Latest news with #HB322
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Alabama postpartum depression bills fail but drive Medicaid policy changes
Rep. Frances Holk-Jones, R-Foley, speaks on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on May 9, 2024 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) Legislation that would have required Alabama health care providers to screen for postpartum depression failed to pass this year. But the sponsors of the bills – one a Democrat; one a Republican — feel they managed to move the issue forward. 'We may not have won the war on postpartum depression, but we certainly got a victory in the battle,' said Rep. Frances Holk-Jones, R-Foley. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX As originally filed, HB 322, sponsored by Holk-Jones, and SB 191, sponsored by Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, would have required the Alabama Medicaid Agency to provide and cover postpartum depression screenings and to cover specific prescription drugs used to treat depression. The bills would also have removed a requirement that those suffering from postpartum depression go through separate 30-day treatment trials with at least two generic antidepressants before covering an FDA-approved therapy for postpartum depression like Zurzuvae. Melanie Cleveland, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Medicaid Agency, said in an email Friday that the agency no longer requires patients with postpartum depression to try less expensive generic medicine before getting approved for pricier treatments. Cleveland said that FDA-approved medication for postpartum depression will no longer depend on two prior failed therapies. 'That's a step in the right direction,' Holk-Jones said. Medicaid covers mental health treatment for low-income mothers up to a year after childbirth. But significant obstacles prevent many from receiving adequate care, forcing some women to go without treatment until they are in crisis. These barriers include Medicaid's underfunding, which leads to low reimbursement rates for therapists and limits the number who accept Medicaid, and issues with administrative requirements, lack of transportation and childcare, and limited telehealth accessibility. The initial version of the bill would have mandated universal postpartum depression screenings for new mothers as part of the postnatal care model. The bill would also have required the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) to develop educational materials on postpartum depression for health care professionals and parents of newborns. Holk-Jones' bill was amended in the House Health Committee to focus only on educational material that would have been developed by ADPH, which the House passed unanimously. Figures' Senate bill was also amended in committee to reflect the changes in the House, but the Senate never voted on it. Figures said that although the remaining educational provisions of the bill did not become law, it is something that the department could do without statute. 'They can do that on their website. If the bill does not pass, the health department can still do that, too,' Figures said, but she said that 'the major thing that needed to be done was done without a statute,' referring to the requirement that people not fail two prior medications. Jennifer Harris, a health policy advocate at Alabama Arise, a nonprofit organization focusing on poverty issues, said that while some providers already provide screenings, the new policy allows providers to assess patient needs without being subject to cost-saving controls. 'One of the administrative changes they made was that the provider should be able to assess the needs for the patient, and if not, if it doesn't meet the criteria of being the least costly, less evasive, medication first, then they're able to prescribe that medication that the mother would need,' Harris said. Despite changes in Medicaid's policy, Holk-Jones said there was still a critical need for the legislation, pointing to the prevalence of postpartum depression in Alabama. 'I do think this bill is absolutely needed, especially for all of the mothers with newborns who are dealing with the difficult mental health issue of postpartum depression,' Holk-Jones said. Mental health care for new moms is critical. And hard to access. Nearly 19% of mothers had frequent postpartum depressive symptoms in Alabama in 2021, compared to 12.7% of mothers nationwide, according to latest March of Dimes data. Holk-Jones also said that untreated postpartum depression is not only damaging to the mother's health, but can also have more significant economic costs, including long-term health care costs from emergency intervention and 'long-term mental health issues that have damaging effects on both the mother and their child.' She said this was 'a genuine attempt' to address an issue that affects more people in Alabama than in other states. She will pre-file the bill for the next legislative session, saying 'it is time we address this issue.' 'This bill … is about making sure every woman, no matter where she lives, gets screened and supported. That's the standard we should all be working toward and that is why I will be refiling this legislation again next session,' Holk-Jones said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Utah's new child influencer law cracks the veneer of social media fame
