Lansing Lines is presented in cooperation with MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.
DHHS Budget Asks: From Detroit Project To Chromotherapy Glasses
During the only House committee hearing over the two weeks of legislative spring break, Rep. Christine Morse (D-Kalamazoo)’s Appropriations subcommittee on Health and Human Services heard funding requests for everything from a new Detroit affordable housing and childcare campus to chromotherapy glasses.
Morse held the hearing to take public comment, which she said would be used to influence the budget-crafting process.
Among the requests heard was a $2.498 million ask to break ground on a combined housing and childcare project in downtown Detroit through MiSide, a Detroit-based nonprofit providing families with access to behavioral healthcare, employment, housing and childcare services.
Laura LeBlanc, executive director of philanthropy and external affairs with MiSide, said the nonprofit provides services to 25,000 people across Wayne County, and is looking to expand services in the Cody Rouge neighborhood of Detroit through a “healthy village initiative.”
LeBlanc said the first-of-its-kind program in metro Detroit will offer a combination of housing and childcare to a “community in desperate need,” using a freshly constructed two-tier campus.
“On the main level, it will offer 90 children access to child care, and then on the second floor we will provide 40 units of affordable housing right here in Detroit,” she said. “This seeks to serve and improve the social determinants of health in both education and affordable housing. In addition to that, it will provide jobs in the area and ensure that families have childcare, so they can go to work and be successful.”
LeBlanc said MiSide has partnered with KIPP Detroit, a local charter school within walking distance, along with Covenant Care, which will provide free dental and health care on the campus. She said there’s also a Boys and Girls club within walking distance of the planned site.
“This will provide everything a child needs to grow up healthy and strong,” LeBlanc said. “We have the potential to help low-income families living above the child care center, to connect them with early childhood careers as well… someone could live upstairs and then go downstairs to work in the morning and provide childcare.”
She said the program will address a shortage of both childcare workers and affordable housing in Detroit.
The goal is to break ground on the new construction project in fall of 2024, LeBlanc said, with families able to move in during 2025.
When asked by Rep. Donni Steele (R-Lake Orion) who would qualify, LeBlanc said the affordable housing portion would be limited to low-income individuals, likely those at less than 80 percent of the area’s median income (AMI). The childcare portion could be available to those living below or just above the poverty line, she said.
Maggie Varney, founder and CEO of Maggie’s Wigs for Kids Michigan, also presented a request for $250,000 to serve 250 children this year.
Varney said currently insurance providers cover wigs for Michiganders over 18 who are experiencing hair loss due to cancer, but do not cover minors, who can be stuck dealing with the emotional and social ramifications of not having access to wigs.
“If you’re under the age of 18, insurance doesn’t recognize the need for a child to have a wig,” Varney said, adding that her nonprofit has provided 5,300 children in 55 counties with wigs, with a minimum of 250 children in the program at any one time.
“The recurrence rate, unfortunately for children, is 75%,” Varney said, “so we don’t see them once… We see them year after year after year, and their little head size changes.”
Monica Sparks is another unique nonprofit founder with a $143,806 General Fund request.
Her nonprofit, Community of Hearts, raises mental health awareness for students through the “stress-less student program” and uses chromotherapy glasses.
Chromotherapy, also referred to as color therapy, is a holistic health treatment using different colored lights to improve health and alter mood.
Sparks said the chromotherapy glasses Community of Hearts is piloting come in colors like yellow, pink, blue and green, and “they help with the overstimulation of the brain.
“The children absolutely love wearing them,” she said. “There’s no stigma attached to them, and they feel very relaxed when they wear them.”
Sparks said the pilot program was used in Kent County schools on students with a background of social and economic challenges, and teachers reported 93 percent of the students who used the glasses benefited from the program, with 72 percent of students utilizing the glasses daily without prompting.
The program is currently operating in 13 classrooms in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, she said, and the appropriation would provide 31,806 students with chromotherapy glasses, for only $13 a child.
Sparks said several pairs of the glasses were left in Morse’s office for her to try.
