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A type of mpox that causes severe illness has been identified in three California residents who had not traveled abroad, the first time the more virulent form has spread within the United States, health officials said on Friday. ... California health officials say the three patients — one in Long Beach and two in Los Angeles — were hospitalized and are now recovering at home in isolation. They have not found a link among the three cases. (Jacobs, 10/17)

A Pennsylvania high school student died from bacterial meningitis, according to the local school district. Ryan Duffy, 18, a senior at Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, contracted Streptococcus Pneumoniae Meningitis last week and was treated in the ICU before dying Tuesday, according to a letter sent to parents by the Neshaminy School District and obtained by ABC News. (Leath, 10/17)

A year after lawmakers spent the summer discussing possible solutions to Wyoming’s crippling shortage of maternity care services and came up dry, the interim Joint Labor and Health Committee is moving two proposals forward that they say will help. (Kudelska, 10/17)

Some states have rates comparable to El Salvador, Belize and Azerbaijan. (Fitzpatrick, 10/20)

The Will County Board on Thursday approved a $10 million levy for the Community Mental Health Board, which grants funding for organizations that provide services for mental health treatment, substance use issues and for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. (Mullins, 10/18)

Juliana Peralta, 13, kept slipping further from reality —from her parents, her friends, and anything she could actually touch —and into a virtual world where an artificial intelligence chatbot enveloped her with what she mistook for empathy. “You’re the only one I can truly talk to,” the Colorado girl messaged the chatbot in an app called Character.AI, according to a federal lawsuit filed in September by her family. (Barker, 10/17)

The last battle to legalize marijuana in the nation’s third-largest state triggered lawsuits, fingerpointing and a possible criminal investigation. Get ready for Round two. Trulieve, the state’s largest medical marijuana company, has already put up nearly $26 million to bankroll a recreational pot initiative for the 2026 ballot. But the new campaign is opposed again by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and now there are fresh allegations that his administration is improperly using its power to block the measure from going to voters. (Fineout, 10/19)

Lavender Timmons popped the trunk of her weather-beaten 2007 Ford Focus parked near the city’s homeless shelter. Regulars gathered around, including one drug user who in the past bought sterile syringes from the illicit market. Timmons, executive director of Evansville Recovery Alliance, wanted to offer them new needles to keep them from contracting HIV, hepatitis C or other infections. But a police car idled a couple blocks away. “The cops are watching us,” Timmons said. (Ovalle and Wallace, 10/19)

The president of a leading addiction medicine group issued stark warnings on hardline Trump administration policies on substance use, low rates of addiction treatment uptake, and a rise in problem gambling. (Facher, 10/20)