HHS announces $700M for behavioral health, homelessness; could GLP-1s and your skin; opioid clinic, ex-CEO to pay $10.2M in fraud case – Morning Medical Update

HHS announces $700M to address mental illness, addiction and homelessness

New $96 million STREETS program leads a behavioral health package tied to Trump's Great American Recovery Initiative.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced more than $700 million in new funding opportunities targeting mental illness, addiction and homelessness, anchored by a $96 million program called Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support, or STREETS. The four-year program will award up to $3 million a year to each of eight communities to build coordinated, street-based care systems for homeless people with substance use disorders, serious mental illness or both, bringing together local governments, health care and housing providers, law enforcement and courts.

The broader package directs $223.1 million to Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, $238.6 million to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, $80 million to substance use programs and more than $70 million to other mental health services. HHS said the funding advances President Trump's Great American Recovery Initiative and that grantees may not use housing first approaches or harm reduction services.

Could GLP-1 drugs treat skin disease, too?

A new review suggests the diabetes and obesity drugs may ease the chronic inflammation behind psoriasis and other skin conditions.

GLP-1 receptor agonists, already blockbuster treatments for type 2 diabetes and obesity, may have a role in dermatology, according to a review published in Pharmaceutics by researchers at Wroclaw Medical University in Poland. The authors examined evidence on the drugs' potential use in psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, hidradenitis suppurativa and chronic wounds, conditions that share chronic immune activation as a common driver. Because GLP-1 receptors appear not only in the pancreas and gut but also on immune cells, the drugs may modulate macrophages, neutrophils and T lymphocytes while reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-17.

Most available data concern psoriasis, where studies reported improvements in disease severity with liraglutide or semaglutide, though the authors said it is difficult to separate direct anti-inflammatory effects from the benefits of weight loss.

Opioid treatment provider, ex-CEO to pay $10.2M to settle false claims case

Journey to Hope billed Rhode Island Medicaid and Medicare for substance use treatment it didn't provide, prosecutors alleged.

Journey to Hope, Health and Healing and its former CEO, Kenneth L. Richardson Jr., agreed to pay $10.2 million to resolve allegations that the Rhode Island opioid treatment provider billed the state Medicaid program and Medicare for substance use disorder services it did not provide. The federal and state False Claims Act settlement covers conduct from January 2015 to July 2021, when prosecutors said Journey failed to deliver required treatment plans and adequate counseling, kept counselor caseloads so high that mandated services were physically impossible to provide, and altered and backdated records to appear compliant with accreditation requirements during Medicaid audits. The case stemmed from a whistleblower complaint filed by two former employees, who will receive about $2.04 million of the settlement.