Health

(RALEIGH, N.C.) — Disabled North Carolina residents say a mask restriction that is under consideration in the state legislature would make it harder for them to access parts of their communities, pushing them back into isolation.

“This law says to them that you are not welcome in our community and we don’t value your presence to accommodate your need to wear a mask,” Tara Muller, a policy attorney at Disability Rights North Carolina, told ABC News.

House Bill 237, dubbed the “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” bill, would repeal a COVID-19 pandemic exception that allowed people to wear a face mask in public. It allows exceptions for holiday costumes, rituals or ceremonies, theatrical productions, gas masks or employment-based usage, but would remove the ability for someone to wear a mask to ensure “the physical health or safety of the wearer or others.”

Legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly are currently negotiating whether to move forward with repealing the exception, which has faced opposition in the House but was recently passed by the Senate. Meanwhile, disabled residents and their families are stuck in a waiting game, concerned about what this will mean for their future.

The bill is intended to curb the use of face masks to conceal an alleged criminal’s identity.

Supporters have criticized the use of face masks amid ongoing protests against the Israel-Hamas war, since many demonstrators have been seen wearing face coverings: “It’s about time that the craziness is at least slowed down, if not literally stopped,” said Republican bill sponsor Buck Newton, according to Raleigh news outlet WRAL.

Similar restrictions are being considered in other states, while still others are now enforcing mask-wearing restrictions – including New York, Ohio, Florida, and other states.

However, disability advocates say such restrictions infringe on their ability to protect themselves and others.

North Carolina resident Bryan Dooley, who has cerebral palsy and asthma, told ABC News he didn’t leave his house for a year when the pandemic started: “And it’s not an exaggeration,” he added.

He was worried about the potential for a respiratory infection that could turn into something worse. Patients with asthma and cerebral palsy are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 complications, according to the Mayo Clinic.

As someone with a speech impediment, Dooley said it can be hard for him to speak to others while wearing a mask, so the people around him often wear masks for both his and their protection, because he often cannot.

He said the disabled community isn’t asking for much: “They just want to contribute to their community just like anybody else.”

Muller’s organization has said people have reached out with concerns about being able to go to a public health facility, to work, to a grocery store, or to just walk down the sidewalk and potentially being confronted by law enforcement or others trying to enforce mask-wearing restrictions. The concerns have come from people with a plethora of experiences, including those who are immunocompromised, who are undergoing chemotherapy, have had an organ transplant, and more.

Katy Neas, CEO of the disability advocacy group The Arc of the United States, said that masking remains a serious and important issue for many concerned about their health.

“You wouldn’t make a kid who has diabetes eat something that’s going to make them sick. You wouldn’t make a kid with life-threatening peanut allergies, make them eat peanuts. We’ve got to recognize that some kids need these protections for their fundamental health,” said Neas.

Muller said she feels the ban would be a step backward in making the world a more accessible place for everyone, not just people who are disabled or immunocompromised. For example, millions of Americans continue to feel the impacts of COVID-19 and long COVID. There have been more than 100 million recorded cases of COVID in the U.S., while roughly 63 million adults in the U.S. have or have had long COVID..

“We’ve made great strides in allowing people with disabilities in their community in ways that were not possible before. Wearing masks is one way that people can feel comfortable accessing their community when otherwise they have not been able to,” said Muller.

Felicia M. Nurmsen of the National Organization on Disability knows firsthand the impact of long COVID. After developing asthma, as well as experiencing fatigue and a worsening heart condition from her bout of COVID, she said the shift away from public health and safety has been concerning.

“I still have some of the other health challenges … there’s nothing that says that they’ll ever go away,” said Nurmsen.

Nurmsen said the pandemic allowed a widespread effort toward accessibility for all, such as wearing a mask for personal and public health, remote-working options, increased home delivery options and more. She notes that many things that make life easier for all – from automatic doors to escalators – are disabled accessibility features.

“When you see someone masked up on the street, when you’re going into a store and someone has their mask on, never assume that that person does not have a disability, because you don’t know,” said Nurmsen. “It should not be an all-or-nothing proposition, because we have to think about the entire population of people.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Chloe Burke, a 25-year-old upcoming Miss Texas contestant, will be in Washington D.C. Thursday to lobby for the HEARTS Act and Access to AEDs Act.

