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Channel: North Denver News

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      string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]"
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Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73207" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

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Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73206" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711651414) } [2]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(52) "A State-Sanctioned Hospital Monopoly Raises Concerns" ["link"]=> string(81) "https://northdenvernews.com/a-state-sanctioned-hospital-monopoly-raises-concerns/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:59:31 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Latest" ["guid"]=> string(81) "https://northdenvernews.com/a-state-sanctioned-hospital-monopoly-raises-concerns/" ["description"]=> string(1230) "
Brett Kelman and Samantha Liss The Federal Trade Commission has long argued that competition makes the economy better. But some states have stopped the agency from blocking hospital mergers that create local or regional monopolies, and the results have been messy. Two dozen states have at some point passed controversial legislation waiving anti-monopoly laws, allowing rival hospitals […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(6714) "

The Federal Trade Commission has long argued that competition makes the economy better. But some states have stopped the agency from blocking hospital mergers that create local or regional monopolies, and the results have been messy.

Two dozen states have at some point passed controversial legislation waiving anti-monopoly laws, allowing rival hospitals to merge and replacing competition with prolonged state oversight.

Six years ago, Tennessee and Virginia ushered in the largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in the nation with the creation of Ballad Health. For most of the 1.1 million residents in the Tri-Cities region of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, the merged system became the only option for hospital care.

The argument for Ballad was that two hospital companies couldn’t survive in the region, and a merger would prevent them from closing or being bought up. But critics say fears a monopoly would jeopardize access to and quality of care have been realized. For example, since the merger, patients spend three times as long in Ballad emergency rooms before admission to hospitals, according to reports released by the Tennessee health department.

“I do not want to further risk my life and die at a Ballad hospital,” said Neal Osborne, a city council member in Bristol, Va. In an interview, Osborne said he spent 30 hours in a Ballad ER this year as he suffered diabetic crisis. “The wait times just to get in and see a doctor in the ER have grown exponentially.”

The legislation that created Ballad is known as a certificate of public advantage, or COPA. The FTC has repeatedly warned states to be wary of COPAs, which “only exist to protect a merger that would otherwise be illegal under antitrust law,” Rahul Rao, a deputy director of the Bureau of Competition at the agency, told KFF Health News in an interview last year.

There have been about 10 hospital mergers in the past three decades that depended on COPAs, and afterward, the feds saw rising prices, decreases in quality, reductions in access and a decrease in wages, Rao said.

Since Ballad’s COPA, the merged system has not met most quality-of-care goals set by the states in recent years. It has fallen short of charity care promises made to Tennessee by about $191 million over a five-year span. 

Ballad has attributed its quality struggles to the coronavirus pandemic, its charity shortfalls to Medicaid changes and its longer ER stays to staffing and discharge challenges it says are beyond its control.

Ballad said ER times for admitted patients have dropped to about 7.5 hours since its latest annual report.  

“On those issues Ballad Health can directly control, our performance has rebounded from 2022,” said a Ballad spokesperson, Molly Luton.

The FTC announced in 2019 that it would study the Ballad merger but has yet to issue a report.

Legislation was introduced this year to limit COPAs in Tennessee. But on Tuesday, a state legislative subcommittee voted to kill the bill without debate, refusing to hear testimony from Tri-Cities residents who drove five hours to Nashville for a chance to speak against Ballad.

This article is not available for syndication due to republishing restrictions. If you have questions about the availability of this or other content for republication, please contact NewsWeb@kff.org.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73205" ["summary"]=> string(1230) "
Brett Kelman and Samantha Liss The Federal Trade Commission has long argued that competition makes the economy better. But some states have stopped the agency from blocking hospital mergers that create local or regional monopolies, and the results have been messy. Two dozen states have at some point passed controversial legislation waiving anti-monopoly laws, allowing rival hospitals […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(6714) "

The Federal Trade Commission has long argued that competition makes the economy better. But some states have stopped the agency from blocking hospital mergers that create local or regional monopolies, and the results have been messy.

Two dozen states have at some point passed controversial legislation waiving anti-monopoly laws, allowing rival hospitals to merge and replacing competition with prolonged state oversight.

Six years ago, Tennessee and Virginia ushered in the largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in the nation with the creation of Ballad Health. For most of the 1.1 million residents in the Tri-Cities region of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, the merged system became the only option for hospital care.