Others who made requests included Matt Julliard, president and CEO of Michigan’s Children, who requested an additional $4.7 million for runaway and homeless youth service providers through the Michigan Network for Youth and Families.
The group initially requested increased funding of $10 million last year, and received a $5.3 million funding increase in the Fiscal Year (FY) ‘24 budget.
Now, the network is requesting the other nearly 50% of funding not yet received to fill a gap in eight Michigan counties that don’t have youth service providers, Julliard said, concentrated mostly in the northwest corner of the lower peninsula and most of the upper peninsula.
Julliard also requested removal of some limitations on how the funding could be used, citing the importance of using the dollars for infrastructure improvements necessary to keep programs running.
In total, members from over 20 Michigan-based groups testified with funding requests or in support of the bicameral water affordability legislation.
Concern After Cattle Herd Catches Avian Flu
A herd of dairy cattle in Montcalm County was found to have contracted the highly pathogenic avian influenza, according to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
MDARD Director Tim Boring said further investigation was needed by state and federal officials . . . but the cattle were recently brought from Texas. Before being moved from Texas the cattle did not have any symptoms and were not ill. He asked cattle producers to contact their veterinarian if there was any concern.
“Our highest priority at MDARD remains protecting our food supply and ensuring animal health. As this situation evolves, we will provide critical updates to producers, industry and all Michiganders,” Boring said.
State Veterinarian Dr. Nora Wineland said the virus is highly contagious and is primarily spread by wild birds and contact with infected animals. She said mammals can contract the virus.
“As more is learned, it is vitally important for producers to work with their veterinarian and isolate sick animals from others, minimize the number of visitors to their farms, prevent contact between their animals and wildlife, and continue to vigilantly monitor the health of their animals,” Wineland said.
She said the spring is a migration window for birds, which is a period of higher risk for avian flu and said there isn’t any indication of concern for domestic flocks in Michigan at this time.
“I think this is a really rapidly evolving situation and there’s a lot that we are still working to understand,” Wineland said.
MDARD said the public health risk associated with this outbreak still remained low to humans and the analysis of the virus from the case and other cases of infected cattle hasn’t shown an adaptation to be more transmissible between mammals.
“MDARD is working diligently and in close collaboration with government partners, producer groups, and Michigan dairy farmers to address the situation and prevent the spread of disease,” Wineland said.
Supreme Court Appears Poised To Preserve Mifepristone Access
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised to preserve access to mifepristone, a medication used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.
The justices arguably questioned whether opponents who challenged the Federal Drug Administration’s approval of the medication have standing to bring claims.
If the court sides with the FDA, current rules allowing patients to receive the drug to induce an abortion through 10 weeks of pregnancy would stand.
Michigan’s top Democrats quickly reacted to the arguments, saying the case is former President Donald Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ efforts to create a national abortion ban.
“Amid a nationwide assault on our reproductive health, today’s case is yet another attempt by partisan, out-of-touch extremists to strip away our freedoms,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. “They think they have found a sympathetic audience in the same Supreme Court that repealed Roe, leaving more than a third of U.S. women living in states with abortion bans. We’ve worked hard to ensure that’s not the case in Michigan. We will watch this case closely and keep fighting like hell.”
Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, called the case a “direct threat to the reproductive freedoms” Democrats have worked to protect.
“… A ban on mifepristone is the next step in chipping away at Michiganders’ health care, and this politically motivated case could strip women of their fundamental freedoms,” she said in a statement.
Michigan’s Progressive Women’s Caucus issued a similar statement, adding that it is “time that the government stops interfering in the reproductive decisions of citizens.”
The court heard consolidated arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). A decision is not expected until June.
AHM sued in November 2022, challenging the FDA’s initial approval of the pill and regulation changes that loosened the rules on who could prescribe the drug and how it could be dispensed.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the doctors don’t “come within 100 miles” of having standing to bring the lawsuit.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. questioned whether anybody could challenge in court the lawfulness of what the FDA did. Alito also asked if the states could challenge it.