In a February Hulu documentary featuring Shari Franke, eldest child of the infamous mommy blogger Ruby Franke, Shari's brother Chad and her father, Kevin, viewers are privy to behind-the-scenes video from the now-defunct family vlog. In one clip, Ruby smiles while recording herself before breaking off to scream at her family off-screen. The documentary, titled 'Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,' features several moments like this, moments that illustrate what detractors see as a wider phenomenon in which the family blogging industry is exposed for its many pitfalls and deceptions, particularly as it pertains to the protection and treatment of children. Indeed, Utah, where the Franke family resided and recorded daily family life for years, has become the fourth state to legislate protections for influencer kids with the passing of HB 322 into law in March, following high-profile activism from Franke family members, who were YouTube family vlogging royalty before matriarch Ruby was arrested on charges of child abuse. Ruby Franke and her estranged husband, Kevin Franke, were the head of the YouTube family channel '8 Passengers.' At its height, the channel commanded more than 2 million subscribers. In her content, Ruby Franke often touted strict parenting, like the time she infamously refused to bring her 6-year-old daughter lunch after the child had forgotten it or when her teenage son was made to sleep on a beanbag for months as a punishment. In 2023, Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested on charges of child abuse after Franke's 12-year-old son escaped from Hildebrandt's house. The child appeared emaciated and had wounds on his wrists and ankles. Franke's 9-year-old daughter was found in a closet of Hildebrandt's house, in a similar state. Hildebrandt and Franke each pleaded guilty to four counts of felony child abuse, for which they were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. The fallout of Ruby Franke's arrest was intense. For detractors of family vloggers and mom influencers, Franke's arrest was proof positive that their suspicions were correct and something ominous was lurking under the perfect veneer of social media fame. Anti-vlogging advocates had the feeling that the bottom was finally falling out of a deeply rotten industry. Buffeted by the moment, Shari Franke, the eldest child of Ruby Franke, spoke in front of the Utah Legislature, saying, 'There is no ethical or moral family vlogger.' In the wake of the Franke family tragedy, calls for protections for kids of influencers have intensified. Though people often assume that child influencers are covered under legal protections for child actors, they're not. In 46 of 50 states, it's legal for parents to feature their kids in monetized or sponsored content without paying the children for their labor. It's particularly impactful for Utah, of all states, to have passed legislation for the privacy and profits of influencer kids, as experts often point to Utah as a hot spot for mom influencers, family vloggers and kid influencers. There's an entire book to be written about why Mormon people are so drawn to influencing — and why they're often so successful at it, including the fact that recordkeeping and scrapbooking are mainstay traditions of the Mormon faith, skills that lend themselves to content creation — but the bottom line is that Utah is one of the most popular states for family vloggers and mom influencers. And though people who were raised as kid influencers aren't a monolith, it's important to listen to them when they speak about their experiences, like when Shari Franke told Rolling Stone, 'Making money off your kids [with] no oversight as to how much the kids are getting paid — there's no way to do that well for me.' I'm a journalist who covers family vloggers and mom influencers, and my take on their work is far from black-and-white. I don't believe that showing your kid online is immoral in itself. We shouldn't conflate the horrors of Ruby Franke's story with the lives of every kid featured in their influencer parents' content. And not every mom influencer and family vlogger are evil — far from it. But if there's an industry that turns on the labor of kids, it makes sense to compensate them for their labor, at the very least. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ruby Franke abuse pushes Utah to shift money, power from mommy bloggers to child influencers
The eldest daughter of disgraced Utah parenting blogger Ruby Franke has taken action to help protect other kids with a new child actor law in her home state. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed the bill that Shari Franke helped promote, HB322, which gives certain payment and privacy protections to minors involved in entertainment, which could include traditional acting, i.e. acting in TV commercials, or acting in social media content. "I have been working on drafting HB322 that would protect child influencers in our state," Shari Franke said in a February Instagram post. "This bill would require parents to create a trust fund for their children and require parents to pay children a minimum amount. It would also allow children influencers, at 18, to have any content they appeared in to be removed from all social media platforms." Shari added that certain family bloggers and lobbyists in Utah are against the legislation, but wrote that "[i]f family vlogging is as good as 'ethical' family vloggers want you to think, they should not fear being mandated to pay their children (because they say the children are already being paid anyway)." Mommy Blogger Ruby Franke Asked Daughter For One Thing Before Arrest: Memoir "And if children are supposedly consenting to being filmed, why fear the kids would want