The argument for Ballad was that two hospital companies couldn’t survive in the region, and a merger would prevent them from closing or being bought up. But critics say fears a monopoly would jeopardize access to and quality of care have been realized. For example, since the merger, patients spend three times as long in Ballad emergency rooms before admission to hospitals, according to reports released by the Tennessee health department.

“I do not want to further risk my life and die at a Ballad hospital,” said Neal Osborne, a city council member in Bristol, Va. In an interview, Osborne said he spent 30 hours in a Ballad ER this year as he suffered diabetic crisis. “The wait times just to get in and see a doctor in the ER have grown exponentially.”

The legislation that created Ballad is known as a certificate of public advantage, or COPA. The FTC has repeatedly warned states to be wary of COPAs, which “only exist to protect a merger that would otherwise be illegal under antitrust law,” Rahul Rao, a deputy director of the Bureau of Competition at the agency, told KFF Health News in an interview last year.

There have been about 10 hospital mergers in the past three decades that depended on COPAs, and afterward, the feds saw rising prices, decreases in quality, reductions in access and a decrease in wages, Rao said.

Since Ballad’s COPA, the merged system has not met most quality-of-care goals set by the states in recent years. It has fallen short of charity care promises made to Tennessee by about $191 million over a five-year span. 

Ballad has attributed its quality struggles to the coronavirus pandemic, its charity shortfalls to Medicaid changes and its longer ER stays to staffing and discharge challenges it says are beyond its control.

Ballad said ER times for admitted patients have dropped to about 7.5 hours since its latest annual report.  

“On those issues Ballad Health can directly control, our performance has rebounded from 2022,” said a Ballad spokesperson, Molly Luton.

The FTC announced in 2019 that it would study the Ballad merger but has yet to issue a report.

Legislation was introduced this year to limit COPAs in Tennessee. But on Tuesday, a state legislative subcommittee voted to kill the bill without debate, refusing to hear testimony from Tri-Cities residents who drove five hours to Nashville for a chance to speak against Ballad.

This article is not available for syndication due to republishing restrictions. If you have questions about the availability of this or other content for republication, please contact NewsWeb@kff.org.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711648771) } [3]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(66) "CDC Relaxes COVID Guidelines; Will Schools, Day Cares Follow Suit?" ["link"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-280/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:42:32 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Health" ["guid"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-280/" ["description"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73204" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711647752) } [4]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(79) "More Women Are Drinking Themselves Sick. The Biden Administration Is Concerned." ["link"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-6/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:58:37 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Latest" ["guid"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-6/" ["description"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(19626) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73203" ["summary"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(19626) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711645117) } [5]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(66) "CDC Relaxes COVID Guidelines; Will Schools, Day Cares Follow Suit?" ["link"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-279/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:41:32 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Health" ["guid"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-279/" ["description"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73202" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711644092) } [6]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(79) "More Women Are Drinking Themselves Sick. The Biden Administration Is Concerned." ["link"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-5/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:57:32 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Latest" ["guid"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-5/" ["description"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(19641) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73201" ["summary"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(19641) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711641452) } [7]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(66) "CDC Relaxes COVID Guidelines; Will Schools, Day Cares Follow Suit?" ["link"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-278/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:40:33 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Health" ["guid"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-278/" ["description"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73200" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711640433) } [8]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(79) "More Women Are Drinking Themselves Sick. The Biden Administration Is Concerned." ["link"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-4/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:56:36 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Latest" ["guid"]=> string(108) "https://northdenvernews.com/more-women-are-drinking-themselves-sick-the-biden-administration-is-concerned-4/" ["description"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(19641) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73199" ["summary"]=> string(316) "When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(19641) "

When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.

She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.

“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.

A portrait of Karla Adkins. She is standing outside on a beach and smiles at the camera.
After years of heavy drinking to ease her anxiety, Karla Adkins nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago. “You can’t get much worse from where I got,” says Adkins. She now works as a coach to help people change their relationship with alcohol and published a book about her health ordeal.(Allison Duff)

Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.

It’s a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn’t something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.

“This is a touchy topic,” said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “There is no safe level of alcohol use,” she said. “That’s, like, new information that people didn’t want to know.”

Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.

“Parenthood tended to be this protective factor,” but that’s not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.

