ABC News reports that a recent outbreak of deadly bacterial meningitis has now infected men in all five boroughs of New York, apparently spurred by anonymous sexual encounters facilitated by social mobile apps and Internet sites. 22 New Yorkers have been infected to date, and another seven have died from the disease.

The outbreak has prompted swift responses from city public health officials, who are urging men who have had intimate contact with other men to get vaccinated against meningitis as a precautionary measure:

“Vaccination is the best defense,” City health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said in a statement. “I urge all men who meet these criteria – regardless of whether they identify as gay – to get vaccinated now and protect themselves from this disease before it is too late.” [...]

The disease is spread by “prolonged close contact with nose or throat discharges from an infected person,” the health department said in a September 2012 statement after the death of a patient. While vaccination can help prevent new infections, “people that have been in prolonged close contact with infected people need to see their health-care provider immediately to receive preventive antibiotics,” the department added. [...]

“I strongly recommend all men who have intimate contact with other men get vaccinated,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said in a statement. “This disease is both potentially fatal and extremely contagious, so increasing the public’s awareness to this growing issue and encouraging vaccination are of the utmost importance.”

Particularly concerning is the fact that half of the recently-infected men are also HIV-positive. That raises the stakes considerably seeing as bacterial meningitis — which is already an extremely contagious and rapidly progressing disease — would be even deadlier for HIV-positive men with compromised immune systems.

While HIV transmission rates have steadily stabilized since 1980, men who have sex with men (MSM) remain particularly vulnerable to it, accounting for over 65 percent of all new infections in 2010. That trend is also reflected in New York City, which — despite its robust public school sex education requirements and plummeting teen pregnancy rates — has seen a troubling rise in syphilis and HIV transmission among MSM. Given that reality, vaccination truly is a crucial preventative measure for men in the city while the outbreak spreads.

This year’s particularly severe flu season is finally winding down. Fortunately — despite the fact that hospital emergency rooms overflowed with unusually high numbers of sick patients, several cities declared a state of public health emergency, and the CDC officially declared it an epidemic — the fatality rates weren’t significantly higher than usual. The CDC reports that 105 children died from the flu this winter, an average toll.

But the agency also noted that, even though all but four of the children who passed away were old enough to get a flu shot, 90 percent of them did not get vaccinated. CDC officials recommend that all children over 6 months old get a flu shot, but Americans still aren’t necessarily following that advice. This past winter, less than half of Americans got their flu shots.

In fact, more broadly, Americans aren’t getting all of the vaccinations that the CDC recommends. The federal agency recently reported that “unacceptably low” numbers of adult Americans are getting their shots for infectious diseases. That could partly be because some lingering stigma surrounding vaccines has perpetrated myths, like the false idea that getting the flu shot will lead to contracting influenza — or the misguided right-wing fearmongering that vaccines lead to autism or mental retardation.

Friday is the 20th anniversary of World Water Day. Ten years from now, by 2030, the U.S. State Department expects the demand for fresh water to outrun supply by 40 percent. Around the world, over 780 million people lack access to clean drinking water. Water and sanitation could prevent 9.1 percent of diseases and 6.3 percent of deaths. This lack of access is the main reason why 3,000 children under age 5 die every day from water-related illnesses.

For the drinkable water — which stands at just 1 percent of the world water supply — human activity poses its own threats:

Hormone-disrupting chemicals: More than 800 manmade chemicals can be found in household cleaners, makeup, electronics, canned food, and clothing, particularly BPA and phthalates that are widely used in plastics. They can leach into water, contributing to a “a global threat that needs to be resolved,” according to the latest report from the World Health Organization and United Nations Environment Program. Research links these hormone-disrupting chemicals to a host of medical problems.

Hydraulic fracturing: The Environmental Protection Agency has linked hydrofracking to water well contamination. The process itself uses 3 million to 9 million gallons of water per fracture. Groundwater used in fracking can shrink aquifers and cause wells to go dry. And as much of the country battles severe drought, farmers have been outbid by frackers for water supply.

Climate change: Drought fueled by climate change is widening the gap between demand and supply, by drying up important U.S. reservoirs. Environmental Science and Technology found that by 2050 one-third of U.S. counties could face major risk of water shortage, and the International Energy Agency determined that if current policies remain in place, fresh water use by the energy industry could more than double by 2035.

North Dakota lawmakers voted on Friday afternoon to pass a “personhood” abortion ban, which would endow fertilized eggs with all the rights of U.S. citizens and effectively outlaw abortion. The measure, which passed the Senate last month, passed the House by a 57-35 vote and now heads to a ballot vote, likely in the next November election.

