and potentially coming to the hospital and and sitting in a room with you for 20 hours,” she said. “It can be a hard sell so that’s why this grant is so important and projects like this are important, so that not only do people know doulas are out there, but that we’re growing the body of doulas that look like the people we are caring for.”
A help, but not a complete solution to the maternal mortality crisis
Health care providers who are on the front lines of helping Black pregnant women describe a heartbreaking situation of watching women live in fear during what it supposed to be a joyous time.
“I cannot have another Black patient come to me and say, ‘I’m scared I’m going to die having this baby,'” said Saint Jean, the OBGYN in New York. “It breaks my heart that in 2021 we still have women in the United States afraid that they will die in childbirth.”
And while having a doula is helpful for Black mothers, it is not a cure-all for the maternal mortality crisis in the U.S., experts say.
For one, doulas can cost upwards of $1,000 per birth. While there are efforts to have doulas funded by Medicaid and more insurance plans and there are initiatives like the Black Parent Initiative (BPI) in Oregon that offers doulas free of charge, the access is not equal, according to BPI’s Bryant-Daaka.
“Everyone should be able to have a doula, no matter what the cost is,” she said. “If we know that these services are helpful and are going to save lives and reduce cost on the backend, why would you not want them offered to women who are giving birth?”
Having doulas present is also not going to eliminate all of the underlying issues that put Black pregnant women in more danger, according to McMillian-Bohler.
“Black doulas are not going to fix the oppression and discrimination and those things that are still happening,” she said. “Because what you hear [from Black women] that’s very consistent is, ‘I don’t feel heard, ‘I’m not listened to;’ ‘I don’t feel comfortable explaining how I’m feeling because I’m not taken as seriously as someone else.'”
“We have example after example after example of where that has happened, and until we get to that issue, it’s not going to go away,” she said.
ABC News’ Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, Dr. Alexis E. Carrington and Danielle Genet contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — COVID-19 cases are rising in Los Angeles County as the BA.2 variant continues to spread throughout the United States.
Data from the L.A. County Department of Public Health shows 1,088 new cases of the virus were recorded Thursday with a seven-day rolling average of 841 new cases per day.
That average is a 40% increase from the average of 601 cases per day recorded two weeks earlier, according to the data.
Additionally, the seven-day average of positive tests rose to 1.0% from 0.7% over the same period.
However, officials believe the number of positive cases is an “undercount” because many people who test positive use rapid at-home tests and don’t report their results.
During a press conference Thursday, L.A. County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said there were 14 new outbreaks in schools for the week ending Tuesday compared to four outbreaks the prior week.
One of the active outbreaks, which occurred at a high school, started with 26 cases and has since grown to 60 cases.
Health experts said the surge of cases is, in part, due to BA.2, a subvariant of the original omicron variant.
Ferrer revealed during the press conference that the highly infectious subvariant accounted for 46.5% of samples that underwent genomic sequencing, up from 31.8% the week prior.
Because the most recent date for which subvariant-specific data is available in Los Angeles is March 19, Ferrer said she expects BA.2 may now make up more than half of all COVID-19 infections in the county.
This is in line with data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showing BA.2 makes up 75% of all cases in the Western region, which includes California, Arizona and Nevada.
“Given that BA.2 is more transmissible than the earlier strains of omicron, it’s very likely BA.2 is now the predominant subvariant in L.A. County,” Ferrer said.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health did not return ABC News’ request for comment.
The spread of the variant mirrors what’s been seen in several countries in Europe, including England, which hit a record-high 1 in 13 people being infected with the virus last week, according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.
However, experts said the rise in cases can also be attributed to the relaxing of public health measures.
“People are letting down their guard in terms of distancing, masking and attending crowded events,” Dr. Otto Yang, associate chief of infectious diseases and a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, told ABC News. “It’s not rocket science. We know how the virus spreads. We know if we relax the measures, it will spread more.”
Ferrer said the relaxing of indoor masking is also one of the reasons behind school outbreaks.
However, hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus in L.A. County continue to remain low.
In the last two weeks, daily hospitalizations have dropped from 373 to 273, according to county data.
Meanwhile, the daily number of deaths currently sits at 15, down from 16 the week before, the data shows.
Yang said the low numbers are due to several factors including high vaccination rates, effective treatments and some prior immunity from infection during the previous omicron wave.
But he warned that these figures could rise in the next few weeks.
“These indicators lag so it takes time [during a surge] before people become seriously ill and die,” Yang said.
Yang also encouraged residents to get their booster shots if they haven’t already and to consider wearing masks around family members or friends at high risk of severe illness.
“If you are at risk of giving it to someone who would have a severe case, consider wearing a mask and avoiding indoors crowded events,” he said. “The same measures will still work. Even if your personal risk isn’t high, think about the people around you.”
