Health

The minimum purchasing age for e-cigarette or vape products in the state could go from 19 to 21 years old and products could be taxed an additional 25%. 

At a House Labor and Commerce Committee meeting on Monday, members of the public weighed in on House Bill 49, introduced by Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau. Versions of this bill have come before lawmakers multiple times in the past few years and public testimony was divided. 

Leena Edais graduated from Anchorage’s Dimond High School in May. She’s co-president of Youth Encouraging Alaskans’ Health, or YEAH, a tobacco prevention and education coalition. She supports the bill.

“Whether it was in the halls, the classrooms, or anywhere in schools, you would see students taking a hit of their vape,” Edais said. “At my high school, it got to a point where so many people were using these products in bathrooms that every single bathroom door in the high school had to be opened for like half of the school year.” 

Edais said she worries that the prevalence of vape products among high school students is negatively impacting their overall health and academic success. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaping and nicotine addiction can harm adolescent brain development and lead to increased stress or anxiety. In 2023, 17.3% of Alaska high schoolers reported vaping over the prior 30 days. 

Roey Armstrong, co-president of YEAH and another recent high school graduate, said the additional tax included in the bill could help prevent students from becoming addicted in the first place. 

“Once you’re addicted to a substance, it’s very hard to quit, and you will do a lot to get the substance that you’re addicted to,” Armstrong said. “These price increases are going to stop more youth from starting because of their budget constraints.”

Not everyone is on board with the bill. Shaun D’Sylva, owner of Fatboy Vapors Alaska, argued vapes are a safer alternative to cigarettes, and the additional tax on products could push more people to take up cigarettes instead. 

Anchorage resident Mark Sundquist told the committee on Monday that the tax would drive people away from purchasing products from local retailers and that patrons would instead get them illegally.

“While the intention may be to discourage the use of e-vapor products, these tax rates would inadvertently make legal and regulated products more expensive,” Sundquist said. “This, in turn, would create a price advantage for illicit products on the black market.”

Hannan said the sales tax is the point — they’ve been proven to reduce youth tobacco use — and she’d like to align state law with federal law. In 2019, a federal law raised the national legal age for purchasing, selling or distributing tobacco products to 21 years old. 

“I certainly think that we want to make sure that we are regulating as best we can products that are legally for sale,” she said. 

Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, filed a similar version of the bill in the Senate. He’s been a proponent of raising the minimum age for the past decade. 

On Monday members of the House Labor and Commerce Committee voted 4-2 to advance the bill. It will next be considered by the House Finance Committee. 

L pulled out a plastic case with small plastic parts of syringes

“So this is my kid’s stuff,” she said, standing in the bathroom of her family’s house in Alaska.

L is a mom who doesn’t want to give her full name because she’s worried about the safety and privacy of her family. She’s raising a 16-year-old nonbinary transmasculine kid, who uses both “he” and “they” pronouns.

In her bathroom, L looked into a cabinet and pulled out another plastic bag, this one filled with about 15 small, white boxes with prescription labels.

“And this we got like the day after the election,” she said. “That’s not as much as it probably looks like, but it should last close to a year.”

Inside the boxes were glass bottles of testosterone, supplies for her kid’s gender-affirming health care. She said she was worried about whether they would be able to fill his prescriptions once Donald Trump took office.

“We were in a panic,” she said.

It has taken her and her family years to navigate her kid’s gender journey, and land on care that works for them. When he hit puberty, she said, her kid became a shell of a person. They were anxious, depressed and self-harming, and she and her husband didn’t know what was going on.

“We spent a lot of time at night trying to problem solve, like, ‘What can we do? Where can we go?’ And honestly worrying that we were going to find them dead in the morning,” L said. “And it wasn’t until we accessed gender-affirming care, which can mean a host of things, but until we accessed hormones, that it was almost like a magic bullet for them.”

President Trump has issued at least five executive orders aimed at trans people during his first few weeks in office, and one order is already making it difficult for some trans and nonbinary people to access care.

Medicaid, for low-income and disabled Americans, and Tricare, for military and their families, no longer cover gender-affirming care for people age 19 and under. Gender-affirming care can include medical, social and psychological interventions to support someone’s gender identity. Medical practices and hospitals risk losing federal funding if they provide gender-affirming care for those 19 years old and younger. And more executive orders are likely to impact trans and queer rights and care moving forward. One may allow denial of health coverage for religious reasons. Others order federal organizations to enforce a strict sex binary. One bars trans people from enlisting in the military or transitioning if they’re already in the military. It’s hard to know how all these executive orders will unfold, and which will get blocked or reversed through legal battles. There are already lawsuits challenging some of the orders, through the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and different states. But experts worry that many trans patients and those needing HIV treatment and prevention, like PrEP, won’t be able to access or afford care.