A personhood ban could have far-reaching consequences even beyond abortion care, since it will charge doctors who damage embryos with criminal negligence. Doctors in the state say it will also prevent them from performing in vitro fertilization, and some medical professionals have vowed to leave the state if it is signed into law.

Personhood measures are so extreme that some pro-life Republicans in the state have come out against them, planning to join a pro-choice rally in the state capital on Monday to oppose the far-right abortion restriction. “We have stepped over the line,” Republican state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) said of the recent push to pass personhood. “North Dakota hasn’t even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on women’s health anywhere.”

Personhood advocates have pushed their agenda in states throughout the country over the past several years, but their measures have so far been unable to advance. Anti-choice lawmakers in North Dakota, who have already pushed through a stringent six-week abortion ban, were actually considering two different types of personhood legislation — one to immediately amend the state’s constitution to redefine life as beginning at conception, and one to put a personhood amendment on the ballot. The House voted down the first and passed the second.

Saturday marks the three year anniversary of President Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health care system since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. While some the law’s most significant provisions won’t go into full effect until next year, many of its important reforms have already taken hold — and have already changed the lives of real Americans for the better. Here are just a few ways that the Affordable Care Act has bolstered the health and financial security of Americans from all around the country:

1. Diabetic Arthur from California finally has health coverage after being uninsured for five years.

Refusing coverage and treatments for sick Americans due to their “pre-existing medical conditions” has always ranked among the insurance industry’s most reviled practices. For decades, Americans have recounted horror stories about battling insurance companies while loved ones suffered — like 4-month-old Alex Lange, who was turned away by an insurer for being born “obese.” Thanks to Obamacare, that’s no longer legal, as the consumer protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions has already gone into effect for children. It won’t be extended to all Americans until 2014 — but that doesn’t mean Obamacare hasn’t already changed the lives of adults with pre-existing conditions, too.

Through its state-based transitional Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) — a bridge program for American adults with pre-existing conditions that will cover them until the law is fully implemented — Americans like 56-year-old Arthur Yu have already been gaining coverage that was once unavailable to them. After losing his job in 2008 and running through his COBRA benefits, Yu remained uninsured for a full five years due to his diabetes and high cholesterol. “If something major happened to me, my savings would get wiped out,” he said. But after Obamacare’s passage, he was able to enroll in California’s PCIP program in 2012, giving him enormous financial — and medical — peace of mind.

2. Connie from Arizona got a $79 rebate from her insurance company in the mail.

On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that Obamacare has helped seniors save over $6 billion on their prescription drug costs by closing the so-called Medicare “donut hole” — and that’s not the only way that the law is already saving Americans money.

Because of Obamacare’s “80/20 rule” requiring insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge customers on actual medical care rather than overhead or profits, millions of Americans have received rebate checks — totaling $1.5 billion in 2011 alone — from their insurance companies in the mail. Arizona resident Connie Kadansky spoke to CNN about her personal experience with this measure after getting a $79 rebate from her insurer last summer, saying, “It was a surprise. My insurance agent tells me that my insurance is going to skyrocket. He hates Obamacare. I read the letter and I said to myself, ‘So what’s wrong with this? This is good.’”

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Just days after a study linked sugary drink consumption to 180,000 worldwide deaths per year, a study by the same team of Harvard researchers has found salt to be even more deadly.

The preliminary study found a diet high in sodium contributed to 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010, and was responsible for one in 10 U.S. deaths. The researchers, who presented the study Thursday at the annual American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans, said 40 percent of those deaths are premature — affecting people 69 years old or younger.

Dariush Mozaffarian, one of the study’s researchers and associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News that salt is more dangerous than sugar largely because of its pervasiveness in the American diet — it’s everywhere, especially in processed, packaged foods:

MOZAFFARIAN: Sugar-sweetened beverages are just one type of food that people can avoid, whereas sodium is in everything. [...] It’s really amazing how pervasive it is. For the average person, it’s very hard to avoid salt — you have to be incredibly motivated, incredibly educated, have access to a range of foods and do all the cooking yourself.

It may take motivation and education, but cutting salt may be exactly what Americans need to do to curb the country’s rising obesity epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Pervention, the human body needs only 180 – 500 milligrams of salt per day to function, and the Institute of Medicne recommends 1,500 milligrams as an adequate salt intake level. But 75 percent of people worldwide consume twice that much, with Americans averaging 3,600 milligrams per day. One study found that cutting “hidden” salt — the kinds in packaged and restaurant foods — could result in 11.1 million fewer cases of high blood pressure each year.

