• California: Gilead plans to invest $32 billion through 2030 to expand research, manufacturing, and workforce infrastructure in the United States. The investments will fund AI-enabled labs and advanced manufacturing sites, create over 3,000 jobs, and expand production capacity, including for personalized therapies. "Our U.S. investment strategy reflects a simple belief: that the future of medicine should be built here," said Daniel O'Day, Gilead's chair and CEO. "By strengthening our American footprint as part of a global innovation engine, we're helping ensure patients everywhere benefit from our world-class therapies." According to the company, its investments will lead to a projected $43 billion in U.S. economic impact. (Gilead, Axios, 6/25)
• Maryland: Earlier this month, CMS announced that health insurers will trade $10.4 billion in exchange for risk-adjustment payments this year. The exchange-risk adjustment program was established under the Affordable Care Act and distributes financial risk across health insurers. Insurers account for risk adjustment during the plan year, and CMS finalizes the specific payment amounts the following June, with payments then being due in November. For the 2024 plan year, risk-adjustment payments were 8.9% of premiums, down from 10.3% in 2023. Overall, 592 companies participated in the risk-adjustment program in 2024, down from 605 in 2023. Centene will receive the largest risk-adjustment payment of $786 million, which the company said will be used to help offset growing utilization among its exchange enrollees. In comparison, Elevance Health will pay the most in risk-adjustment payments at $54 million. (Tepper, Modern Healthcare, 7/7)
• Pennsylvania: According to a new study, U.S. children's physical and mental health has declined in several areas over the last 17 years. For the study, researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) conducted several cross-sectional analyses using mortality statistics from the United States and 18 other high-income countries, five nationally representative surveys, and EHR data from 10 pediatric health systems. Between 2007 and 2022, U.S. infants were 1.78 times more likely to die than infants in other high-income countries, and children ages 1 to 19 were 1.80 times more likely to die. The prevalence of chronic conditions in children ages 3 to 17 also increased from 39.9% in 2011 to 45.7% in 2023. Rates of obesity, early-onset menstruation, sleep issues, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms, and loneliness also all increased in U.S. children. "To me, it's a huge wake-up call that we really are failing kids right now," said Christopher Forrest, a professor of pediatrics at CHOP and the study's lead author. "We need to not just examine the food environment, the chemical environment, or the technological environment, but the whole ecosystem that kids are growing up in." (Goldman, Axios, 7/8; Henderson, MedPage Today, 7/7)

Host Rachel Woods sits down with a team from Seattle Children's — Ginger Hines, executive director, Sheryl Morelli, medical director and CMO, and Larry Wissow, chair of pediatric psychology and behavioral medicine, to talk about the behavioral health issues children are facing in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic.