Oregon is giving Medicaid patients air conditioners and other equipment to help them cope with soaring heat, smoky skies, and other dangers of climate change. Oregon health officials hope to show other states and the federal government that they can save lives and money. (Samantha Young, )
Beverly Hills Abortion Fight Shows Different Side Of California: A proposed clinic in Beverly Hills that would have performed later abortions was blocked from opening, highlighting California's barriers to abortion rights. "The more rights people seem to gain, the more those who are directly opposed become more vocal," said state Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). Read more from CalMatters.
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline's coverage. For today's national health news, read KFF Health News' Morning Briefing.
More News From Across The State
Sacramento Watch
CalMatters: Can CA Keep Private Equity Out Of Health Care? Bill Splits Industry The most influential players in the health industry are fighting over a controversial plan to let the attorney general block hedge funds and private equity firms from acquiring health care facilities. The Legislature's analysis of the bill says "private equity acquisitions in health care have exploded" and studies show that the trend results "in higher health care costs, poor quality and less access to care." (Sabalow, 4/30)
Health Care Industry and Pharmaceuticals
Times of San Diego: Neighborhood Healthcare Raises $100,000 At Spring Fling Fundraiser Neighborhood Healthcare, a regional Federally Qualified Health Center providing medical, dental, and behavioral health services, raised over $100,000 at its first Spring Fling fundraiser. The Temecula event also increased the awareness of the nonprofit organization's services in Riverside County to all, regardless of their situation or circumstance. (Sklar, 4/29)
Becker's Hospital Review: Cedars-Sinai Creates Patient-Facing AI App Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai has created a generative artificial intelligence app, CS Connect, that can interact with patients and ask them questions, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported April 29. "The AI behind the app is a chatbot, like ChatGPT," Jason Moore, PhD, chair of Cedars-Sinai's Department of Computational Biomedicine, told the news outlet. "What it does is interact with the patient, asks them questions. The patient answers the questions about what symptoms they're having, what health issue they're having, and the chatbot understands what the patient's saying and can then help the patient schedule an appointment here at Cedars-Sinai to see a doctor." (Diaz, 4/29)
Becker's Hospital Review: FDA Finalizes Rule To Regulate Hospital Lab Tests The FDA finalized a rule April 29 to treat laboratory-developed tests as medical devices, putting them in the purview of federal oversight. Under the new rules, the FDA will phase in oversight of laboratory-developed tests, or LTDs over a four-year period. LTDs are those designed, manufactured and used within a single clinical laboratory, often in hospital and academic medical center labs. Such tests are the basis of 70% of medical decisions made in the U.S., federal regulators estimate. (Carbajal, 4/29)
USA Today: Philips CPAP Machine Settlement: Company To Pay $1.1B After Recall Medical device company Philips reached a settlement Monday to shell out $1.1 billion to cover hundreds of personal injury lawsuits linked to its respiration and sleep apnea machines. The manufacturer has recalled more than 15 million breathing devices since 2021, primarily due to health hazards caused by the breakdown of foam materials that users could inhale, according to the Food and Drug Administration. (Walrath-Holdridge, 4/29)
Capitol Weekly: CIRM Success Story Dies Quiet Death A once-heralded research venture by the state of California that targeted "don't eat me" signals that protect cancer cells has now ended. The potential treatment's obituary boiled down to one phrase repeated six times and buried deep in a corporate document. That amounts to $816 million per mention, based on what was paid for the company that grew out of the state-backed research. (Jensen, 4/29)
UnitedHealth Cyberattack
Stat: Biden Cybersecurity Plan For Hospitals Entails Carrots First, Then Sticks The Biden administration's plan to improve cybersecurity at hospitals starts off with incentives, but eventually hospitals will face penalties for not adopting measures to protect patient data, HHS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm said Monday. (Wilkerson, 4/29)
Bloomberg: UnitedHealth Hack: Lawmakers Probe Change Healthcare Data Breach When a cyberattack on Change Healthcare paralyzed much of the US health-care system, some lawmakers saw it as proof its parent company, UnitedHealth Group Inc., was too big. UnitedHealth Chief Executive Andrew Witty saw it differently. He has said that the company's size kept the hack, which crippled a network that handled $2 trillion in health claims a year, from being more harmful. It was "important for the country that we own Change Healthcare," Witty said earlier this month. (Tozzi, Griffin, and Robertson, 4/29)
The Washington Post: Court Says State Health-Care Plans Can't Exclude Gender-Affirming Surgery A federal appellate court in Richmond became the first in the country to rule that state health-care plans must pay for gender-affirming surgeries, a major win for transgender rights amid a nationwide wave of anti-trans activism and legislation. The decision came from a set of cases out of North Carolina and West Virginia, where state officials argued that their policies were based on cost concerns rather than bias. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected that argument, saying the plans were discriminating against trans people in need of treatment. (Weiner, 4/29)
Los Angeles Times: Basic Income Could House Thousands Of Homeless People, Researchers Say A monthly payment of $750 to $1,000 would allow thousands of the city's homeless people to find informal housing, living in boarding homes, in shared apartments and with family and friends, according to a policy brief by four prominent Los Angeles academics. Citing positive preliminary results of pilot studies in several cities, including Los Angeles, they argue the income could provide access to housing for a portion of the population who became homeless primarily as the result of an economic setback. This could ultimately save millions of dollars in public services, they argued, and leave the overstretched and far more expensive subsidized and service-enriched housing for those who have more complicated social needs. (Smith, 4/30)
