President Joe Biden has nominated federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former public defender, to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has said he would like to see Jackson confirmed by the start of the chamber’s Easter break, which begins April 8. He has not announced dates for confirmation hearings.

S. 1543, the “Suicide Training and Awareness Nationally Delivered for Universal Prevention Act of 2021” or the “STANDUP Act of 2021,” would require state, tribal, and local educational agencies that receive grant funding for priority mental health needs to establish and implement evidence-based suicide awareness and prevention training policies. In addition, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in coordination with the Department of Education and Bureau of Indian Education, would provide educational agencies with best practices for these trainings. House companion bill H.R. 586, introduced by Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA) and 14 other original cosponsors, passed in the House on May 13, 2021. The Senate bill passed on the House Floor by voice vote.

Fact sheet link here.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour: President Biden will recount that throughout the pandemic, millions of American workers have put their lives on the line to keep their communities and country functioning, including the 40 percent of frontline workers who are people of color. The President will express his belief that hard-working Americans deserve sufficient wages to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, without having to work multiple jobs. The President already issued executive actions to ensure 370,000 federal employees and employees of federal contractors are paid a minimum of $15 per hour – because investing in workers also makes employers, including the government, work better and faster. The President will call on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and end the tipped minimum wage and sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities so that workers across the country can have a little breathing room and provide opportunity for their families.

The Biden administration laid out several new policy initiatives that seek to support the needs of people with disabilities and older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this new fact sheet, the White House announced the following actions:

NCD’s Health Equity Framework is the outgrowth of an acknowledgment of decades of health disparities experienced by people with disabilities, and of physical and systemic barriers to accessing health care for people with disabilities; and the desire to address these inequalities and achieve health equity for all persons with disabilities. NCD’s framework begins with four core areas that NCD views as foundational for achieving health equity for people with disabilities:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unveiled a notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks to roll back Trump administration policies to the Department’s so-called “public charge” immigration rule. In the proposed rulemaking, DHS is proposing to consider the following public benefits when making a public charge inadmissibility determination:

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra today issued a new report highlighting the progress that has been made over the past year to strengthen the U.S. public health and medical supply chain and industrial base.

The report highlights the U.S. government’s accomplishments in addressing public health and medical supply chain challenges since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, describes how HHS is implementing the recommendations and goals in the National Strategy for a Resilient Public Health Supply Chain, and outlines additional actions the U.S. government can take to build on its progress. Full news release here.

The report shows that states that have not expanded Medicaid have the highest percentage of uninsured adults and children who are Black. If the remaining twelve non-expansion states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming) were to expand Medicaid, an estimated 957,000 Black Americans without insurance coverage would become eligible for Medicaid coverage. Read the ASPE report.

Unpaid medical bills are among the largest contributors to personal debt in the United States. Evidence indicates that medical debt disproportionately affects people of color and individuals with lower incomes. The Center on Health Insurance Reforms' (CHIR) Maanasa Kona takes a look at new data from the Census Bureau and state court records that demonstrate the disparate impact of medical debt and what policymakers can do to protect consumers from aggressive debt collection. Check out this Georgetown Center for Health Insurance Reform blog post for startling information.

Families that experience poverty-related stressors such as income insecurity or loss, material hardship, and housing hardship or instability—in other words, families with a financial inability to provide for their children—are also more likely to come into contact with the child welfare system. The intersection of poverty and economic insecurity with neglect poses a challenge to child welfare agencies when they respond to reports of maltreatment. Of all maltreatment types, neglect is particularly difficult to identify and define because it involves the omission—rather than the commission—of actions that can harm children. Untangling whether a child’s unmet needs are due to poverty or to some other factor is difficult, which begs the question: To what degree do child welfare agencies include income-related factors in their definitions of child maltreatment? The answer is different in every state. Check out the full blog post here.

Here is the funding announcement for more information about this Targeted PFA. 

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Family Voices is a national organization and grassroots network of families and friends of children and youth with special health care needs and disabilities that promotes partnership with families--including those of cultural, linguistic and geographic diversity--in order to improve healthcare services and policies for children.