content removed once 18?" she wrote. Read On The Fox News App Shari's support of HB322 is one of many actions she has taken to try and help protect the rights of children whose parents are social media influencers since her mother pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child abuse in 2023 and sentenced to years in prison. Mommy Blogger Ruby Franke's Husband Says 'Some Crazy S--t' Went On In Abuse Accomplice's $5.3M Fortress Democratic Utah State Rep. Doug Owens, who sponsored the bill, explained its purpose to Fox News Digital. "It's a bill that has a couple different parts: one is it protects traditional child actors, like in the film industry or making commercials, [it] has their parents set aside 15% of their earnings for when they become an adult, and that is copying a number of other states," Owens said. "And then it goes further and also includes protections for children in social media content." He added that it is "usually" children's parents featuring kids in their content and, in turn, earning money from that content. Youtube Mommy Blogger Ruby Franke, Co-host Jodi Hildebrandt Sentenced For Child Abuse: 'Dark Delusion' "It … requires the parents or other adult to save some of that money for the kids when they get to be an adult," he said. "And then it also has a third part, which says that if you are a child in content creation, when you get to be an adult and you find that content embarrassing or emotionally damaging in some way, you can have that removed from the website later so that it gives kids some protection for when they get to be an adult." Ruby Franke, a 43-year-old mother of six, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a 55-year-old mother of two, ran a joint parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms before they were arrested and pleaded guilty to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in a St. George courtroom in December 2023. Utah Police Discover 'Panic Room' Inside Abusive Mommy Blogger Accomplice's $5.3M Desert Home Utah authorities initially arrested Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt for abusing Franke's two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, after Franke's son approached a neighbor for help in 2022, and the neighbor called 911. Some of the abuse occurred in Hildebrandt's home in Ivins, Utah. 911 Call Reveals Shock Of Utah Mommy Blogger's Alleged Child Abuse: 'She's A Bad Lady' Prior to ConneXions, Ruby Franke ran a parenting vlog, or video blog, called 8Passengers, centered around her own family of six children and two parents. But the 8Passengers empire came crumbling down once users started to notice Franke's unusual behavior and punishments for her children. Ruby Franke stopped posting to the 8Passengers YouTube channel after her last video was uploaded on June 5, 2019. Fox News is not aware of any evidence that Ruby Franke or anyone associated with 8Passengers engaged in any illegal conduct during the period she was actively vlogging on the 8Passengers YouTube channel. Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve up to 30 years in prison. Shari also wrote a memoir titled "The House of My Mother," in which she explains how she and her siblings were listed as 8Passengers LLC's "employees." Click To Get The Fox News App In dozens of YouTube videos and social media posts, Franke and Hildebrandt coached parents in calm voices from a living room couch on how to raise their children in "truth." In a video posted just before their arrests, Hildebrandt said pain can be a good thing for children of a certain age. The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person's or family's reality, as well as children's rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media article source: Ruby Franke abuse pushes Utah to shift money, power from mommy bloggers to child influencers
Fox News
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Ruby Franke abuse pushes Utah to shift money, power from mommy bloggers to child influencers
The eldest daughter of disgraced Utah parenting blogger Ruby Franke has taken action to help protect other kids with a new child actor law in her home state. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed the bill that Shari Franke helped promote, HB322, which gives certain payment and privacy protections to minors involved in entertainment, which could include traditional acting, i.e. acting in TV commercials, or acting in social media content. "I have been working on drafting HB322 that would protect child influencers in our state," Shari Franke said in a February Instagram post. "This bill would require parents to create a trust fund for their children and require parents to pay children a minimum amount. It would also allow children influencers, at 18, to have any content they appeared in to be removed from all social media platforms." Shari added that certain family bloggers and lobbyists in Utah are against the legislation, but wrote that "[i]f family vlogging is as good as 'ethical' family vloggers want you to think, they should not fear being mandated to pay their children (because they say the children are already being paid anyway)." "And if children are supposedly consenting to being filmed, why fear the kids would want content removed once 18?" she wrote. Shari's support of HB322 is one of many actions she has taken to try and help protect the rights of children whose parents are social media influencers since her mother pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child abuse in 2023 and sentenced to years in prison. Democratic Utah