The tone of Trump’s executive orders isn’t a surprise to L. Everyone in her tight-knit queer and trans community has been preparing for a Trump presidency. She said losing gender-affirming care for her kid is just not an option.

“I just know where we were and we can’t go back there,” L said. “I can’t do that to my kid. So we will do whatever we have to do. We’ll go into debt. We will go to other countries.”

This stress, fear and confusion is something that Identity Health Clinic in Anchorage sees a lot of lately in their patients. The clinic is the largest provider of gender-affirming care in the state and many of their patients rely on Medicaid.

Tom Pittman, Identity’s executive director, said the clinic has seen Medicaid denials of coverage for minors already. But despite changes in coverage, he said, it’s still legal to seek and provide health care.

“It is a right, and we get to have the respect of the society that we live in to do that,” Pittman said. “It’s under attack, but we still get to, right now.”

Identity has a legal and insurance team to help patients understand their rights and navigate claims, and Pittman said they’re planning to launch a fund to financially support patients whose care isn’t covered.

He said the clinic pulled out of its federal funding late last year, to make it less vulnerable to what Pittman calls “personal vendettas” against queer communities.

But he said even if patients can still access health care, the executive orders ostracize trans people and patients.

“When you take someone that has already interacted with society, knowing that there are people out there that disrespect them, that want to push them down, and then you do this to them, [and] it becomes something that’s an official act of their government, that’s even worse,” Pittman said. “That’s even more destabilizing.”

That destabilization is something H, a trans woman in Alaska, has been wrestling with. We’re identifying her by her first initial to protect her privacy.

“I haven’t questioned my safety this much, even when I was working in the fishing industry, even in places [where] I’ve been assaulted for being trans,” H said. “Now there is just a general anxiety of existing in the world.”

H is also seeing the impacts of executive orders ripple through her community. Some trans women she knows are leaving the country because they’re scared for their health and safety. Several of the executive orders specifically target trans women.

“I’m so afraid of losing people,” H said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I’ve had friends that have submitted themselves to residential treatments already, like, this is f-ing real. I was thinking to myself, riding these ups and downs, ‘Man if I don’t take care of myself, I’m afraid for myself.’ I don’t want to have a mental breakdown.”

H is an artist and she said through all of this stress and sorrow, her art has been a lifeline. Making art about all of this is something she now calls a “purpose in this world.”

“As much as they try and separate us, we have the tools to build those connections and to create strong community,” H said. “And that is, honestly, the greatest form of resistance that you can have.”

She said throughout history, trans women have always found each other and supported each other, and she said she and her trans “sisters” in Alaska are doing that now.

Juneau’s city-owned hospital is in a much better financial position than it has been in years. According to a report to the hospital’s board, the hospital has been making steady positive income for the last eight months.

Bartlett Regional Hospital’s CEO Joe Wanner gave an update on the hospital at the Southeast Conference’s Mid-Session Summit on Wednesday. 

“With the support of the board, the support of the CBJ Assembly and the support of the community, we were able to right-size the hospital, get back to our core services,” Wanner said. “We’ve kind of turned the corner. We want to refocus on why we are here at Bartlett, and that is to care for patients.”

The newfound stability comes less than a year after the hospital announced it had a multimillion-dollar budget deficit that threatened bankruptcy. The hospital’s board was able to avert bankruptcy — but not some difficult decisions. It cut back staffing and, controversially, closed programs like Rainforest Recovery Center and its new crisis care unit last year. 

Despite the tumultuous year, Wanner – who became CEO last fall – said the hospital is working to expand services in new areas. In late January, the hospital announced the opening of a new orthopedic outpatient specialty clinic, which it says will increase patient’s access to orthopedic surgeons in Juneau.

The hospital is also gearing up for a multimillion-dollar emergency room renovation slated to begin this spring. 

“What this will do is basically give us a modern ER with negative pressure rooms, let us face some of the modern diseases, such as COVID (19) and all the other things that seem to come off the cruise ships during the summers,” he said. 

During the speech, Wanner highlighted the hospital’s launch of a mobile crisis unit dedicated to assisting people with mental health emergencies. In the first two months of operating, its crisis team assisted nearly 60 patients. 

But, he also said there’s still a lot more the hospital needs to do to maintain financial stability into the future. He said it continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining staff. Currently, about 10% of its overall staffing is filled with contract employees, which is driving up costs. 

The hospital is also dealing with problems with its aging infrastructure and removing asbestos from its building. The last time the hospital received a major renovation was two decades ago.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has introduced legislation to set a statewide tracking system in place for sexual assault kits, and ensure victims can privately track their kit through the process from collection to forensic testing.

“Survivors of sexual assault deserve a system that prioritizes their well-being and delivers justice,” Dunleavy said, in a prepared statement released with the bill’s announcement. “This bill reflects our commitment to creating a trauma-informed, survivor-centered process.”

