What We’re Reading: Biden Administration Addresses Fentanyl Crisis, Food Insecurity Rises, Cybersecurity Toolkit Rolls Out

White House Requests $1.55 Billion to Address Opioid Deaths

The Biden administration requested $1.55 billion from Congress on Wednesday for a broader funding package used in part to address illicit fentanyl causing overdose deaths nationwide, according to NBC News. These funds would be included alongside money for grants to states, territories, and tribes through an HHS program aiming to strengthen addiction treatment, overdose prevention, and recovery support services. Legislation addressing opioid overdoses has not come to a floor vote in either chamber this year as the SUPPORT Act, a bill passed in 2018 that provided $20 billion toward opioid use treatment, prevention, and recovery, expired on September 30.

US Food Insecurity Increased by Millions in 2022

The years-long trend of declining hunger in the United States has ended as the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report Wednesday showing that millions more Americans were food insecure in 2022 compared to the year prior, according to Reuters. The USDA found that 12.8% of households struggled to get enough food in 2022, which equates to 17 million households; in 2021, 10.2% struggled with food insecurity, equating to 13.5 million households. The USDA report did not explain the rise in food insecurity, but reports from food banks and the US Census Bureau demonstrated that hunger is increasing due to low-income Americans struggling to recover from the pandemic and the end of expanded food assistance.

Biden Administration Rolls Out Health Care Cybersecurity Toolkit

The Biden administration released an updated cybersecurity toolkit to help better defend the US health care infrastructure against hackers, according to Axios. This release comes after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported that it provided about 65 health care organizations pre-ransomware notifications this year alone to prevent ransomware encryption and warn of early-stage ransomware activity. Officials from both the HHS and the CISA jointly released the toolkit, which includes ways for the health sector to mitigate risk, including vulnerability scanning and a framework for accessing and improving cyber resiliency. The HHS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm noted that this is part of a broader set of tools HHS has been releasing over the last year to help improve cybersecurity across the sector.