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In another demonstration of the Biden-Harris Administration’s unwavering commitment to children’s health, today the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released comprehensive guidance to support states in ensuring the 38 million children with Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage – nearly half of the children in this country – receive the full range of health care services they need.

Under Medicaid’s Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) requirements, eligible children and youth are entitled to a comprehensive array of prevention, diagnostic, and treatment services – including well-child visits, mental health services, dental, vision, and hearing services. These requirements are designed to ensure that children receive medically necessary health care services early, so that health problems are averted, or diagnosed and treated as early as possible. Because of the EPSDT requirements, Medicaid provides some of the most comprehensive health coverage in the country for children and youth.

The EPSDT guidance also includes information to help address the needs of children with behavioral health conditions. Youth in the United States are experiencing a mental health crisis, research shows. The EPSDT guidance includes a series of strategies and best practices that states can use to meet children’s and youth’s behavioral health needs. For example, it suggests that states create a children’s behavioral health benefit package and support the management of children and youth with mild to moderate behavioral health needs in primary care settings. States must provide coverage for an array of medically necessary mental health and SUD services along the care continuum – including in children’s own homes, schools and communities — in order to meet their EPSDT obligation. This work builds on the HHS Roadmap to Behavioral Health Integration, which outlines the Department’s commitment to providing the full spectrum of integrated, equitable, evidence-based, culturally appropriate, and person-centered behavioral health care to the populations it serves, and builds on the President’s Unity Agenda to advance mental health.

Read more at HHS.gov.

Women in the U.S. — particularly younger women — are finding it tough to make their own health a top priority. More than six in 10 U.S. women (63%) say it is hard for them to do this. Majorities cite feeling overwhelmed, their mental or emotional health, caring for others before themselves, and work as the top barriers getting in the way. These findings are from a Hologic-Gallup survey of the state of women’s health conducted April 8-16, 2024, with 4,001 adult women across the U.S. via web using the probability-based Gallup Panel.

Younger generations of adult women in the U.S. are much more likely than baby boomers and the Silent Generation to agree it feels too overwhelming to make their health a top priority. Adult Gen Zers and millennials are more likely than their older counterparts to report that they don’t have enough time, they don’t have enough money, and their work gets in the way as challenges preventing them from making their health a top priority.

Although many women are aiming to make their mental health a high priority, previous Gallup research shows that this group experiences worse mental and emotional wellbeing than men and older Americans. Suffering from poor mental and emotional health on their own negatively affects women’s lives. The Hologic-Gallup study finds that mental health issues are also preventing women from taking care of their health broadly, with 60% saying it is a barrier to making their health a top priority.

Women facing barriers to prioritizing their health while they are young could suffer from significant long-term effects. Taking care of one’s health early can be key to ensuring stable health and wellbeing later in life.

Read more at News.Gallup.com.

Ohioans living in rural, Appalachian counties are dying early at a higher rate than the rest of the state, according to a new report. Early deaths (under 75) have increased statewide in the past decade. Per 100,000, there were 378 early deaths in Ohio between 2008-2010 and 454 between 2019-2021. There were 428 early deaths in rural Appalachia from 2008-2010 and 527 from 2019-2021. 

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio recently published a report titled “Health in rural and Appalachian Ohio.” They used the county types developed for the Ohio Rural Health Improvement Plan.  The report shows how people in rural areas experience barriers to health care — from lack of broadband access to transportation.

Nearly one-fifth (18%) of households in rural Appalachia had no access to the internet from 2018-2022. 14% of rural non-Appalachian households also had no access to the internet compared to 12% of Ohio. The Ohio Capital Journal reported last year that about 75% of people and about a third of households in Ohio’s 32 Appalachian counties don’t have access to the Federal Communications Commission’s bare minimum internet speed. 

Read more at OhioCapitalJournal.com.