Access to AEDs (or Automated External Defibrillators) is a deeply personal issue to Burke, who suffered a cardiac arrest in 2019 at University of Houston while she was cheerleading at a football game. She remembers completing her stunt, and then collapsing on the ground.

“It was the most helpless I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” said Burke. “Your survival is up to the fate of hoping there’s someone around you that knows how to act.”

Burke was fortunate. On-field paramedics performed CPR and used an AED to get Burke’s heart pumping normally again.

However, Burke knows that others are not as lucky. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more that 356,000 Americans suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year and up to 80% of them die before reaching the hospital.

To improve outcomes for others, Burke is joining the American Heart Association (AHA) and roughly 200 others in an Advocacy Day in D.C. on May 23, 2024. Advocates will meet with lawmakers and staff to discuss the two federal bills that the AHA is supporting.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr.’s (D-NJ-6) bill, the Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, Research, and Training in the Schools Act of 2023 or the HEARTS Act (H.R. 6829), encourages research and education around cardiomyopathy. The bill has passed through committee and is awaiting a vote in the House.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s (D-FL-20) bill, Access to AEDs Act (H.R. 2370), has 110 cosponsors in the House, and is still in committee. An identical bill has been introduced in the Senate (S. 1024). The bill earmarks $25 million to be distributed through grants to schools to provide CPR training and buy AED equipment.

Bystander CPR and AED use can increase survival rates. Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, a cardiologist and past president of the AHA, said that “CPR is effective, but it needs to be done in a very timely fashion.”

“The clock here is not even in minutes. It’s in seconds,” he said.

However, a national poll of more than 1,000 people conducted by the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center showed that only 51% of respondents have been trained to perform hands-on CPR in the last two years and feel comfortable administering it.

Burke, the current Ms. Space City said “any amount of time or money or rules or laws is worth teaching people the skills that can save lives.”

She hopes that the HEARTS Act and Access to AEDs Act will ultimately create “a future of people who could save lives at any time in any place because [CPR is] a skill they can take with them.”

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(NEW YORK) — The second human case of bird flu associated with the current outbreak among livestock has been confirmed in Michigan, health officials said Wednesday.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) said the case was identified in a Michigan farmworker who had regular exposure to livestock infected bird flu, or avian influenza.

The farmworker experienced mild symptoms and has since recovered. The health department said it will not be releasing any additional identifying information about the farmworker.

It comes after the first human case of bird flu was identified in Texas last month and linked to cattle. The infected individual worked directly with sick cattle and reported eye redness as their only symptom.

The risk to the general public remains low, according to the MDHHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Michigan has led a swift public health response, and we have been tracking this situation closely since influenza A (H5N1) was detected in poultry and dairy herds in Michigan,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive at MDHHS said in a statement. “Farmworkers who have been exposed to impacted animals have been asked to report even mild symptoms, and testing for the virus has been made available.

“The current health risk to the general public remains low. This virus is being closely monitored, and we have not seen signs of sustained human-to-human transmission at this point. This is exactly how public health is meant to work, in early detection and monitoring of new and emerging illnesses,” the statement continued,”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — The health effects from extreme heat will soon take an even bigger toll on disadvantaged communities, according to a new report.

As global temperatures continue to climb, a growing number of people living in disadvantaged communities will be impacted by health-threatening heatwaves, a report released Wednesday by the ICF Climate Center, an environmental solutions firm, found. As many as 54 million people in at-risk communities could be threatened by extreme heatwaves by 2050 under a high-emissions scenario, compared to 500,000 people today, according to the report.

The report combines the latest climate projections with the ICF Climate Center’s climate risk analytics platform, ClimateSight, to understand how people living in marginalized communities — ones that have been “overburdened by pollution and underinvestment” — will be exposed to extreme heat in the coming decades as well as how the increasing temperatures will affect the health of the residents.

The results point to a significant increase in disadvantaged communities’ potential exposure to extreme heat as well as a spatial component of these increases in potential exposure, Mason Fried, director of climate science at ICF, told ABC News.

