General Mental Health Issues
- Wyoming law enforcement agencies will be better able to respond to mental health crises in their communities thanks to a $2.4 million grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The funding supports the Virtual Crisis Care program, which connects officers in the field with licensed mental health professionals for immediate help for people in crisis. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- Minnesota joined a wave of states suing TikTok, alleging the social media giant preys on young people with addictive algorithms that trap them into becoming compulsive consumers of its short videos. The lawsuit, filed in state court, alleges that TikTok is violating Minnesota laws against deceptive trade practices and consumer fraud. It follows a flurry of lawsuits filed by more than a dozen states last year alleging the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health. Minnesota’s case brings the total to about 24 states, Ellison’s office said. Read more here.
AI and Mental Health
- Passive documentation of clinic visits using artificial intelligence (AI)-drafted notes was linked to reduced burnout and improved well-being, a survey study from two academic medical centers suggested. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis
- Fentanyl has spread to every corner of the country in recent years and has caused overdose deaths to surge everywhere it’s gone. For years, young, white, and often rural people have been the public face of the opioid epidemic. Lately, public officials and journalists have also been raising the alarm about high overdose rates among Native Minnesotans and people of color, more generally. However, one particularly hard-hit group in Minnesota is getting little attention from policymakers: older Black men. Read more here.
Transgender Issues
- The Trump administration appears to be following through on its threat to withhold federal funds from public schools in Northern Virginia after they refused to roll back policies that support transgender and gender non-conforming students. The U.S. Education Department announced that it has placed Fairfax County Public Schools and the school systems in Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William, and Loudoun on “high-risk status,” a move that it claims lets it attach specific conditions for releasing funding. Read more here.
Mega Bill’s Impacts on Federal Programs
- The federal budget deficits caused by President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law could trigger automatic cuts to Medicare if Congress does not act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported. The CBO estimates that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for Americans over age 65, could potentially see as much as $491 billion in cuts from 2027 to 2034 if Congress does not act to mitigate a 2010 law that forces across-the-board cuts to many federal programs. Read more here.
- The Trump administration announced a new initiative aimed at getting noncitizens disenrolled from the Medicaid program and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)."CMS will begin providing states with monthly enrollment reports identifying individuals whose citizenship or immigration status could not be confirmed through federal databases," the agency said in a press release. Read more here.
- Advocates are warning the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law will disproportionately harm Black women and children who depend on the program, worsening already disparate health outcomes among Black Americans. Although Black people represent about 14% of the U.S. population, they account for more than 20% of Medicaid enrollees, according to Pew Research Center, and almost 60% of all Black children are enrolled in Medicaid. Read more here.
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