(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.”
(NEW YORK) — Despite a recent increase in COVID-19 breakthrough infections, an updated report illustrates the significant impact the nation’s vaccine campaign has had in preventing millions of virus-related deaths, hospitalizations and infections.
The U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program is now estimated to have prevented 2.2 million deaths, 17 million hospitalizations and 66.1 million additional infections through March 2022, according to updated modeling from the Commonwealth Fund, an organization advocating for improved healthcare for marginalized communities.
In the analysis of recent trends, researchers estimated that the daily peak of deaths pre-omicron, and without vaccination, would have exceeded 24,000 per day, far surpassing the actual peak of 4,300 per day, experienced by the country during the winter of 2021.
Without the vaccines, the omicron wave could have been substantially larger, the study suggested.
In addition, the researchers estimate that without vaccines, there would have been nearly $900 billion in associated health care costs.
The model accounts for waning immunity and changes in population behavior over time, as schools and businesses have reopened and travel has increased. As immunity wanes, researchers stressed that “redoubling efforts to increase vaccine uptake, especially among the elderly and other vulnerable groups, will be critical to avert outbreaks as pandemic restrictions are lifted,” particularly as the omicron subvariant, BA.2, spreads.
“Our findings point to the tremendous power of vaccination to reduce disease burden from COVID-19. This may be even more important if newer variants arise or population immunity ebbs. Without continued funding, the lifesaving impact of vaccinations are at risk,” researchers said.
Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have both taken credit for the development and implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Following the release of the study, the White House said in a statement that the loss prevented by the vaccine is the “the result of the Biden Administration’s efforts to use every tool to make vaccinations easy and convenient for every American, Congress providing us the vital resources we needed, and the American people stepping up and doing their part.”
“Together, we’ve spared millions of families the immeasurable loss that too many others have suffered, and turned unthinkable pain into extraordinary purpose and progress,” the statement said.
Trump has also touted his administration’s leadership in the nation’s vaccine rollout, asserting that the vaccines would not have been developed at such a fast pace without his pressure on drug companies.
“There are some people that say my greatest achievement was getting the vaccine, because the vaccine was said to take three to five years, and most people said it wasn’t going to happen,” Trump said during a panel interview at Princeton University in July 2021. “We made maybe one of the best bets in history because we bought billions and billions of dollars worth of the vaccine by saving time long prior to knowing whether or not it was going to work.”
Despite Trump’s support of the COVID-19 vaccine, last month, an ABC News analysis of federal data found that on average, the death rates in states that voted for Trump were more than 38% higher than in states that voted for Biden, following the widespread availability of vaccines.
“The irony of course, is that the Trump administration was responsible for fighting for this pandemic funding, in fast-tracking the vaccine process that has really saved a lot of lives,” Peter Jacobson, professor emeritus of health law and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told ABC News.
In order to protect more Americans moving forward, the Biden administration and its top health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have continued to push for COVID-19 funding.
“COVID-19 is not over. And we have an obligation to protect our country, the American people and make sure we’re taking steps to prepare,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press conference this week.
The White House asserted inaction on funding for Covid-19 relief will leave the nation vulnerable to the emergence of future surges and variants. Weekly allocations of many COVID therapies have already been scaled down with the funding stalled in Congress.
“This is deeply disappointing – and it should be unacceptable to every American. We’ve worked too hard and come too far to leave ourselves and our economy vulnerable to an unpredictable virus,” the White House statement said.
(NEW YORK) — Clea Shearer, co-founder of The Home Edit, a home organizing company, announced she has breast cancer and shared a message encouraging women to be their own advocates when it comes to their health.
Shearer, a Nashville, Tennessee-based mom of two, shared on Instagram Thursday that she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer after finding a lump in her breast in February.
She said that her OBGYN was not able to see her, so she had to seek out her primary care doctor to have a mammogram done.
“I had to request a mammogram from my general doctor, which led to an ultrasound, and then an emergency triple biopsy,” Shearer wrote in an Instagram post. “I have two tumors, 1 cm each, that are aggressive and fast moving – but I caught it early. Had I not taken this upon myself, I would be in a completely different situation right now.”
Shearer, 40, said in a later Instagram story that she has an invasive type of breast cancer, which means the cancer has spread into surrounding breast tissue, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).
The star of Netflix’s Get Organized with The Home Edit, said she is undergoing a double mastectomy and shared a photo of herself Friday in the hospital awaiting surgery.
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On average, over 255,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S., and over 40,000 people die each year from the disease, according to the CDC.