“We’re seeing spatially across the contiguous United States both an intensification of exposure in historically hot areas — those hot areas are only going to get hotter — and the consequences in those areas,” Fried said. “But there’s an expansion of exposure into regions that have not experienced very hot temperatures.”

The Southeast and Midwest could see 15 to 30 additional energy-impacting heat days, while most of Texas, the central plains, Louisiana and the Florida peninsula are expected to experience 50 or more additional energy-impacting heat days under a moderate emissions scenario, the report found.

Electric grids in the Northeast and New England could be strained under these conditions as well, as grids in those areas were generally not designed to operate in such extreme heat, the authors found.

While historically it was the Southwest and southern Texas that saw disadvantaged communities experiencing at least 24 energy-impacting heat days per year, by 2050 overburdened communities in the South, Midwest and Southwest will be exposed, according to the report.

The findings of the report are “not surprising,” given how much research has already been done to show that the most disenfranchised communities around the world will be hardest hit by climate change, Jennifer A. Burney, chair of global climate policy and research at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. Burney’s own research has looked into the urban heat burden experienced by poorer communities.

Heat illness is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the world, with more than 1,220 people dying from heat-related illnesses every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The urban heat island effect, urbanized areas that experience higher temperatures than outlying areas due to an abundance of roads and buildings, adds tremendously to the heat burden that people in disadvantaged communities are experiencing, Amy Bailey, director for climate resilience and sustainability at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told ABC News.

Neighborhoods that had been redlined in the 1930s — a post-Great Depression practice involving a pattern of lending discrimination — are among the hottest in major cities, a 2019 paper that studied 108 urban areas nationwide, found.

Solutions such as whitewashing pavement and planting trees are known solutions to mitigating the heat island effect.

The report called for prioritizing planning efforts for populations identified to be at elevated risk and engaging stakeholders and decision-makers within those communities to ensure they have agency in the implementation of programs.

The report and its confluence of key public health, equity and energy resilience data points are important for planners, community-based organizations and health professionals, Bailey said.

Communities will especially need to prioritize measures to make places like libraries and malls established cooling centers by creating a “cooling budget” that could help subsidize businesses as well as offer safe options for residents, Burney said.

Planners will also need to make investments to increase grid resilience and community-level solutions, Bailey said.

“It’s our hope that it provides, at first some, some, you know, the data and analytics to help size up and understand the problem,” Fried said.

Federal initiatives in recent years have reflected the severity of future heat impacts, according to the report.

Last year, Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, an interactive map that monitors data points such as income, asthma rates, and wildfire risk with the aim of determining and prioritizing the most disadvantaged communities for funding. However, race and ethnicity are not included as indicators in the tool, but are “included as information only and are not considered as a part of the tool’s methodology,” according to the website, a collaboration among the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In July 2023, the Biden Administration also announced several actions to mitigate extreme heat, including the launch of Heat.gov, which provides science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Let’s Talk About Heat Challenge,” which funded 10 community groups and localities across the country to help protect underserved communities from heat illness.

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(NEW YORK) — The number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) around the world is increasing and is a “major concern” for health officials, according to a new report published Tuesday from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The report found four curable STIs — chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and trichomoniasis — are responsible for more than 1 million infections daily among adults between ages 15 and 49. Cases of syphilis, in particular, have been rising rapidly.

The number of new syphilis cases among adults between ages 15 and 49 increased from 7.1 million in 2020 to 8 million in 2022, according to the report.

There have also been increases in the rate of congenital syphilis, which occurs when a baby is born with the infection after the mother passed it on during pregnancy. Between 2020 and 2022, the rate per 100,000 live births per year rose from 425 to 523.

The global trends mirror those seen in the United States. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released earlier his year found the total number of syphilis cases increased more than 17% to 207,255 between 2021 and 2022, reaching the greatest number of cases reported since 1950.

The report also found that cases of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea are increasing, which was labeled another “concern.” As of 2023, nine countries reported elevated levels — from 5% to 40% — of resistance to ceftriaxone, which is considered a last line treatment for gonorrhea.

