• California: Earlier this month, two surgeons performed the first human bladder transplant on a 41-year-old man who had lost most of his bladder capacity due to treatments for a rare form of bladder cancer. The doctors who performed the surgery were Inderbir Gill, chair of the urology department at the University of Southern California, and Nima Nassiri, an assistant clinical professor of urology at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to Gill, the surgery was "the realization of a dream" for treating thousands of patients experiencing severe pelvic pain, inflammation, and recurrent infections. "There is no question: A potential door has been opened for these people that did not exist earlier," Gill said. Currently, Gill and Nassiri plan to perform bladder transplants in four more patients in a clinical trial to understand potential outcomes like bladder capacity and graft complications. (Nunn, New York Times, 5/18)
• Nebraska: Nebraska has become the first state to receive a federal waiver to ban the purchase of soda and energy drinks in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The waiver, which goes into effect Jan. 1, is expected to affect around 152,000 people in Nebraska enrolled in SNAP. "There's absolutely zero reason for taxpayers to be subsidizing purchases of soda and energy drinks," said Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R). "SNAP is about helping families in need get healthy food into their diets, but there's nothing nutritious about the junk we're removing with today's waiver." Six other states, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, have submitted requests for waivers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs the SNAP program. The waiver requests include bans on certain foods and drinks or the addition of hot foods for participants. Until now, USDA had rejected waiver requests, saying that there are no clear standards on what foods are good or bad. The agency had also said that the restrictions would be difficult to implement, complicated and costly, and would not necessarily change how people purchased food or decrease health issues such as obesity. (Aleccia, Associated Press, 5/19)
• Ohio: Last week, Kettering Health reported a network cyberattack that limited access to patient care systems and caused a call center outage. Following the attack, the perpetrators posted a ransom note to Kettering's network threatening to leak sensitive and protected data unless the health system paid an extortion fee through a site associated with the Interlock ransomware gang. In an April advisory, the Chicago Health System Coalition warned that Interlock was aggressively targeting healthcare organizations. According to Kettering, perpetrators also contacted patients and requested credit card payments for medical expenses. "While it is customary for Kettering Health to contact patients by phone to discuss payment options for medical bills, out of an abundance of caution, we will not be making calls to ask for or receive payment over the phone until further notice," Kettering said. (Fox, Healthcare IT News, 5/22)

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