On Tuesday, Covered California announced that 90,500 new consumers signed up for 2019 coverage as of November 30. These figures represent more than an 11 percent drop in enrollment compared to this time last year when there were roughly 102,000 new consumers signed up for coverage. The decrease in Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment at…
Read More »On Thursday, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced changes to school meals standards to allow additional flexibilities related to milk, whole grains, and sodium. Under the new final rule, previous sodium level reduction timelines will be slowed, whole grain-rich requirements will be lessened, and flavored, low-fat milk will be able to be served. According…
Read More »The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recently announced a new technical assistance opportunity – Strong Systems, Stronger Communities (SSSC) TA Cohorts. SSSC will support local health departments in completing public health performance improvement projects through a tailored training and…
Read More »On Monday, the Urban Institute released a report, “Proposed Public Charge Rule Could Jeopardize Recent Coverage Gains among Citizen Children,” detailing the potential impacts of the proposed public charge rule on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The report finds that between 2008 and 2016, Medicaid and CHIP participation increased 15.5 percent among…
Read More »The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) this week released a report, “Taxation of Sugary Drinks,” which examines the purpose of sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes and key design decisions for the Legislature to consider. Recall, AB 1838 was a budget trailer bill that was passed and signed into law in June 2018 that bans the ability…
Read More »This week, researchers at UCLA and UC Berkeley released a new study that projects hundreds of thousands more Californians could become uninsured due to federal changes to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate penalty. Recall, the ACA’s individual insurance coverage mandate tax penalty will be repealed beginning in 2019 as part of the sweeping…
Read More »The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) this week released three mortality reports, finding that life expectancy declined for the third consecutive year in 2017. Contributing to the declining life expectancy was an additional 70,000 deaths from overdoses and a 3.7 percent increase in the suicide rate….
Read More »Last week, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and its 13 federal member agencies released the Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) which assesses the science of climate change and its impacts across the United States. The comprehensive and extensive report examines 12 different national topic areas on which climate change will have significant impacts,…
Read More »The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is accepting proposals for two awards with a maximum of $15,000 each to supplement ongoing climate change and health adaptation initiatives in local health departments. Applicants should have experience working in local initiatives…
Read More »The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is accepting applications for the 2018-2019 Model Practices Program through Wednesday, December 12. The program honors and recognizes outstanding local health initiatives from across the country and shares and promotes these practices among LHDs through the Model Practice Database. A Model Practices webinar recording which…
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