Screening for breast cancer — which includes mammograms, at-home breast self-exams and clinical breast exams done by a doctor or nurse — can help catch the disease early, when it is easier to treat, according to the CDC.
Shearer said she decided to share her cancer battle publicly to encourage other women to “to self-examine on a regular basis, self-advocate always, and to prioritize your health over your busy schedules.”
She noted that she was under the age of 40 when her tumors were found and has no family history of breast cancer.
“The most important thing for everyone to remember is that I found these tumors myself,” Shearer said in her Instagram stories. “I felt something and I said something.”
“I’m begging you all. I’m pleading with you. Please examine yourself on a regular basis. Please fight for your own testing and your own scans, even if your doctor is not being helpful, and please prioritize your health,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — Being infected with COVID-19 raises the risk of developing serious blood clots, a new study suggests.
An international team of researchers from Sweden, the United Kingdom and Finland compared more than 1 million people in Sweden with a confirmed case of the virus between February 2020 and May 2021 to 4 million control patients who tested negative.
They found three to six months after contracting COVID-19, patients were at increased risk of being diagnosed with blood clots in their legs or lungs, according to results published in the journal BMJ on Wednesday.
Specifically, patients had a significantly increased risk of deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that forms deep in the thigh or the lower leg, up to three months after a COVID-19 infection.
Patients also had a heightened risk of developing a pulmonary embolism, a clot that develops in a blood vessel and travels to a lung artery, up to six months after having the virus.
The team said its results add to a growing body of evidence about the link between COVID-19 and serious blood clots, while adding new information about how long the risk might last.
“The present findings have major policy implications,” the authors wrote, adding that the report “strengthens the importance of vaccination against COVID-19.”
They also said the findings suggest that COVID-19 patients — “especially high-risk patients” — should take anticoagulation medicine, which are medications to help prevent these clots.
During the course of the study period, the team saw 401 cases of DVT among the COVID-19 patients, compared to 267 cases among the negative patients.
Meanwhile, there were 1,761 cases of PE among virus patients in comparison with 171 cases among the control patients.
COVID-19 patients were at higher risk of blood clots if they had underlying conditions, had a severe case of the virus or if they were infected during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020.
However, there wasn’t just a risk of blood clots. The study also found an increased risk of any kind of bleeding up to two months after a COVID-19 infection.
The team noted there were limitations, including that the study was observational rather than a randomized controlled trial.
Additionally, the researchers recognized that clotting in COVID-19 patients may be underdiagnosed and information about patients’ vaccination status was not available.
Despite the risk of blood clots following COVID-19 infections being well-documented, it’s unknown what biological mechanisms are at play. However, there are theories.
One study from Michigan Medicine and the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute suggested “rogue” antibodies from a COVID-19 infection cause blood cells to lose their anti-clotting properties.
Another study from Yale School of Medicine suggested specific proteins are produced by endothelial cells — cells that line blood vessels — due to inflammation from the virus and lead to blood clots.
“It remains to be established whether SARS-CoV-2 infection increases the risk of venous thromboembolism or bleeding more than it does for respiratory infections, such as influenza, but also whether the period of [anticoagulation medicine] after COVID-19 should be extended,” the authors wrote.
(BOSTON) — A Massachusetts toddler who weighed just over one pound when she was born at 25 weeks is home after spending the first 19 months of her life hospitalized.
Bradi Foster, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, was greeted with cheers and bubbles from her doctors and nurses when she left Franciscan Children’s, a hospital in Boston, this month with her parents, Darlene and James Foster.
The toddler was born on Aug. 9, 2020, in an emergency cesarean section after Darlene Foster suffered a placenta abruption, which is when the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Bradi spent her first several months fighting for her life in the neonatal intensive care unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where she was born.
“I think they said it was around 40% chance of survival,” James Foster said of his daughter’s condition at birth. “Her lungs were not fully developed so she needed a lot of assistance just breathing and regulating her oxygen.”
The Fosters, also the parents to three older daughters, ages 6, 4 and 3, recalled having to wait nine days after she was born to even hold Bradi.
“It was scary,” Darlene Foster said. “She was smaller than our hands.”
In Bradi’s first months of life, she underwent heart surgery and battled a number of infections and lung and gastrointestinal issues, according to her parents.
Because Bradi was born early on in the coronavirus pandemic, the Fosters said they were typically allowed to have just one person with her at the hospital, an approximately 75-minute commute from their home.