The legislation, House Bill 62, would expedite timelines for processing sexual assault kits, which is a collection of physical evidence after a sexual assault that can be used for prosecution in court.

If passed, the bill would require health care providers who collect the sexual assault kits to notify law enforcement that the kit is ready for forensic testing within 14 days. The appropriate law enforcement agency would then have to submit the kit to a forensic lab for testing also within 14 days, down from 30 days in current law. The lab would be required to test the kit within 120 days, down from 180 days.

It also requires the sexual assault kit tracking system to allow survivors to log on through an online portal and privately track the status of their own kit, and when it has been tested.

James Cockrell, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the state has made significant progress in addressing a backlog of untested kits. He addressed the committee during its first hearing of the bill.

In 2017, a statewide survey found almost 3,500 untested kits across the state, many held by local police departments.

“If you go back 10 years ago, where we were, we were in the dark ages when we were processing sexual assault kits,” Cockrell said. “We’ve certainly cleared up the huge backlog.”

There is a tracking system now, created through grant funding, and the new legislation would require the state to maintain the system, at a cost to the state of roughly $200,000 per year. 

“Currently, I think we have 14,000 sexual assault kits in our crime lab,” he said. “We retain all sexual assault kits, regardless of jurisdiction, wherever the examinations are taking place.”

The tracking system is already in place, and this bill would cement the timelines for each stage of processing, Cockrell said, “because it is such a devastating crime, and it’s important that law enforcement takes it at that level and holds people accountable.”

A similar bill failed in the Legislature last year, after health care providers raised concern over a proposed seven-day period to process kits. Currently there is no timeline. This bill would allow for 14 days instead, which Cockrell said was arrived at after discussions with providers.

Transparency for survivors in tracking their own kit, and the choice of whether or not to log on to check its status was a major priority in the creation of the system, said David Kanaris, chief of the scientific crime detection laboratory in the Department of Public Safety.

“Doing this previously had to be done through them contacting a law enforcement agency,” he said of kit tracking. “Which can be a traumatic experience in itself for the victim-survivor, and so allowing them to do it at their own pace through the kit tracking system was huge for us.”

Kanaris said since the tracking system launched in June 2023, over half of the kits in the system have had a login by a survivor or advocate on their behalf. All the data is private and confidential via a barcode system, he added, aside from potentially being introduced as evidence in court.

During the presentation to the committee, Kanaris shared photos of the large store room at the lab in Anchorage, where the estimated 14,000 sexual assault kits are now stored permanently. If DNA is detected in a kit, he said it’s also stored in the Combined DNA Index System, a national DNA database that stores and compares DNA profiles, managed by the FBI.

Alaska has the highest rate of sexual assault in the U.S. — four times higher than the national rate.

Only about one third of sexual assaults nationally are reported to law enforcement, according to an analysis by RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. That’s due to a wide range of reasons, including fear of retaliation or beliefs the police would not or could not do anything to help.

Kanaris said currently half of all cases processed at his forensic lab — including homicide, property crimes, and others — are related to sexual assault, or about 600 out of 1,200 cases last year. It takes roughly 133 days to process those cases, he added.

“Each one of those (sexual assault kits) pertains to a victim’s worst day,” Kanaris said. “And it was quite eye opening for me as I moved to Alaska and had no idea of the magnitude of the problems. … And we’re very proud of the work that we’ve done so far, and we would like to see that continue.”

Sexual Assault Resources:

• STAR Alaska Crisis Line: Anchorage (907) 276-7273 Toll Free (800) 478-8999
• AWAIC Alaska Crisis Line: (907) 272-0100
• Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault’s list of shelters
• AWARE’s list of resources
• Legal help through Alaska Legal Services Corp.

The waters of Southeast Alaska are an ideal environment to grow species ranging from Pacific oysters to ribbon kelp. But growing them successfully requires in-depth knowledge of dozens of species — where they grow, when they grow, and under what conditions.

A new tool aims to make that easier.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new guide earlier this month that chronicles more than 100 species of seaweed commonly found in Alaska.

“To grow it for the kelp industry, you need to know where you can find those spores, what time of year,” said Jordan Hollarsmith, a mariculture-focused research biologist with NOAA. “Or if you want to harvest it, to eat it, you need to know what you’re looking for, where you can find that species.”

The guide aims to advance the state’s budding mariculture industry at a time when global demand for kelp products is on the rise. Alaska mariculture is still tiny compared to other coastal states, like California, Oregon and Washington. But it is steadily gaining ground. All told, the state boasts more than 1,300 acres permitted for mariculture, according to a NOAA report from last year.

And more mariculture farms are coming. On average, Alaska received more than a dozen applications for new sites each year between 2019 and 2023. That’s more than double the average for the five years prior.

