NEWS

FDA authorizes Novavax Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in ages 12-17. It is the fourth coronavirus vaccine available in the United States and, unlike the others, it uses a protein-based technology. The vaccine was authorized for adults in July. With the latest emergency use authorization, it also will be available as a two-dose primary series for ages 12 to 17.

In this age group, "overall, the clinical efficacy of the vaccine is around 80%," said Silvia Taylor, Novavax's senior vice president global corporate affairs. The vaccine has shown 90% overall efficacy in adults.. (CNN, 8/19/22)

NEWS

America’s Fall Booster Plan Has a Fatal Paradox. The nation’s leaders have vanished mask mandates and quarantine recommendations, and shortened isolation stints; they’ve given up on telling schools, universities, and offices to test regularly. People have been repeatedly told not to fear the virus or its potentially lethal threat. And yet the biggest sell for vaccines has somehow become an individualistic, hyper-medicalized call to action—another opportunity to slash one’s chances at severe disease and death. The U.S. needs people to take this vaccine because it has nothing else. But its residents are unlikely to take it, because they’re not doing anything else. (The Atlantic, 8/25/22)

See also: 

• FDA expected to authorize Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech Omicron boosters (Politico, 8/29/22)
• Fall Vaccination Campaign Will Bring New Shots, Worse Access (New York Times, 8/28/22)
• White House effort to stave off fall COVID surge with new boosters faces uphill battle (Fox40, 8/28/22)
• COVID vaccination in kids under 5 remain low as US hospital admissions steadily rise (USA TODAY, 8/25/22)

NEWS

Moderna sues Pfizer over COVID-19 vaccine patents. The lawsuit alleges the two companies used certain key features of technology Moderna developed to make their COVID-19 vaccine. It argues that Pfizer and BioNtech's vaccine infringes patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016 for its messenger RNA or mRNA technology. (NPR, 8/26/22)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Systems for Action: Systems and Services Research to Build a Culture of Health. Systems for Action (S4A) is a signature research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that helps to build the evidence base for a Culture of Health by rigorously testing new ways of connecting the nation’s fragmented medical, social, and public health systems. New strategies and tools are needed to help medical, social, and public health systems work together to dismantle structural racism and improve health and well-being for all. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 7/6/22)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Evidence for Action: Innovative Research to Advance Racial Equity. E4A seeks grantees who are deeply committed to conducting rigorous and equitable research and ensuring that their findings are actionable in the real world. In addition to research funding, RWJF also supports grantees with stakeholder engagement, dissemination of findings, and other activities that can enhance their projects’ potential to “move the needle” on health and racial equity. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 9/9/21)

REPORT

Federal Student Loan Repayment Programs for Behavioral Health Service Providers. This In Focus discusses student loan repayment programs specifically available to behavioral health providers and for which Congress appropriated funds in FY2022 (Table 1), along with selected policy issues. All of the programs discussed are administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and are authorized by the Public Health Service Act. In general, loan repayment benefits provided under these programs are subject to the availability of funds. (Congressional Research Service, 8/4/22)

PERSPECTIVE

Building a National Public Health System in the United States. In light of the shortcomings of the haphazard U.S. approach to public health, laid bare by the Covid pandemic, a Commonwealth Fund commission is proposing urgent, necessary, and realistic reforms. (New England Journal of Medicine, 8/4/22)

See also: 

• ‘So much more to do’: A hospital system’s campaign to confront racism — and resistance to change — makes early strides (STAT, 8/25/22)
• Moral distress among clinicians working in US safety net practices during the COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed methods study (BMJ Open, 8/22)

NEWS

Restoring trust in public health: There are no shortcuts. Effective communication and messaging are only part of the solution. More than communication, past and future actions will determine trustworthiness. For individual leaders and organizations, creating trust will require a renewed commitment to candor, clarity, and coordination. This means listening more actively to better understand the people they serve, and then translating this understanding into credible action. (STAT, 8/29/22)

See also: CDC announces sweeping reorganization, aimed at changing the agency's culture and restoring public trust (CNN, 8/17/22)