And the threat of salt starts at a young age. A recent study found that 75 percent of pre-packaged meals and snacks for toddlers are high in sodium, and some contain as much as 630 milligrams of sodium — more than half of the U.S. Institute of Medicine’s reccommended 1,000 milligrams daily intake for children aged 1 through 3. In a statement, the study’s researchers explained that high salt intake as a toddler could not only lead to childhood obesity or early cases of high blood pressure; it could also hardwire children to crave saltier foods throughout their lives. “The less sodium in an infant’s or toddler’s diet, the less he or she may want it when older,” said Joyce Maalouf, the study’s lead author and fellow at the CDC.

In 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) spearheaded an initiative to encourage food companies such as Kraft, Heinz, Subway and Starbucks to lower the sodium content in their packaged and restaurant food, and it’s starting to work. But so far, the U.S. government hasn’t taken any similar steps to regulate sodium in packaged or restaurant foods — in 2010, it appeared as though the FDA was going to limit the amount of salt in food products, but that rumor was quickly squashed by the agency.

Some of the nation’s largest health insurance companies are warning investors that they’ll raise insurance premiums by as much as 116 percent next year, as the coverage expansion provisions in the Affordable Care Act go into effect and millions of uninsured Americans begin purchasing coverage.

The threats of premium increases come as the industry is experiencing record profits and are part of a well-coordinated publicity campaign to alarm Americans about the cost of coverage, while downplaying mechanisms in the law that will cushion them from rate shock. The effort comes as insurers seek more favorable regulatory changes that would, in part, allow companies to charge older people more for coverage.

United Health Group Inc., Aetna, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield are ringing the alarm, attributing the possible cost increases to general health care inflation as well as provisions in the health care law, which require insurers to offer more comprehensive coverage, particularly in the individual health care market, and limit the companies’ ability to set premiums based on beneficiaries’ health care histories, age, or sex.

As a result, “The insurance industry has also been talking publicly about big potential premium increases in lobbying for tweaks to the law,” the Wall Street Journal reports:

In a private presentation to brokers late last month, UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation’s largest carrier, said premiums for some consumers buying their own plans could go up as much as 116%, and small-business rates as much as 25% to 50%. The company said the estimates were driven in part by growing medical costs not directly tied to the law. It also cited the law’s requirements that health status not affect rates and that plans include certain minimum benefits and limits to out-of-pocket charges, among other things. [...]

Aetna Inc. in a presentation last fall to its national broker advisory council, suggested rates on individual plans not being grandfathered under the law could go up 55%, on average, and gave a figure of 29% for small business rates. Both numbers included 10 percentage points tied to medical-cost inflation, not the law. An Aetna spokesman said the numbers are “still generally in line with what we’ve been estimating,” and represented the average impact in a typical state.

An official with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina told a gathering of brokers last week that individual premiums could go up by as much as 40% to 50%, according to brokers who were present. A spokeswoman for the insurer said “we don’t have final numbers” yet on premiums.

Insurers have long complained that the law’s more rigorous standards would raise prices, although since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, national health expenditures have decreased and insurers in the individual market have followed the trend, posting fewer double digit increases. Sudden rate hikes were considered the norm before the law went into effect and applicants were regularly denied coverage or priced out of it altogether. Insurance commissioners have also begun reviewing rates more carefully and insurers have had to spend 80 cents out of every premium dollar on health benefits, rather than administrative overhead.

The ACA also includes mechanisms to help minimize initial sticker shock and independent analyses have found that many young adults can enroll in Medicaid, stay on their parents’ policies, or qualify for tax credits in the state-based health insurance exchanges. The CBO analysis of the law has also determined that average premiums for individuals would be 10 percent to 13 percent higher because of the law — an increase that’s far smaller than insurers are projecting.

Insurers, meanwhile, are already seeing impressive profits. UnitedHealth, for instance, “had a particularly strong past year, with net income of $5.1 billion, up by 11% from the previous year” and Aetna is similarly beating revenue expectations. A July 2010 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that the law’s state-based health care exchanges provide private insurers with a lucrative new market in which they stand to gain up to $200 billion in revenue by 2019.

North Dakota lawmakers recently passed the worst abortion ban in the nation, outlawing the legal medical procedure after just six weeks of pregnancy, and are currently advancing an even more stringent “personhood” restriction to ban all abortion services altogether. But not all of the state’s legislators support North Dakota’s recent shift toward a far-right anti-abortion agenda. Spearheaded by state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R), a group a Republican politicians are speaking out against the new affronts to women’s reproductive rights.

