Health Glance
One morning early last July, Micha Bitsinnie arrived at work to an onslaught of messages from confused families.
New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham had just issued a directive mandating the state’s child welfare department seek custody of all newborns who had been exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero. Some parents wondered whether medications that they were taking for addiction recovery, such as methadone, would flag their cases. Healthcare providers wondered whether the fentanyl in an epidural counted as a drug exposure.
Bitsinnie supports families as a policy manager at the non-profit organization Bold Futures, which advocates for policies that keep families together. Research shows that children prenatally exposed to substances do best when they can remain in their families and receive supportive services to treat any withdrawal symptoms they experience.
Bitsinnie is also a member of the Navajo nation, and she immediately noticed that the new directive appeared to be in tension with laws protecting the sovereignty of New Mexico’s Native tribes. Those laws stipulate that tribes must be immediately notified about a child welfare case involving a Native child so that they can take jurisdiction of cases involving their citizens.
By the time the American surgeon who contracted Ebola in Congo was flown to Germany for treatment Tuesday, he was barely able to stand on his own, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group where he worked.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unintentionally published Social Security data for at least 100 health providers, according to multiple outlets.