NEWS

The Pandemic’s Soft Closing. For many, many months now, U.S. policy on the virus has emphasized the importance of individual responsibility for keeping the virus at bay; these latest updates simply reinforce that posture. But given their timing and scope, this, more than any other pandemic inflection point, feels like “a wholesale abandonment” of a community-centric mindset, says Arrianna Marie Planey, a medical geographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—one that firmly codifies the “choose your own adventure” approach. (The Atlantic, 8/16/22)

See also: 

• The two big pandemic investments we still need to make (Vox, 8/24/22)
• We Are Not 'In This Together': The Biden Adminstration's Covid-19 Policy Is Still Killing Vulnerable People (Common Dreams, 7/31/22)
• How the Pandemic Is Leaving a Lasting Mark on Mountain Towns
• (Route Fifty, 8/15/22)
• Unions can't force OSHA to adopt COVID-19 safety rule, court says (Reuters, 8/26/22)

NEWS

Black Covid long-haulers felt invisible to the health care system, so they formed their own support groups. Like most of the pandemic’s fallout, Black people are bearing the brunt of long Covid, with the group making up a majority of long Covid hospitalizations and researchers even projecting that Black people’s life expectancy will drop significantly in the next five years as a result. As a way to counter the troubling data, Black people have formed these support groups in hopes of making sense of the illness and to find the help they need. (NBC News, 8/28/22)

See also: 

• Long Covid is responsible for about a third of unfilled jobs in the U.S., new research suggests (CNBC, 8/26/22)
• ‘It Just Seems Like My Patients Are Sicker’ (The Atlantic, 8/29/22)

NEWS

The COVID lessons the U.S. still needs to learn to tackle monkeypox. COVID-19 and monkeypox are pretty different diseases. But the parallels between the nation’s yearslong, languishing response to the coronavirus pandemic and the emerging monkeypox outbreak are many – and potentially agonizing. (PBS, 8/15/22)

See also:

• The Biden administration's monkeypox messaging challenge (Washington Post, 8/18/22)
• How Sex Workers And Sex Party Attendees Are Dealing With Monkeypox (BuzzFeed News, 8/22/22)
• Monkeypox’s Data Problem Is a Race Problem (Bloomberg, 8/18/22)
• We Can’t Fight Monkeypox “Ourselves” (Dame Magazine, 8/25/22)
• Monkeypox public health response is lagging for LGBTQ+ community (STAT, 8/26/22)

NEWS

The Inflation Reduction Act: One step closer to pharmacoequity? Taken as a whole, the Inflation Reduction Act offers a significant opportunity to reduce health disparities, advance health equity, and bring the U.S. closer to the goal of pharmacoequity. As health care groups applaud the successes of the landmark bill on prescription drug costs, they must also push lawmakers to begin to address the fundamental and upstream causes of unequal access to prescription drugs in the U.S. Such bold policy changes will include patent reform, elimination of pharmacy deserts, and training a medical professional workforce that is without bias in its provision of clinical care. (STAT, 8/19/22)

NEWS

‘A poster child’ for diversity in science: Black engineers work to fix long-ignored bias in oxygen readings. Pulse oximeters — extremely basic and ubiquitous medical devices — do not work as well on people with darker skin because melanin in skin can interfere with the absorption of light the clip-on devices use to measure the amount of oxygenated blood in a person’s finger. The problem can lead to readings in those with darker skin that mask possibly dangerous low oxygen level. (STAT, 8/19/22)

NEWS

How Fixes to the $800 Billion Covid Relief Program Got Money to More Small Businesses. By 2021, the Small Business Administration, the program’s administrator, had admitted about 600 new lenders, including small community banks that serve minorities, and allowed more sole proprietors and self-employed people to participate. The SBA also kicked off its later round of lending in 2021 by prioritizing applications from businesses with fewer than 20 employees during the first two weeks. (Bloomberg, 8/22/22)

PRESS RELEASE

OSTP Issues Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available Without Delay. Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) updated U.S. policy guidance to make the results of taxpayer-supported research immediately available to the American public at no cost. (White House, 8/25/22)

PODCAST

How to Fix Air Quality in Schools. As kids head back to school, many parents and teachers worry about air quality amid viruses like COVID-19. Rather than waiting for your school’s HVAC system to get replaced, what if you could build something that circulates air to the standard of an intensive care unit room for under $100 and in less than an hour? Engineers and air quality experts Richard Corsi and Jim Rosenthal have designed just a product and teach Andy how to make one. (In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt, 8/22/22)