“We think the states lack standing; they’re asserting indirect injuries,” Prelogar said. “… I think with respect to regulatory changes it’s hard to identify anyone who would have standing.”
Erin Hawley, who represents Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued the anti-abortion doctors and organizations who sued have standing because they may be called upon to issue treatment to someone who has had complications from using the drug, which would violate their personal ethics. And, she noted, doctors may not be able to raise such a concern in an emergency.
Hawley said the FDA also acknowledges that between 2.9 percent and 4.9 percent of women will end up in emergency rooms and that women are “more likely” to need surgical intervention and other care without an in-person visit.
“… Doctors will be forced to manage abortion drug harm is not a bug in the FDA system, but part of its very design,” she argued. “Ruling against respondents on standing here would allow federal agencies to conscript non-regulated parties into violating their consciences and suffering other harm without judicial recourse.”
Prelogar said FDA’s opponents can’t name one doctor who has had to violate his or her conscience by providing care to a woman suffering health issues due to mifepristone under the FDA’s regulations.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned when such a situation happened, and Hawley, who is the wife of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), acknowledged that she couldn’t because doctors do not always know the events that preceded an emergency.
Prelogar also noted, in answer to a question from Justice Brett Kavanagh, that federal laws already provide protections to keep doctors from going against their conscience to perform or assist in an abortion.
Kavanagh as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, all Trump appointees, seemed skeptical about standing.
Barrett doubted the doctors could show they were harmed by the FDA’s actions.
“The difficulty, to me, is that the affidavits do read more like conscience objections,” she said.
This is not the first time the high court has considered mifepristone.
In April 2023, the court issued an emergency ruling allowing full access to the drug while the lawsuit continued.
In January 2021, the court sided 6-3 with the outgoing Trump administration in requiring women to visit in person a doctor’s office, hospital or clinic to receive mifepristone.
After Biden took office, the FDA said it wouldn’t enforce the in-person requirement.
The court will hear arguments in April in Idaho v. United States, which challenges whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals must include abortions.
Health Agencies Dealing With Less Public Trust
Steve Hall used to call public health “the invisible profession.”
“Previously, when we did our jobs well, people didn’t know about us,” said Hall, who for 10 years has been the health officer for the Central Michigan District Health Department.
Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has put the field “right in the limelight,” Hall said, bringing new challenges and some benefits to the network of local departments that promote good health across the state.
The political divisions over COVID policies often “split” communities, leaving public health officials in the middle, said Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health.
“A lot of communities were sort of divided down the middle, so as a health officer it felt like you couldn’t do anything right,” he said. “Whatever they did, it seemed like half the community hated them and half loved them for it.”
Those divisions have led to lingering distrust in public health officials, Hess said.
“We have work ahead of us in rebuilding the image of public health and the respect that the field had before,” he said.
Hall said his department has been able to maintain the trust of most area residents by emphasizing that the staff is a “real part of the community.” It covers Arenac, Clare, Gladwin, Isabella, Osceola and Roscommon counties.
He said he suspects state and federal agencies will have a harder time rebuilding those relationships.
“The number-one thing is that our employees are part of this community. They work here, live here, have kids in school here,” Hall said. “When you’re around on a daily basis, people are more likely to trust what you’re saying than when you’re some federal official in Washington people don’t know.”
That message has been embraced across the state, with public health departments in the Upper Peninsula and Northern Lower Peninsula funding television and social media ad campaigns that portray their staff as everyday members of the community.
“We live here. We work here. We care about you, your family and the communities we serve.” reads the slogan of one ad created by a collective of UP agencies.
Linda Vail, longtime director of public health in Ingham and Kalamazoo counties, said community appeal alone won’t mend the divisions between certain people and their public health officials. She resigned from the Ingham County position in 2023.
“Look at the climate right now with culture and politics and tell me how many Qanon people are going to go, ‘Oh, this public health stuff is great,’” Vail said. Qanon is a far-right conspiracy theory underground network.
