Hormone Therapy Declared Necessary Medical Care for Transgender Inmates

Today's top stories in health care.

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By Caitlin Owens (@caitlin__owens)

THE LEAD

“Looking back, she said, it seemed an apt rite of initiation into what became three years of degrading and abusive treatment, starting with the state’s denial of the hormones she says she had taken for 17 years. But on Friday, Ms. Diamond and, through her, all transgender inmates won the unexpected support of the Justice Department, which intervened on her behalf in the federal lawsuit she filed against Georgia corrections officials in February...the Justice Department...declared hormone therapy to be necessary medical care, saying Georgia, and other states, must treat “gender dysphoria” like any other health condition and provide “individual assessment and care.”” (Deborah Sontag, The New York Times)

FEDERAL FITNESS: “For the first time in 16 years, the F.B.I. is requiring that its agents pass a fitness test. The fitness tests, which started at the end of last year, are a return to a tradition begun by the F.B.I.’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover... More significant, the tests are a response to concerns throughout the bureau about how its transformation after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, has put more stress on the agents and given them less time for fitness.” (Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times)

AA WORKS: “The study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, teased apart a treatment effect (improvement due to A.A. itself) and a selection effect (driven by the type of people who seek help). The investigators found that there is a genuine A.A. treatment effect...Separating treatment from selection effects is a longstanding problem in social and medical science...For many years, researchers and clinicians have debated whether the association of A.A. with greater abstinence was caused by treatment or a correlation that arises from the type of people who seek it.” (Austin Frakt, The New York Times)

TOP LINES

“A California appeals court ruled last week that a school district in Encinitas could incorporate yoga into physical education, rejecting a challenge by parents who said the millennia-old discipline violates religious-freedom provisions in California’s constitution, which are broader than those in the U.S. Constitution.” (Joe Palazzolo, The Wall Street Journal)

“The federal government spent millions of dollars in recent years to discourage tobacco use among hipsters through a program that recommends “styling your sweet mustache” and listening to music “no one else has heard of” as good alternatives to smoke breaks.” (Josh Hicks, The Washington Post)

“A Republican state lawmaker in Missouri is pushing for legislation that would stop people like Greenslate and severely limit what food stamp recipients can buy. The bill being proposed would ban the purchase with food stamps of "cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak."” (Roberto A. Ferdman, The Washington Post)

“A hospital operator denied allegations of poor training and improper preparation in seeking dismissal of a lawsuit by a nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for the first U.S. patient to succumb to the deadly disease.” (Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal)

HAPPENING TODAY

On Monday, ACS Corporation Associates and the American Political Science Association hold a briefing on "21st Century Understanding of Chemicals," focusing on "chemicals used in commercial products" and "their effects on humans and/or the environment."

On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Department; Administration for Community Living holds a meeting by teleconference of the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities to discuss the preparation of the 2015 Report to the President and the roles of technology in the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Department; Food and Drug Administration holds a meeting of The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to discuss modified risk tobacco product applications submitted by Swedish Match North America Inc. for 10 tobacco products, April 9-10.

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