Data points to a lack of screening for the rise in STIs as well as other issues including a lack access to care. Additionally, disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic likely delayed screening for many.

“The rising incidence of syphilis raises major concerns,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “Fortunately, there has been important progress on a number of other fronts including in accelerating access to critical health commodities including diagnostics and treatment.”

“We have the tools required to end these epidemics as public health threats by 2030, but we now need to ensure that, in the context of an increasingly complex world, countries do all they can to achieve the ambitious targets they set themselves,” the statement continued.

Not all trends showed an upward trajectory, in 2022, the number of people newly infected with HIV globally fell to 1.3 million from 1.5 million, according to the report. However, the WHO notes that certain populations — men who have sex with men; people who inject drugs; sex workers; transgender people; and those currently in prisons and other closed settings – continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV.

In a press release, the WHO noted there have been gains in expanding STIs, HIV and hepatitis services and several countries have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and/or syphilis.

To drive rates down, the report outlines some recommendations including accelerating efforts to decriminalizes and destigmatize those affected by STIs and other infections as well as strengthening the focus on primary prevention, diagnosis and treatment to raise awareness of STIs and infections.

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(NEW YORK) — Amid the growing popularity of drugs used for weight loss like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, one question has remained for users, what happens if they were to stay on the drug for years?

Now, a new study released earlier this month by Novo Nordisk, the maker of both Ozempic and Wegovy, is shedding light on what the long-term results look like for people on the weight loss medications.

“This is the longest study we’ve conducted so far of semaglutide for weight loss,” Martin Holst Lange, Novo Nordisk’s head of development, told Reuters. “

Both Ozempic and Wegovy are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 Receptor Agonists that help people produce insulin to lower the amount of sugar in their blood.

The drugs, made from a compound called semaglutide, work by slowing down movement of food through the stomach and curbing appetite, thereby causing weight loss.

The new study, presented this month at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, Italy, focused solely on Wegovy, an injectable medication that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for weight loss for people with obesity or who are overweight with a comorbidity like high blood pressure.

Ozempic is approved by the FDA to treat Type 2 diabetes, but some doctors prescribe the medication “off-label” for weight loss.

Here are four questions answered about the study’s results, and what they mean for the future of weight loss.

1. Were people able to keep weight off by using Wegovy long-term?
Yes.

The study found that the majority of people on Wegovy lost weight, on average 10% of their body weight, in the first 15 months of using the medication and sustained their weight loss over four years with continued use of the drug.

“We see that once the majority of the weight loss is accrued, you don’t go back and start to increase in weight if you stay on the drug,” Lange told Reuters.

The results came from a clinical trial of over 17,000 people with preexisting heart disease as Novo Nordisk was testing Wegovy for its heart benefits in people who are overweight and obese.

2. Were there any side effects to using Wegovy long-term?
Around 17% of patients in the four-year timeline withdrew due to a side effect of taking Wegovy, mostly nausea, according to the company.

Among all medications used for weight loss, the most commonly reported side effects are nausea and constipation, but irreversible gallbladder and pancreatic disease is also reported.

Makers of these drugs recommend having a conversation about the side effect profile and personalized risks with a healthcare professional before starting.

3. Why would a person need to stay on a medication after weight loss?
ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OBGYN and obesity medicine specialist, said that people should remember that obesity is a chronic condition.

“In the majority of cases, people who are on these GLP-1 medications and lose a significant amount of weight, can/will regain some or all of it when they discontinue it,” Ashton said. “Why? It’s because of the etiology, or what the causes are, of the conditions of overweight and obesity. It’s not a temporary situation. It’s a chronic condition.”

Obesity is a medical condition that affects nearly 42% of people in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obesity has been associated with conditions like stroke and heart attack, hypertension, breathing difficulties, sleep apnea and an increased risk of early death.

4. What does maintenance look like on medications like Wegovy?
While long-term research has been done on GLP-1 medications and Type 2 diabetes, Ashton said there is still much research to be done on how the medications can be used long-term to help people maintain weight loss.