State Rep. Doug Owens, who sponsored the bill, explained its purpose to Fox News Digital. "It's a bill that has a couple different parts: one is it protects traditional child actors, like in the film industry or making commercials, [it] has their parents set aside 15% of their earnings for when they become an adult, and that is copying a number of other states," Owens said. "And then it goes further and also includes protections for children in social media content." He added that it is "usually" children's parents featuring kids in their content and, in turn, earning money from that content. "It … requires the parents or other adult to save some of that money for the kids when they get to be an adult," he said. "And then it also has a third part, which says that if you are a child in content creation, when you get to be an adult and you find that content embarrassing or emotionally damaging in some way, you can have that removed from the website later so that it gives kids some protection for when they get to be an adult." "[I]f you are a child in content creation, when you get to be an adult and you find that content embarrassing or emotionally damaging in some way, you can have that removed." Ruby Franke, a 43-year-old mother of six, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a 55-year-old mother of two, ran a joint parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms before they were arrested and pleaded guilty to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in a St. George courtroom in December 2023. Utah authorities initially arrested Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt for abusing Franke's two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, after Franke's son approached a neighbor for help in 2022, and the neighbor called 911. Some of the abuse occurred in Hildebrandt's home in Ivins, Utah. Prior to ConneXions, Ruby Franke ran a parenting vlog, or video blog, called 8Passengers, centered around her own family of six children and two parents. But the 8Passengers empire came crumbling down once users started to notice Franke's unusual behavior and punishments for her children. Ruby Franke stopped posting to the 8Passengers YouTube channel after her last video was uploaded on June 5, 2019. Fox News is not aware of any evidence that Ruby Franke or anyone associated with 8Passengers engaged in any illegal conduct during the period she was actively vlogging on the 8Passengers YouTube channel. Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve up to 30 years in prison. Shari also wrote a memoir titled "The House of My Mother," in which she explains how she and her siblings were listed as 8Passengers LLC's "employees." In dozens of YouTube videos and social media posts, Franke and Hildebrandt coached parents in calm voices from a living room couch on how to raise their children in "truth." In a video posted just before their arrests, Hildebrandt said pain can be a good thing for children of a certain age. The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person's or family's reality, as well as children's rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
Utah Passed a Law to Protect Child Influencers
Cavan Images Utah, has become the latest state to legislate protections for child influencers, after Governor Spencer Cox signed HB 322 into law. State Rep. Doug Owens (D-UT) first opened the discussion on HB 322 in October of 2024. The hearing featured comments from Shari Franke, the 21-year-old daughter of former YouTube vlogging royalty and convicted child abuser Ruby Franke. 'I don't come today as the daughter of a felon, nor a victim of an abnormally abusive mother. I come today as a victim of family vlogging,' she said. 'My goal is not to present any idea of a solution to this problem, but to shed light on the ethical and monetary issues that come from being a child influencer. There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.' Though there isn't data on how many mom influencers and family vloggers live in each state, experts point to Utah as a hot bed for these kinds of content creators. 'Utah is ground zero for mom influencers,' says Jo Piazza, host of the podcast Under the Influence, which examines the role of mom influencers. 'It's where the movement started and there are likely more mom influencers in Utah than anywhere else in the country. The fact that the state is cracking down is a huge deal and I think we will see other states follow suit by instituting their own protections. It still isn't enough to regulate this industry, but it is a good start.' Under the new Utah law, parents who make at least $150,000 per calendar year and feature their minor children in monetized or sponsored social media content must maintain a record of that content for at least two years and establish a trust into which a percentage of any earnings must be transferred to be held until the child reaches the age of 18. The formula for the percentage of earnings involves a calculation between the minor's earnings, the paid minutes featuring the qualified minor, and the preceding month's income from social media, among other factors. The Utah legislation also stipulates that, upon reaching the age of 18, an individual may 'request that a content creator delete or edit any social media content' featuring the individual as a minor. Though there are laws addressing the profits of influencer kids in Illinois, Minnesota, and California, only the Minnesota law includes the privacy protections that are present in the Utah law. Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
