"Maryland health leaders call for law requiring docs to report immunizations" (Baltimore Business Journal - February 9, 2015)

Tuesday Feb 10th, 2015

An outbreak of measles spreading across the country is prompting Maryland health officials to take a closer look at its policies for tracking immunizations. Several public health officials on Monday participated in a panel discussion about state and local response to measles at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore County's top health officer Dr. George Wm. Branch, and former Maryland Health Secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein (now an associate dean at Hopkins) all emphasized the need for Maryland to stay vigilant about infectious diseases despite its high vaccination rates.

Related Stories

Lead poisoning cases fell 19 percent in Baltimore last year, even as more children tested for exposure (Baltimore Sun)

The number of Baltimore children with lead poisoning fell 19 percent in 2017, even as more children were tested for exposure to the powerful neurotoxin.

Statewide, the number of Maryland children found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood held steady even as the number of children tested increased by 10 percent, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment report released Tuesday.

Read the entire story.

Azar Unveils Plan to Help Pregnant Patients Quit Opioids (MedPage Today)

States will get help from the federal government integrating services for pregnant and postpartum Medicaid patients with opioid use disorder under a pilot program announced Tuesday by Health and Hu

Trump declared an emergency over opioids. A new report finds it led to very little. (Vox)

To much fanfare last year, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to declare a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” Trump said at the time. “It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.”

When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

Read the entire story.

Visit the Newsroom