Hawken and her fellow GOP lawmakers think their party has “stepped over the line” with the new restrictions, and will join a “Stand Up for Women” rally on Monday to raise their voices in opposition. As Hawken explained to the Huffington Post, she believes the new bans are too extreme, and simply distract lawmakers from the real legislative priorities they ought to be tackling in North Dakota:

“It’s to say, hey, this isn’t okay. We have stepped over the line,” said state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) in a phone interview with The Huffington Post. “One of the key tenets of the Republican Party is personal responsibility. I’m personally pro-life, but I vote pro-choice, because you can’t make that decision for anyone else. You just can’t.” [...]

Hawken said the personhood bills are so extreme that she and approximately 10 of her Republican colleagues in the state legislature — both men and women — were inspired to speak out in defense of women’s rights.

“North Dakota hasn’t even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on womens health anywhere,” she said. “I got a letter yesterday from a pharmacist who said, ‘We don’t want to be in jail because we prescribed something!’ We’re spending an inordinate amount of time on social or personal issues, however you want to put it, but we haven’t done anything on property tax relief, higher education funding, fixing the roads. There are all kinds of other things we need to be doing besides this.”

Now that the 2012 elections have passed, anti-abortion groups have been pressuring Republicans to focus on advancing their agenda in the new legislative session. GOP lawmakers have complied in states like North Dakota, Arkansas, and Kansas — but as Hawken and her colleagues reveal, the legislation that’s cropping up this year is going too far even for some members of the Republican party.

Hawken described herself as a “strong fiscal conservative” and noted that she’s not thrilled about the prospect of spending state money to defend abortion restrictions in court. That’s the same reason Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) chose to veto the new abortion restrictions in his state, although the anti-choice lawmakers overrode him to enact those unconstitutional bans anyway.

The Senate plans to begin considering the Democratic-sponsored budget resolution on Friday or Saturday, including the slew of amendments that Republican senators have tacked onto the legislation. Since budget amendments only need a simple majority to pass, GOP lawmakers have seized the opportunity to push their agenda by rushing to file hundreds of them — including several that would dismantle Obamacare.

Here are just some of the amendments that seek to undermine the implementation of the law, just as advocates prepare to celebrate its third anniversary:

REPEAL OBAMACARE: Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) cuts to the chase with Amendment #202, which would “establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to provide for the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.”

PREVENT ANY NEW OBAMACARE SPENDING: Amendment #285, introduced by Sen. Robert Wicker (R-MS), wouldn’t repeal the health law outright — but it would “provide for the repeal of new spending under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

REPEAL OBAMACARE’S FUNDING SOURCES: Several amendments seek to undermine Obamacare by preventing it from being able to use new revenue to carry out its health reform provisions. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)’s Amendment #222 would “repeal the tax increases enacted under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that were imposed on low- and middle-income Americans,” and Sen. Dan Coats (R-ID)’s Amendment #194 would “repeal the 3.8 percent tax on investment income imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

DELAY OBAMACARE’S IMPLEMENTATION: The health reform law’s implementation is marching forward across the country, but Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) wants to halt that progress. His Amendment #357 seeks to “delay implementation of the President’s health care law for 2 years.”

INHIBIT MEDICAID EXPANSION: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)’s Amendment #408 would “reduce the federal matching rate for Medicaid expansions,” which could threaten funding for the provision and dissuade states from opting to expand their Medicaid pools. Even though federal funding for Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion is not currently in question, Coburn also wants to “prevent the federal government from making an unrealistic promise to States to fund any State’s expansion of the Medicaid program at a higher level of federal reimbursement.”

ELIMINATE HEALTH INSURANCE SUBSIDIES: Two different amendments — #326 from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and #417 from Sen. Coburn — seek to eliminate some of the subsidies that help ensure Americans can afford to purchase health care on the state-wide insurance marketplaces. Obamacare allows Americans with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level to receive some assistance to buy health insurance, but Graham and Coburn want to lower that cut-off to 300 percent.

UNDERMINE PUBLIC EDUCATION ABOUT HEALTH REFORM: Many Americans still have significant misperceptions about what’s included in Obamacare, but Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) doesn’t want those to be cleared up anytime soon. Roberts introduced Amendment #187 to “prohibit the use of funds for promotional or marketing materials promoting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

Republicans have tried to repeal all or parts of the Affordable Care Act at least 54 times since its enactment.