She now works for Health Management Associates, a national public health consulting firm.
Messaging like the UP ads is a good start, she said, but real change will take time, especially as officials are burdened by threats to their funding and jobs from some elected officials.
Vail pointed to an ongoing battle in Ottawa County as an example of what health officials may face. There, an ultra-conservative county commission, upset by emergency health orders during the pandemic, demoted the county’s top public health official over an alleged violation of state law.
In more everyday situations, Vail said public health officials working under conservative county boards regularly struggle with getting approval of state and federal grants.
Funding for sexual health services and programs for LGBTQ and undocumented residents is becoming harder to get approved, as conservative county leaders express more criticism of public health agencies, Vail said.
“These things that are controversial right now are things that public health departments have been doing for years,” she said. “But, now there’s a lot more scrutiny and all this difficulty we have to maneuver around.”
On the other hand, Hall said that increased visibility has eased some funding challenges as officials without political objections to public health departments have become more likely to pay attention to the profession.
Before, it was hard to get lawmakers to notice some public health causes as they drew up new budgets, Hall said.
But after the COVID-19 pandemic, he said he sees a “newfound openness from decision makers about funding public health programs” like restaurant inspections and septic tank maintenance, Hall said.
“When we were invisible, it was harder to get any attention to secure funding,” Hall said. “That’s a bit different now, doors are opening to talk about more funding for public health projects.”
(Contributed by Capital News Service Correspondent Alex WALTERS).
‘Big Pharma’ Flagged For Funding Right-Wing Groups
Among the $2 billion in expenses reported by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 tax years to the Internal Revenue Service, a combined $30,000 was given to the 501(c)(4) connected to former Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey that funded the Unlock Michigan ballot proposal.
The $30,000 accounted for less than 3 percent of the $1.29 million the “dark money” group “Michigan My Michigan raised in those three years. However, the fact any contributions to Michigan My Michigan, whose president is being criminally charged, were found at all was a reason for the “center-left advocacy” group accountable.us to push out a four-page report on the matter.
The Committee to Protect Health Care promoted the findings today during a morning press conference.
Unlock Michigan was the ballot committee created to repeal Gov. Gretchen Whitmer‘s legal authority to make emergency orders during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ballot was bankrolled, in large part, by two Shirkey-connected 501(c)(4)s, one of which was Michigan My Michigan.
Attorney General Dana Nessel is now pushing criminal charges against the head of Michigan My Michigan and a fundraiser for the nonprofits on the grounds that funneling money through these accounts for a ballot proposal violates campaign finance laws.
Also, Accountable.us also found “Big Pharma” gave money to ultra conservative groups like FreedomWorks, which is aligned with the Stand Up Michigan organizations that opposed COVID-19 restrictions, attacked Whitmer and promoted debunked election conspiracies.
Tony Carrk, the executive director of Accountable.us, said in a press conference that between 2019 and 2021, Big Pharma gave Michigan! My Michigan! $29,500 and in 2020 the Shirkey group gave $550,000 to Unlock Michigan petition campaign as well as $6,000 to Stand Up Michigan.
Nessel recently announced charges against two Republican campaign operators, Sandra Baxter and Heather Lombardini, alleging they used two 501(c)(4)s connected to Michigan! My Michigan! to fund Unlock Michigan.
Accountable.us and the Committee to Protect Health Care used the press conference to tackle a few other subjects, as well.
Carrk said IRS reports show “Big Pharma” donated more than $16 million to groups challenging Medicare drug price negotiations in 2022 and gave $125,000 to the Republican Attorney Generals Association, which in turn funneled millions to nine AGs actively campaigning against abortion pill access and the Federal Drug Administration’s authority to approve medicines.
Carrk said Big Pharma wants to defund or eliminate key federal agencies and fire tens of thousands of employees deemed not loyal to former President Donald Trump. Their priorities in 2025 include cutting taxes for large corporations, reducing regulations and repealing federal government’s ability to negotiate drug prices, he added.