More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.

The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.

More recently, the covid-19 pandemic “significantly exacerbated” binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.

But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the “pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market.”

Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of “mommy wine culture,” said Adams, is that “if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you’re fine.”

And while it’s unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women’s drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.

A black and white cartoon that visualizes reasons why there's "always an excuse" to have a drink. The illustration is set up like a flowchart, and lists reasons such as: "the holidays, a wedding, dinner with your in-laws, vacation, your birthday, work happy hour, girls night out, baby shower," and more.
Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. “It’s a vulnerable group,” says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.(Chrissie Bonner)

These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach.“It’s a very taboo topic,” Adams said.

And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it’s often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.

“Often, they didn’t know there was anything wrong with what they’re doing,” she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.

And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.

National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.

When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob’s office would not comment on such policies.

It’s a topic close to Adkins’ heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.

“The amazing thing is, you can’t get much worse from where I got,” said Adkins. “My hope is really to change the narrative.”

" ["date_timestamp"]=> int(1711637796) } [9]=> array(12) { ["title"]=> string(66) "CDC Relaxes COVID Guidelines; Will Schools, Day Cares Follow Suit?" ["link"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-277/" ["dc"]=> array(1) { ["creator"]=> string(12) "James Python" } ["pubdate"]=> string(31) "Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:39:32 +0000" ["category"]=> string(6) "Health" ["guid"]=> string(96) "https://northdenvernews.com/cdc-relaxes-covid-guidelines-will-schools-day-cares-follow-suit-277/" ["description"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["content"]=> array(1) { ["encoded"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

" } ["post-id"]=> string(5) "73198" ["summary"]=> string(375) "BOSTON —  Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree? In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were […]" ["atom_content"]=> string(8152) "


Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.

Gone are mandated isolation periods and masking. But will schools and child care centers agree?

In case you’ve lost track: Before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were supposed to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then mask for a set period of time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, with COVID deaths and hospitalizations dropping, the CDC says children can go back to school when their overall symptoms improve and they’re fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask when they return.

Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to react when their children fall sick. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record on following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absences, can influence a state or district’s decisions.

The result can be a confusing array of policies among states and districts, not to mention workplaces — confounding parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.

“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mom in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what I should think of COVID now. Is it still a monster?”

Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take off 10 days if she gets COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade has still been sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after long breaks.

FILE - Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

FILE – Fifth graders wearing face masks sit while social-distancing during a music class at Milton Elementary School in Rye, New York, May 18, 2021.

“I feel like we should just do away with anything that treats COVID differently or keep all of the precautions,” she said.

The public education system has long held varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-22 school year, 18 states followed CDC recommendations for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.

And in the child care world, some providers have long used more stringent testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. Reasons have ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy — both for their personal safety and to keep the day care open.

Some states moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.

In an attempt to minimize school absences and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged kids to come to school when mildly sick and said that students who test positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic can attend school. Los Angeles and San Diego’s school systems, among others, have adopted that policy.

But the majority of big-city districts around the country still have asked parents to isolate children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to mask for another five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.

Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely followed.

Official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, has been to have students stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy, in effect, is: “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”

That’s because COVID is managed at home, using the honor system.

“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.

FILE - Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

FILE – Students line up to enter Christa McAuliffe School in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 29, 2021.

Ridley School District in the Philadelphia suburbs was already using a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they come back, they must mask for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement because of the new CDC guidance.

A school or day care’s specific guidelines are consequential for working parents who must miss work if their child can’t go to school or child care. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, 104,000 adults reported missing work because of child care issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems meant 41,000 adults missed work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Melissa Colagrosso’s child care center in West Virginia dropped special guidelines for COVID about a year ago, she said. Now, they’re the same as other illnesses: A child must be free of severe symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.

“We certainly are treating COVID just like we would treat flu or hand, foot and mouth” disease, said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.

As for kids without symptoms who test positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing kids unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a quandary she has not encountered.

Still, some parents worry the relaxed rules put their communities at greater risk. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and Indigenous immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California did away with isolation requirements in January.

“I don’t think they’re considering what the impact will be for our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care — that we’re almost expendable.”

Other impacts of the pandemic linger, too, even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the Philadelphia-area district, more students are reclusive and struggle to interact in-person with peers, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.

“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having trouble.”

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