“What hasn’t been even described or reported in the peer-reviewed medical literature is what does maintenance on these medications look like,” Ashton said, adding, “That knowledge and awareness has to be there, that if you get to your goal weight, and you completely stop these medications, the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority of people will regain the weight that’s lost.”

Ashton said patients on a medication like Wegovy should work closely with their doctor determine what is best in their individual situation.

Generally, she said doctors may prescribe a lower dose of the medication to take in the long-term, or reduce the frequency of the dose.

“I think what you’ll see is healthcare providers, doctors who are experienced in managing patients on these medications, when they [the patient] get to their goal weight, they’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s drop your dose down first, and then we could try to space out the frequency of your dosing intervals,'” Ashton said. “What I’ve done, and I’ve spoken to other doctors in obesity medicine who are doing the exact same thing, is we’ll say, ‘Okay, instead of taking [an injectable dose] every week, let’s try taking it every two weeks.'”

She continued, “Alternating one week on, one week off may be something that we start to see in the future become a more common, more official part of the maintenance regimen.”

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(HOUSTON) — A 6-month-old girl born with a life-threatening lung disorder is now breathing on her own thanks to a rare double lung transplant.

Kylie Overfield was placed on a ventilator immediately after her birth on Nov. 10, 2023, due to surfactant B deficiency, a rare genetic condition that causes abnormalities in the lining of the lung tissue, making breathing difficult, according to the National Library of Medicine.

The condition, which affects roughly 1 in 1 million newborns globally, can lead to respiratory failure. In Kylie’s case, the condition was so severe that doctors feared she wouldn’t survive long after her birth, which came on a Friday, according to her mom, Ashley Overfield.

“They didn’t think Kylie was going to make it,” Overfield, told Good Morning America. “She wouldn’t survive the weekend.”

Defying the odds, Kylie survived the next three months and, in January, was strong enough to be transferred from the Virginia hospital where she was born to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

“I’m telling you, she was feisty,” Overfield said of her daughter. “If she was fighting, I was never going to stop fighting.”

Overfield was told by doctors that the most effective treatment for Kylie was a double lung transplant, a rare treatment. Only 35 lung transplants have been performed on babies under the age of 1 in the United States over the past decade, according to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

At Texas Children’s Hospital, doctors were prepared to take on Kylie’s case, having performed more than 100 pediatric lung transplants since 2014, a total the hospital says is more than any other in the country.

“Specifically in lung transplants, we are one of the busiest pediatric lung transplant centers in the country,” Dr. David Moreno-McNeill, a pediatric pulmonologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, told GMA.

After arriving at Texas Children’s Hospital in January, Kylie was placed on the waiting list for a bilateral lung transplant on Feb. 16.

Just two months later, doctors found a match for Kylie.

On April 17, Kylie, then just 5 months old, underwent a double transplant procedure, receiving two new lungs.

Following the successful surgery, during which a hole in her heart was also repaired, Kylie was able to breathe on her own for the first time in her life.

“I got my baby, so she has a life now,” said Overfield, who relocated to Houston with her husband and their two older children. “She gets a chance.”

Overfield said she and her family are especially grateful to the mom of the donor baby, who made the selfless choice of organ donation.

“I’m so grateful that she chose to donate the organs because she saved my baby and I’m sure other babies,” Overfield said. “My heart hurts for her and I think about her every minute of every day.”

Currently, over 103,000 people in the U.S. are on the waiting list for a transplant, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

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(NEW YORK) — A major new report shows stark disparities in breast cancer care, with non-white Americans and those without health insurance far less likely to be up to date with recommended screenings.

Women under the age of 65 who do not have health insurance are 50% less likely to be up to date with breast cancer screening, according to the findings of the 2024 AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report 2024, released Wednesday by the American Association for Cancer Research, a nonprofit organization focused on breast cancer research.

The report also found that between 2015-2019 Asian and Pacific Islander women had the highest increase in breast cancer occurrences among all racial and ethnic groups.

Black women are at a 40% higher risk of dying from breast cancer compared to non-Hispanic white women, even though they are 6% less likely to develop breast cancer, according to the report.

Earlier this month, another organization, the American Cancer Society, launched a study of 100,000 Black women that aims to figure out why Black women are disproportionately impacted by cancer, including breast cancer.