As part of the Biden-Harris administration’s effort to ensure more than 150 million people with private health coverage have greater access to mental health and substance use disorder care, the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury took significant action today by issuing final rules to clarify and strengthen protections to expand equitable access to these benefits as compared to medical and surgical benefits and reduce barriers to accessing these services. 

“Like medical care, mental health care is vital to the well-being of America’s workers,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. “The final rules issued today make it easier for people living with mental health conditions and substance use disorders to get the life-saving care they often need.”

The rules build on the departments’ commitment to achieving the full promise of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. The act requires group health plans and health insurance issuers offering group and individual health insurance coverage that offer mental health or substance use disorder benefits to cover those benefits in parity with medical and surgical benefits, without imposing greater restrictions on mental health or substance use disorder benefits as compared to medical and surgical benefits. More than 15 years after the law’s enactment, the departments’ enforcement efforts have shown that many still encounter barriers to accessing mental health and substance use disorder care as compared to medical and surgical care under their health plan or coverage. 

The new rules add additional protections against more restrictive, nonquantitative treatment limitations for mental health and substance use disorder benefits as compared to medical or surgical benefits. Nonquantitative treatment limitations are requirements that limit the scope or duration of benefits, such as prior authorization requirements, step therapy and standards for provider admission to participate in a network. 

Read more at DOL.gov.

Online spaces like forums, chat rooms, social media, and video games offer individuals a way to connect that may not be as easy—or even possible—in real life. Most digital communities allow members to remain anonymous and make it easy to find others who share their interests, values, and identities—including ones they don’t express outwardly in their everyday lives. 

The communities that form around video games are facilitated by the new ways of interacting online that have come about over the last several years. To collaborate, players often use tools beyond the game, such as platforms like Discord, where groups can converse via text or voice chat. These platforms also allow gamers to stay connected when they’re not playing.

When he returned from military service in Iraq, U.S. Army Captain Stephen Machuga found that playing video games took his mind off the severe anxiety he was experiencing. In 2015, he founded Stack Up with the goal of using video games to help other veterans and active duty military. The organization sends games and consoles to deployed units and veterans, funds trips to gaming events, and more—all with the mission of supporting mental health.

What Machuga didn’t anticipate was that this initiative would also end up including a 24/7 crisis intervention program. As more veterans, active duty military members, and civilians joined Stack Up’s Discord server to play games together, Colder Carras says, they quickly realized that many members faced challenging life situations—like relationship loss or financial ruin—and felt overwhelmed and unable to cope. What’s more: they trusted each other—peers with shared experiences and love for video games—to help them through crises and mental health struggles.

So the members of Stack Up came up with a way to help themselves: Two first responders in the community created the Stack Up Overwatch Program (StOP), which officially launched in 2018, to offer 24/7 peer-based mental health and crisis support. The group worked with the PsychArmor Institute—a nonprofit that educates people on how to support military members and veterans—to formalize the nearly 40-hour training process of becoming a StOP volunteer.

Read more at PublicHealth.JHU.edu.

Nashua health officials are working to decrease the stigma surrounding mental health for Latinos in the city, through an initiative that seeks to understand the community’s current mental health needs.

Equity Officer Iraida Muñoz said the city’s division of public health hosted a community conversation last month about mental health in English, Spanish and Portuguese, with a focus on emotional well-being. She said some of the most interesting responses were about the cultural taboos among Latinos about talking about mental health — especially for young men.

“Some of the answers we found is that people don’t talk about their feelings at home; this isn’t something Hispanics usually emphasize, but they do connect in other ways,” Muñoz said in Spanish.

Watila Burpee is a therapist at the Greater Nashua Mental Health Center who has spent nearly two decades working with Hispanic clients and raising awareness about the ongoing mental health crisis. Echoing Muñoz, she said an additional barrier for many of her clients is the cultural attitude towards mental health.

“Latino culture doesn’t see mental illness as something that is important to take care, just like the physical health,” she said. “They think that’s a shame. That’s just something that we don’t talk about.”

Read more at NHPR.org.