Black Health Guides & Explainers

Policy

Medicaid Renewal: How to Keep Your Coverage

If you have Medicaid, the state checks whether you still qualify at least once every 12 months, and …

B Black Health Editorial team Jul 17 · 9m

Policy

How four versions of the federal Black Maternal Health Momnibus lost the word Black

In 2023, Black women died of pregnancy-related causes at 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, 3.5 times the …

B Black Health Editorial team Jun 2 · 10m

Policy

Eight former CDC directors warn a June 1 State Department plan would dismantle U.S. disease defense

Eight former directors and acting directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spanning six presidential administrations …

B Black Health Editorial team Jun 1 · 7m

Policy

Georgia just lost 28 percent of its April ACA effectuated enrollment. The 2027 pool is now the question.

An analyst's tracker, reported by KFF Health News, surfaces the deepest single-state drop in people paying ACA premiums …

B Black Health Editorial team May 26 · 10m

Policy

Maryland just capped Ozempic at $274 a month. Most Black Marylanders won't see the change in 2027.

The state's first GLP-1 price cap binds state and local government employee plans. Medicaid, commercial coverage, and the …

B Black Health Editorial team May 26 · 8m

Policy

The rat-borne disease behind the hantavirus headlines is leptospirosis

US national surveillance captured race or ethnicity for only 19 percent of the 1,053 leptospirosis cases reported between …

B Black Health Editorial team May 22 · 12m

Policy

CMS thinned ACA plans this week. Stacked on the OBBBA premium-subsidy rollback, Black marketplace enrollees absorb the squeeze on both sides.

CMS finalized the HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2027 on May 15, 2026. The rule …

B Black Health Editorial team May 20 · 10m

Policy

SCOTUS upheld Medicare drug-price negotiation. The 10 negotiated drugs land where Black Medicare beneficiaries already absorb the disease burden.

The Supreme Court on May 18, 2026 declined to hear pharmaceutical-industry appeals to the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare …

B Black Health Editorial team May 19 · 10m

Policy

Black families in non-expansion states are losing ACA coverage after OBBBA killed the enhanced premium subsidies. Here is what to do this week.

Georgia's marketplace enrollment fell 37 percent from January 2025 to April 2026, dropping from about 1.5 million enrollees …

B Black Health Editorial team May 17 · 11m

Policy

The 2023 ACS lung-cancer screening expansion widened the Black-white eligibility gap from 7 to 12 percentage points

A 2026 multi-cohort Chest analysis of 175,259 adults with a smoking history found that the American Cancer Society's …

B Black Health Editorial team May 17 · 9m

Policy

42 percent of large US tuberculosis outbreaks 2017-2023 were Black or African American patients. Two-thirds of outbreaks happened in family and social networks, not jails or shelters.

A CDC MMWR analysis of 50 large tuberculosis outbreaks across 23 US states between 2017 and 2023 found …

B Black Health Editorial team May 15 · 9m

Policy

HHS launched the MAHA Action Plan to curb psychiatric overprescribing on May 4. The Black-mental-health pattern is under-treatment, not over-treatment.

Five US peer-reviewed studies covering adult depression, pediatric ADHD, Medicare dementia, and Medicaid pediatric antipsychotic care document the …

B Black Health Editorial team May 12 · 10m

Policy

1 in 13 Black babies is born with sickle cell trait. The screening-mandate evidence is more contested than the policy story tells you.

About 1 in 13 Black or African American newborns carries sickle cell trait, the carrier state for sickle …

B Black Health Editorial team May 11 · 9m

Policy

Black US medical-school matriculation dropped 11.6 percent in the first admissions cycle after the SFFA ruling. The Black-physician pipeline shrinks for everyone now looking for one in 2030.

Two 2025 JAMA Network Open papers using AAMC and AACOM data establish three measurements of the post-SFFA shift: …

B Black Health Editorial team May 7 · 8m

Policy

Illinois became the first state to mandate private-insurance doula coverage. Four months in, here is what the evidence predicts and where the implementation gap will show up.

Illinois's January 2026 dual-track policy combines Medicaid doula coverage with a first-in-nation private-insurance mandate. The 2017 Cochrane review …

B Black Health Editorial team May 7 · 10m

Policy

Bhattacharya blocked an MMWR vaccine-effectiveness paper. MMWR anchors most US Black-disparity surveillance reporting; here is what the cite-chain risk looks like.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, head of the CDC and director of the National Institutes of Health, blocked publication of …

B Black Health Editorial team May 1 · 7m

Policy

Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones gave US public health the Levels of Racism framework. It is the lens running underneath most of our reporting.

In 2000, Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones published Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener's Tale in …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 30 · 6m

Policy

Ernie Hudson is the new face of Black-men's-cancer screening. Here is the evidence behind starting earlier on three cancers.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation's 2024 Black-men screening guideline lowered the recommended baseline PSA testing window to ages 40 …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 25 · 9m

Policy

CMS's RAPID pathway cuts Medicare device coverage decisions from a year to two months. Black-Medicare utilization gaps live downstream of the timing change.

The new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Coverage Pathway compresses coverage decisions on FDA Breakthrough Devices from …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 24 · 6m

Policy

Title X's FY2027 funding notice moves the federal family-planning program toward fertility-awareness counseling. A 2022 study of the 2019 precedent shows what that looks like in practice.

A peer-reviewed qualitative study of 55 Title X clinics in Arizona, Iowa, and Wisconsin during the 2020 implementation …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 24 · 7m

Policy

Virginia signs four Momnibus Act II bills on April 22. Here is what each bill does and why the Black-maternal-mortality context makes them consequential.

Governor Abigail Spanberger signed four maternal-health bills in Richmond on April 22, 2026: HB1400 on mental-health screenings, HB1403 …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 24 · 6m

Policy

Bellevue's new 104-bed unit takes Rikers mental-health care out of the jail. The evidence says it should cut self-harm.

NYC's prior Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation model reduced self-harm and injury compared with Restrictive Housing for incarcerated …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 23 · 6m

Policy

A CMS extension of the GLP-1 Bridge through 2027 may reopen a Black Medicare access gap

Before MassHealth expanded coverage of semaglutide and tirzepatide in April 2024, Black patients at a Boston weight-management clinic …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 23 · 5m

Policy

Four years on, long COVID's access gap is widening for Black patients

During the survey window of August 20 to September 16, 2024, the CDC Household Pulse Survey recorded 0.8 …

B Black Health Editorial team Apr 22 · 8m