• District of Columbia: Last week, SCOTUS heard a case on South Carolina's efforts to restrict Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. In 2018, state officials were ordered to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, saying that "payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any Justices Weigh Challenge to South Carolina's Bid to Defund Planned Parenthood purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life." However, the SCOTUS case was not about abortion access. Instead, it focused on whether Medicaid beneficiaries have a "right" to choose a preferred health provider and sue when they cannot. According to NBC News, the court currently seems to be split, with some conservative justices saying that there could be a flood of lawsuits if patients could sue to pick their preferred medical provider and liberal justices arguing that states could choose to defund providers for any number of reasons if patients were not allowed to sue. A decision on this case is expected later this summer. (Weixel, The Hill, 4/2; Hurley, NBC News, 4/2, Liptak, New York Times, 4/2)
• District of Columbia/New York: According to a new study published in Nature, getting vaccinated against shingles may reduce the risk of developing dementia by around 20%. In the study, researchers analyzed the health records of 282,541 older adults in Wales who did not have dementia at the start of the country's shingles vaccination rollout on Sept. 1, 2013. At the time, the vaccine was only offered to people ages 79 and younger. This provided the researchers with a "unique natural experiment" to evaluate the effects of shingles vaccination on dementia. Overall, the researchers found that being vaccinated against shingles reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis by 3.5 percentage points over a seven-year period, which corresponded to a relative risk reduction of 20%. This reduction in risk was also greater among women than men. Although the mechanism behind the reduction in risk is still unclear, Anupam Jena from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said that, "[t]he vaccine could represent a cost-effective intervention that has public health benefits strongly exceeding its intended purpose." (George, MedPage Today, 4/2; Carroll, NBC News, 4/2)
• New York: NYU Langone has named Alec Kimmelman, a physician and cancer researcher, as its next CEO. Kimmelman originally joined NYU Langone in 2016 as its chair of radiation oncology and was later appointed director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center in 2023. According to the health system, Kimmelman will become CEO and dean of NYU's Grossman School of Medicine on Sept. 1. He will replace Robert Grossman, who has served as CEO and dean since 2007. Grossman plans to retire in the summer, after which he will become EVP of the organization's board of trustees. "I am humbled and excited to be the next CEO and dean of NYU Langone and appreciate the confidence the board of trustees and the search committee have placed in me,” Kimmelman said. "I look forward to building upon Dr. Grossman's astonishing record of achievements that have catapulted this institution to be one of the top-ranked health systems in the nation." (D'Ambrosio, Crain's New York Business/Modern Healthcare, 3/31)

The implications of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade  are far reaching, with over 250,000 reported abortions¹ in 2019 taking place in states likely to ban them² following this ruling. Regardless of personal convictions, leaders in every sector of the healthcare industry must grapple with how this decision will differentially impact women across states and demographic groups. Check out our insights and interactive maps  to see which groups will be most impacted by new abortion restrictions in each state.