“It was the toughest thing leaving our house to go to Boston to go see her and then have her sisters be like, ‘We want to go too. We want to see our sister,'” Darlene Foster said. “And some of the times I would just watch her in her little isolette and just look because she was sometimes too sick to hold.”
In January 2021, at just 5 months old, Bradi became so sick she had to be placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine, which removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, giving the heart and lungs time to heal.
That same week, in a hospital across the street, Darlene Foster’s dad died after battling COVID-19.
“We had to say goodbye to him … and we were so sure that it was it for her,” she said, referring to Bradi’s critical condition.
Darlene Foster said that while she was at her dad’s funeral, she was notified by the hospital that Bradi had taken a turn for the better and would be taken off the ECMO machine.
From there, according to the Fosters, Bradi’s condition began to improve.
In July 2021, she was transferred to Franciscan Children’s, a post-acute rehabilitation hospital, where she continued her recovery.
After a tracheostomy was performed and Bradi no longer had to be on sedatives to keep her breathing tube in place, the Fosters said they saw their daughter come alive.
“We finally got to see her smile. Her eyes opened and she wanted to play,” Darlene Foster said. “We completely got our baby as soon as she got her trach.”
In the 19 months she spent hospitalized, Bradi underwent around 10 major surgeries and a dozen smaller ones, according to the Fosters.
Now that she is home, Bradi still has a tracheostomy tube and a gastrostomy tube (g-tube) for nutrition, but her parents said they expect both will be removed in the near future.
“We definitely have high hopes that she will be a normal kid, but it’s just going to take a little bit longer for us to get all those things out and progress her to where she should be for her age,” said James Foster. “But we definitely believe that she will be fully capable.”
Describing Bradi’s personality, he added, “We can’t believe how happy she is. After all of this experience that she’s had in life, she’s remained such a happy soul.”
When she arrived home for the first time, Bradi got to see her sisters for just the second time in her life.
“It is the best feeling in the world,” Darlene Foster said of having their family of six home together. “We just want to give hope to any other NICU parents, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
(NEW YORK) — Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about mental health.
In a first-person essay published by New Beauty magazine on April 4, the actress and Food Network host revealed that her “mental health has improved immensely” since she ditched the scale.
“I stopped weighing myself when I finished writing my book, which was a big thing for me, and I haven’t gotten on a scale since,” Bertinelli wrote. “My clothes still fit; my jeans still zip up. I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t see what number I was and if I wasn’t able to keep an eye on it, that I would balloon up … but that hasn’t happened.”
“I feel like once that gets on its full journey, then maybe my body will follow. Maybe I’ll want to eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink less alcohol, and eat less sugar, and put things in my body that make both my body and my mind feel better,” she added. “It’s all a test and we’ll see how it works, but I do know that my mental health has improved immensely because I stopped looking at the scale every morning — and that’s the first big step for me.”
The One Day At A Time actress has been vocal about her struggles with her weight and body image. Last year, Bertinelli took a stand against body-shamers in an Instagram video after a follower told her that she needed to lose weight.
Bertinelli’s post resonated with many who then started sharing some of their own struggles. Celebrities also commended her for being open about her experience.
“For me, the big thing is my weight — it’s the thing that holds me back,” Bertinelli wrote in her essay for New Beauty. “But I want to start feeling the same about myself — no matter what weight I am. I don’t have to wait until I’ve lost weight to be kind to myself and to be kind to others.”
“It shouldn’t matter what I look like,” she added. “I’m trying to make that a reality in my life, and then, hopefully, my body will follow.”
(NEW YORK) — From sayings like “mommy juice” and “rosé all day” to happy hours, drinking is part of American culture, particularly for women.
One thing that is less discussed though is alcohol’s link to cancer, and how that impacts women.
“We’re finding that probably anywhere between 5% and 10% of all cancers worldwide are due to alcohol use,” Dr. Suneel Kamath, a gastrointestinal oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center in Ohio, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “It’s something that we need to talk a lot more about.”
In addition to potentially facing depression, liver disease and obesity, women who consume about one alcoholic drink per day have a 5% to 9% higher chance of developing breast cancer than women who do not drink at all, and that risk increases for every additional drink a woman has per day, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
One study published in 2019 found that women who were not at high risk for breast cancer based on family history increased their risk of breast cancer from moderate drinking.
For women, a moderate alcohol intake per week is defined as seven servings of alcohol or less, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advise women to have no more than one drink per day.
Heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming eight drinks or more per week, according to the CDC.
One serving of alcohol is just five ounces for wine and just one-and-a-half ounces for hard alcohol, far less than what is typically served in bars, restaurants and at home.
The data shows that even casual drinkers face a greater risk of cancer, most commonly liver and throat cancers but also colon and head and neck cancers, in addition to breast cancer.
“Over 100,000 cases of cancer a year were attributed to that type of drinking,” said Kamath. “I think that’s most surprising, that many of us really are comfortable with doing that and consider that to be very safe.”
Drinking alcohol is listed by the Department of Health and Human Services as a known human carcinogen.
Research shows that just as women metabolize alcohol differently than men, they also face more serious health consequences.
Women are more susceptible to alcohol-related heart disease than men; alcohol misuse produces brain damage more quickly in women than in men; women may be more susceptible than men to alcohol-related blackouts, or gaps in memory; and women who regularly misuse alcohol are more likely than men who drink the same amount to develop alcoholic hepatitis, a potentially deadly condition, according to the NIAAA.
“This is a perfect example of gender-specific medical differences,” said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OBGYN and ABC News chief medical correspondent, explaining the difference lies primarily in enzymes that women lack to metabolize alcohol. “This is significant and we can’t look at this, like so many other things in medicine, like it’s one size fits all.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, data showed that heavy drinking among women especially soared, while alcohol-related liver disease also rose among young women amid increased pandemic drinking.
Liz Piscatello, 37, describes herself as a moderate, social drinker and said she is willing to put the reward of alcohol over the risk.
“I’m a firm believer that everything causes something, and you cannot live your life being scared,” she said. “Live your life because you only live once. Tomorrow’s not promised, so have fun while you can.”
Kamath is among the medical experts warning though that the less alcohol intake the better for your health.
“What I recommend to people really is to limit alcohol intake as much as you can,” he said. “The less you can do, the better.”
According to Ashton, it is important that women be aware of the risks of alcohol and make a “deliberate choice” if they choose to consume.
“It’s not the only thing that we do that can have negative effects,” she said of alcohol. “It has to be a deliberate choice and we have to go into it with the awareness that we know, unfortunately, it’s just not good for us.”
(NEW YORK) — Being infected with COVID-19 raises the risk of developing serious blood clots, a new study suggests.
An international team of researchers from Sweden, the United Kingdom and Finland compared more than 1 million people in Sweden with a confirmed case of the virus between February 2020 and May 2021 to 4 million control patients who tested negative.
They found three to six months after contracting COVID-19, patients were at increased risk of being diagnosed with blood clots in their legs or lungs, according to results published in the journal BMJ on Wednesday.
Specifically, patients had a 4% raised risk of deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that forms deep in the thigh or the lower leg, up to three months after a COVID-19 infection.
Patients also had a 17% heightened risk of developing a pulmonary embolism, a clot that develops in a blood vessel and travels to a lung artery, up to six months after having the virus.
The team said its results add to a growing body of evidence about the link between COVID-19 and serious blood clots, while adding new information about how long the risk might last.
“The present findings have major policy implications,” the authors wrote, adding that the report “strengthens the importance of vaccination against COVID-19.”
They also said the findings suggest that COVID-19 patients — “especially high-risk patients” — should take anticoagulation medicine, which are medications to help prevent these clots.
During the course of the study period, the team saw 401 cases of DVT among the COVID-19 patients, compared to 267 cases among the negative patients.
Meanwhile, there were 1,761 cases of PE among virus patients in comparison with 171 cases among the control patients.
COVID-19 patients were at higher risk of blood clots if they had underlying conditions, had a severe case of the virus or if they were infected during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020.
However, there wasn’t just a risk of blood clots. The study also found an increased risk of any kind of bleeding up to two months after a COVID-19 infection.
The team noted there were limitations, including that the study was observational rather than a randomized controlled trial.
Additionally, the researchers recognized that clotting in COVID-19 patients may be underdiagnosed and information about patients’ vaccination status was not available.
Despite the risk of blood clots following COVID-19 infections being well-documented, it’s unknown what biological mechanisms are at play. However, there are theories.
One study from Michigan Medicine and the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute suggested “rogue” antibodies from a COVID-19 infection cause blood cells to lose their anti-clotting properties.
Another study from Yale School of Medicine suggested specific proteins are produced by endothelial cells — cells that line blood vessels — due to inflammation from the virus and lead to blood clots.
“It remains to be established whether SARS-CoV-2 infection increases the risk of venous thromboembolism or bleeding more than it does for respiratory infections, such as influenza, but also whether the period of [anticoagulation medicine] after COVID-19 should be extended,” the authors wrote.