“A decade ago, I don’t know if there was a single farm,” Hollarsmith said. “And now we see multiple around Kodiak, some pretty small-scale ones in Kachemak Bay and in Prince William Sound, and then a few smaller, medium-sized ones and a large one as well in Southeast Alaska.”

Hollarsmith didn’t author the updated guide. But she says it will be a crucial tool as the industry develops across the state. Right now, the highest concentration of mariculture is in Southeast, with forty permitted farms, according to the 2024 report.

NOAA is also exploring where other farms might thrive. At one point that included the waters around Haines. But the agency later dropped Haines from the list because the area is near several state marine parks, which cannot overlap with farm lease applications, Alicia Bishop, a regional coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, said in an email.

Siting new farms is one of the key obstacles to growth. That’s because new sites have to meet several key criteria, including the right environmental conditions and limited overlap with other marine activities.

“You can’t set your farm where there’s already a fishery, where there’s military installations, a ferry route, those sorts of things,” Hollarsmith said.

Still, the industry is growing – and fast.

That’s largely due to a $49 million federal grant awarded in 2022 to a coalition of companies, agencies, tribes and researchers working to boost the industry. NOAA said at the time that the grant could help grow the industry to be worth nearly $2 billion within the next decade. A state task force, meanwhile, set a goal in 2016 to develop mariculture into a $100 million industry by 2040.

Driving the state’s interest in part is the industry’s potential to boost Alaska’s coastal economies. Hollarsmith thinks mariculture could offer more opportunities for people already working on Alaska’s waterfronts.

“We see a lot of people that participate in commercial fisheries also participating in the mariculture industry,” she said.

Hollarsmith says untapped opportunities for Alaskan oyster farms could also fuel growth. Kelp, meanwhile, is becoming an increasingly popular health food, and can also be used for other purposes. The industry is exploring how different species can be used as a strengthening ingredient in concrete, or in fertilizer to boost crop production.

While the new field guide doesn’t focus on the quickly growing industry, it does provide detailed information about dozens of seaweed species commonly found in Alaska. That was made possible in part by new genetic techniques, like DNA sequencing, that have allowed researchers to better classify seaweed and identify new species over the last decade.

“It’s really important that we’re all using the same name to describe a given species,” Hollarsmith said. “Especially in this time of kelp industry growth, when farmers are experimenting with new species and trying to understand what species are out there and what kind of benefits they might have.”

 

A state-owned corporation that manages roughly $800 million in assets for the benefit of Alaskans with mental health issues has a new leader.

Dr. Mary Wilson, a pediatrician who grew up in Anchorage, was chosen by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s board to be the new chief executive officer. Wilson has worked in leadership positions with the Permanente Medical Groups in Georgia and California.

The board announced Wilson’s appointment at a special meeting on Tuesday. She officially starts her new position on Wednesday, the board said.

Wilson succeeds Steve Williams, a longtime Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority official who served as chief executive from 2022 until last July. In the intervening months, Allison Biastock, the trust’s chief communications officer, served as an interim CEO while the board conducted its hiring search.

Wilson worked for six years as executive medical director and president at the Southeast Permanente Medical Group in Atlanta. In that position, she managed the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the organization’s approximately 1,000 employees, according to local news accounts.

Before that, she held senior positions at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

“On behalf of the board, I’m very excited that Mary is joining our organization. Her leadership experience and knowledge of our healthcare system will be invaluable as our organization continues to strategically invest in projects and initiatives that lead to improved outcomes for vulnerable Alaskans,” Brent Fisher, chair of the board of trustees, said in a statement.

“I am honored with the opportunity to lead an organization that has such a unique and important role in supporting Trust beneficiaries and the organizations that serve and support them,” Wilson said in the statement.

Wilson is a graduate of Dimond High School in Anchorage, Colorado College and the University of Washington Medical School. She also has a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has retired from her medical practice and returned to Alaska in 2021, Biastock said.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority administers assets of a trust fund that is unique in the United States.

The fund was created in 1994, the result of a lawsuit filed by advocates for mental health patients and people with developmental disabilities. The trust’s assets, which started out $200 million and 1 million acres of land granted by the state, are managed by the authority, generating income that is used for mental health and disability programs. Beneficiaries include Alaskans affected by mental illnesses and intellectual or developmental disabilities, substance abuse disorders, dementia and traumatic brain injuries.

The trust is operated in a manner similar to a private foundation, and the authority that manages it is a state corporation.

Each year, the fund authority administers about $25 million in grants to programs that serve beneficiaries. It also engages in direct advocacy for Alaskans who need program services.

In October, the authority and the Alaska Department of Health and Alaska Department of Family and Community Services jointly released a five-year plan to guide services from 2025 to 2029.

The Comprehensive Integrated Mental Health Program Plan, issued periodically, is required by state law. The newest plan puts an emphasis on prevention and early intervention, according to state officials.