Last year, a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Black women had the same risk of dying from breast cancer if they were screened starting at age 42 as the general population had with screenings starting at the age of 50.

The recommended age to start breast cancer screenings for most women of average risk is now 40, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which in April released finalized updated guidelines.

The age for routine screening was dropped from 50 to 40 to account for the 2% increase in breast cancer diagnosis rates each year among women in their 40s, according to the USPSTF.

The updated recommendations will not impact insurance coverage, but by law, mammograms should be covered by insurance for all women 40 and older.

The USPSTF recommends that women in their 40s talk to their doctor about their individual risks.

In addition, many doctors recommend that women undergo a breast cancer risk assessment with a doctor by age 25 in order to understand the risk category in which they fall.

Dr. Matthew Schabath, program leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at Moffitt Cancer Center and a member of the steering committee for the 2024 AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report, told ABC News that one of the biggest reasons that some women may not be up to date with recommended cancer screenings is lack of access to transportation.

“A common threat among minoritized and underserved populations… is transportation,” Schabath said. “Simply being able to travel to a healthcare provider has been a huge barrier… especially in the case of something like mammography, you can move the bar by having mobile mammography, bringing healthcare to the community.”

Experts say structural racism and discrimination also contribute to imbalances that drive disparities.

Patient-focused care will be of the utmost importance in addressing cancer screening and follow-up care, Dr. Robert Winn, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and steering committee chair for the 2024 AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report, told ABC News. 

“We are aligning with the communities’ power to ultimately bring about better health,” Winn said.

In the United States, breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Each year in the U.S., around 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women, and around 42,000 women die from breast cancer, according to the CDC.

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(NEW YORK) — Drug overdose deaths fell in 2023, marking the first decrease in five years, new provisional federal data published Wednesday showed.

An estimated 107,543 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

This is a 3% decrease from the estimated 111,029 overdose deaths that occurred in 2022 and the first annual decrease in drug overdose deaths since 2018.

Dr. Susan Sherman, a professor in the department of health, behavior and society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News it’s “great” to see the numbers trending downward.

“If you think about it, the numbers are so crazy high that we were below 100,000 the last time we had a dip,” she said. “It’s great that there’s a decrease.”

The data shows that overdose deaths involving opioids fell from an estimated 84,181 in 2022 to 81,083 in 2023.

While the majority of overdose deaths in 2023 were due to synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, there was a decrease from 2022. An estimated 76,226 deaths were linked to synthetic opioids in 2022 compared to 74,702 deaths in 2023.

Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine and can be deadly even in small doses, according to the CDC. Other drugs may be laced with deadly levels of fentanyl, and a user is not able to see it, taste it, or smell it.

Unless drugs are tested with fentanyl test strips, it is nearly impossible to tell if they have been laced with the synthetic opioid, the CDC said.

Deaths linked to natural or semi-synthetic drugs, such as morphine and codeine, also fell from 12,135 In 2022 to 10,171 in 2023. However, deaths associated with psychostimulants, including methamphetamine, and cocaine increased from 2022 to 2023.

Some states across the U.S. saw decreases with Indiana, Kansas, Maine and Nebraska experiencing declines of 15% or more, the data shows. However, there were increases in others with Alaska, Oregon and Washington seeing an increase of least 27% compared to the same period in 2022.

In Alaska, opioid overdoses have steadily been increasing since at least 2018, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. A state report released earlier this year found 2022 to be the deadliest year on record in Alaska for opioid overdoses.

Additionally, earlier this year in Portland, Oregon, government officials declared a 90-day state of emergency to address the city’s growing fentanyl crisis. In November 2020, Oregonians voted to decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs, but the state reversed course with lawmakers passing a bill earlier this year to recriminalize drug possession.

Some of the progress may be attributed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving the overdose reversal drug Narcan for over-the-counter use in March 2023, becoming available in September.

Narcan, made by the company Emergent BioSolutions, is given as a nasal spray and the active ingredient in the medication — naloxone — can quickly reverse the effect of opioids to restore breathing if someone is experiencing an opioid overdose.

