By Daniel Payne, Erin Schumaker and Evan Peng

Children's Hospital Association Ceo Matt Cook | Children's Hospital Association

The Children’s Hospital Association’s new CEO, Matt Cook, is making the case to lawmakers that Congress needs to invest in kids’ health — and that means helping his members.

Cook told Daniel he wants Congress to:

— Fund the Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education program

— Help build the mental health workforce

— Bolster the Medicaid program

Why so? The medical education program trains a substantial number of the pediatricians who work in children’s hospitals.

Those hospitals are straining to serve the growing number of children who’ve needed mental health care since Covid-19 arrived.

And since children’s hospitals see more Medicaid patients than other facilities, so Congress must retain the extra government funding that goes to “disproportionate share hospitals,” Cook said.

About Cook: On Monday, he took the association’s helm. He was previously senior vice president of children’s services at UCSF Health and president of Riley Children’s Health in Indiana.

Playing defense: Cook also needs to stave off a GOP proposal to make funding for the medical education program contingent on the hospitals not providing gender-affirming care.

“We respect the rights of patients and families to make decisions about care in conjunction with the pediatric specialist that they’re seeing. And they should be able to make those decisions,” he said.

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Solomons, Md. | Shawn Zeller

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Kelly Hooper talks with POLITICO health care reporter Katherine Ellen Foley about the FDA's accelerated approval process for neurological disease treatments and why some experts fear it can give patients false hope.

AI has arrived in medicine, but regulation lags behind. | AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organization is planning to establish a European artificial intelligence office to help countries evaluate AI systems that are now aiding in diagnoses.

Why it matters: “Many countries still do not have mechanisms in place to evaluate the impact of digital technologies and solutions,” Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, director of country health policies and systems at the World Health Organization’s Europe office, told POLITICO’s Helen Collis.

Azzopardi-Muscat says she believes AI should be vetted in the same way drugs and devices are, and that a WHO office focused on AI could help do that.

Developers should be able to demonstrate that their product is safe, effective and cost-effective, she said.

What’s next? The WHO hopes member nations will give the green light for the office “in the coming months,” Azzopardi-Muscat said.

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Buprenorphine helps people with opioid use disorder, even when they get it prescribed virtually. | Elise Amendola/AP Photo

Telehealth helps people with opioid use disorder stay in treatment, new research suggests.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky, the Ohio State University and others looked at Medicaid data from late 2019 through 2020 in Kentucky and Ohio to draw that conclusion.

Why it matters: The Drug Enforcement Administration is mulling whether to retain rules it adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic permitting doctors to prescribe buprenorphine — a drug used to help people with opioid use disorder recover — virtually.

Buprenorphine is widely recognized as an effective and lifesaving treatment for opioid use disorder. However, it is itself an opioid and can be dangerous if misused.

Earlier this month, the DEA announced an extension of the pandemic rules through the end of 2024.

The study on treatment retention provides advocates of retaining the eased pandemic rules with some evidence to bolster their case.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse was involved in the research, and its director, Dr. Nora Volkow, has taken note of the results.

Even so: The researchers found no differences in the odds of opioid-related overdoses between those who started buprenorphine treatment via telemedicine and those who received their prescriptions via other means such as an in-person office visit.

They didn’t track fatal overdoses specifically.

What’s next? The DEA plans to issue new “standards or safeguards” by fall 2024.

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