Harm reduction groups and other experts have been pushing for easier access to naloxone as one strategy to help prevent some of the tens of thousands of overdose deaths that occur each year in the U.S.

“Sometimes when things decrease, we think, ‘Oh, we’re done,'” Sherman said. “I think sometimes people think, ‘Job’s done.’ But of course, the job is not done. I worry people [will] lift their foot off the gas.”

Sherman said to keep bringing the number of drug overdose deaths down, it’s important to keep scaling up interventions that work including making medications for opioid use disorder and syringe service programs more accessible.

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(NEW YORK) — An acrimonious divorce between a Texas couple fighting over their frozen embryos could end up having an impact on in vitro fertilization care in the entire state, and possibly a replay of the controversial court decision in Alabama that briefly ended IVF access in the state.

Caroline Antoun has argued that life begins when an egg is fertilized and claims the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which overturned Roe v. Wade and left it up to the states to regulate abortion care — gives her a right to “custody” over their three embryos, despite previously signing over her rights to the embryos to her husband in the event of a divorce.

In August 2022, a trial court judge ruled the embryos should be considered “property” and awarded them to the husband — Gaby Antoun — and upheld the agreement between the former couple. That court declined to side with Caroline Antoun’s argument that the embryos are living beings.

In August 2023, an appeals court judge affirmed that ruling and declined Caroline Antoun’s request to hear an appeal.

The embryos were the key point of disagreement in the couple’s divorce, according to court documents.

The arguments

Caroline Antoun is asking the Texas Supreme Court to take up her case and address the “treatment of embryonic tissue during divorce proceedings,” arguing the court needs to issue new guidance on the treatment of these disputes since Roe is no longer in effect.

“In the interest of providing the most robust protection to all life, embryos should be treated as children rather than as property during divorce proceedings,” Caroline Antoun’s petitioner’s brief argues.

“While legislative action will undoubtedly be necessary to fill out the framework this Court may provide, the Court is presented the opportunity to reclassify embryos from property to unborn children, and to address in the first instance what rights those unborn children (and their parents) have,” the petitioner’s brief argues.

Despite acknowledging that an agreement between the couple and their fertility clinic awards the embryos to Gaby Antoun, Caroline Antoun argues that embryos have been designated as property because IVF procedures started after the ruling in Roe v. Wade was issued in 1973. The first live birth from IVF wasn’t announced until 1978.

Caroline Antoun also claims she did not know what she was signing and she did not intend to relinquish any future parental rights regarding the embryos. She also says she did not intend for them to be implanted in anyone but herself, according to Caroline Antoun’s petitioner’s brief.

In responding court filings, Gaby Antoun said the court “properly upheld existing law when it comes to the treatment of embryos.” He also argues the post-Roe treatment of embryos is for the legislature to take up.

He also argues the Dobbs decision simply returned the regulation of abortion to the states, but did not find that embryos should be considered people, according to Gaby Antoun’s response to the petition for review.

“Texas Legislators have yet to address if frozen embryos should be classified as people instead of property. This is a case that the Court should allow the legislature to have time to enact legislation that applies rather than the Court attempting to create law regarding frozen embryos,” according to Gaby Antoun’s response.

The Texas Supreme Court has received briefs from Caroline and Gaby Antoun but is still considering whether it will take up the case, according to court records.

Potential fallout

If the state Supreme Court takes up the case and rules in favor of Caroline Antoun, it could be detrimental to IVF treatment in Texas — months after a similar situation played out in Alabama.

After the Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling that embryos are children, IVF treatment in the state was suspended at the three largest providers for two weeks until lawmakers passed legislation to restore access.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine warned, in an amicus brief to the case, that if the court sides with Caroline Antoun, it “could impede access to IVF in Texas and also affect the many thousands of Texans who have relied on IVF to establish or grow their families.”

Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, pushed back in legal filings and said a “custody hearing for frozen human embryos does not directly impact the IVF industry.”

“Texas Right to Life and its members across the country are opposed to all intentional acts that cause the death of any innocent human life, regardless of their stage of development, location, or whether created naturally or in a laboratory,” Texas Right to Life said in an amicus brief.

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