Drug Use
Los Angeles Times: What Is HPPD? Why Psychedelic Drug Highs Last Years In Some Users A.J. took two small hits off a cannabis vape pen, a common ritual with his morning coffee. Moments after exhaling, a transfigured, kaleidoscopic version of the world emerged before his eyes. "Some colors are seeping into the other colors," the 30-year-old said, gesturing across his art-filled living room in Yorba Linda. "In that Persian tapestry on the wall, the flowers are flowing like the wind, back and forth, and the centerpieces of the horses and other animals, they're stagnant still but I can feel them kind of moving, almost like a gallop." (Sheets, 4/30)
Voice of San Diego: Morning Report: Supes Pitch Vista Behavioral Health Campus County supervisors will vote today on whether to initiate talks to buy much of a longtime Vista addiction treatment campus to eventually pursue an untold number of behavioral health beds. North County Supervisor Jim Desmond and Chair Nora Vargas suggest the site could serve as a regional hub with detox beds, sober living spaces and longer-term board-and-care facilities that offer more support. (4/30)
CIDRAP: WHO COVID Vaccine Advisers Recommend Switch To JN.1 Strain The World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition, which meets about every 6 months to assess if any changes are needed, has recommended that the next COVID vaccine formulations use a monovalent (single-strain) JN.1 lineage. The group met in the middle of April to review the genetic and antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2, with an eye toward vaccine composition implications. (Schnirring, 4/29)
CIDRAP: COVID Booster Linked To 25% Lower Odds Of Long COVID A new cross-sectional study published in Vaccine of US adults demonstrates that people who received the COVID-19 booster vaccine had 25% lower odds of having long COVID than their unvaccinated counterparts. (Soucheray, 4/29)
CIDRAP: X's Crowdsourced Tool To Counter COVID Untruths Mainly Accurate, Credible, Researchers Say Community Notes, a crowdsourced COVID-19 vaccine misinformation countermeasure on X (formerly Twitter), generally corrected false posts accurately and pointed readers to more credible sources, according to researchers who evaluated the posts. The University of California at San Diego (UCSD)-led team assessed the accuracy and credibility of a random sample of 205 Community Notes on COVID-19 vaccines from the year after the tool's December 2022 launch. The reviewers included an infectious-disease doctor and a virologist. The results were published last week in JAMA. (Van Beusekom, 4/29)
AP: Chinese Scientist Who First Published COVID Sequence Protests After Being Locked Out Of His Lab The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Virologist Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since Zhang published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval. The move shows how the Chinese state continues to pressure and control scientists conducting research on the coronavirus. (Kang, 4/30)
Stat: H5N1 Bird Flu: What We're Starting To Learn About Infection In Cows The H5N1 bird flu virus has been around for decades, and the damage it wreaks on chickens and other poultry is well documented. But the recent discovery that the virus has jumped into dairy cattle — whose udders seem to be where the virus either infects or migrates to — has dumbfounded scientists and agricultural authorities. (Branswell and Molteni, 4/30)
CIDRAP: Analysis Of Cow, Cat H5N1 Avian Flu Samples Raises Concerns About Spread To Other Animals Microbiological examination of cow, milk, and cat samples early in the investigation of H5N1 avian flu in some of the first affected states found that the cats died shortly after they were fed raw colostrum from sick cows, highlighting the risk of spread from cows to other animals through contaminated milk. (Schnirring, 4/29)
Vaping and Cigarette Smoking
ScienceAlert: Concerning Levels Of Uranium And Lead Found In The Urine Of Teens Who Frequently Vape Teenagers who regularly puff away on their vape throughout the day could be exposing their bodies to potentially toxic metals. A new study led by researchers from the University of Nebraska has found that regular vapers between the ages of 13 and 17, who report using an e-cigarette at least eight times a day, have 30 percent more lead and twice as much uranium in their urine compared to their peers who only occasionally vape. (Cassella, 4/30)
CBS News: Could Vaping One Time Put You At A Higher Risk Of Heart Failure? Could vaping just one time put you at higher risk of heart failure? More research is pointing to the dangers of e-cigarettes. A new study presented at a recent American College of Cardiology scientific session followed more than 175,000 participants for nearly four years. They found that those who used electronic cigarettes at any point in their lives had a 19 percent higher risk of heart failure compared to never users. (Marshall, 4/29)
Stat: Supporters See A Long Fight Ahead For A Menthol Cigarette Ban Advocates of a federal ban on menthol cigarettes have spent the better part of the last decade trying everything — from federal lawsuits to holding mock funerals outside the White House — to convince Washington policymakers to remove the minty substance from cigarettes. Now, it seems, advocates may just have to sit around and wait. (Florko, 4/30)
The New York Times: Physical Fitness Can Improve Mental Health In Children And Adolescents, Study Suggests Physical fitness among children and adolescents may protect against developing depressive symptoms, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a study published on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. The study also found that better performance in cardiovascular activities, strength and muscular endurance were each associated with greater protection against such mental health conditions. The researchers deemed this linkage "dose-dependent", suggesting that a child or adolescent who is more fit may be accordingly less likely to experience the onset of a mental health disorder. (Richtel, 4/29)
The Washington Post: An AI Genetic Test Aims To Detect Postpartum Depression Before Symptoms Postpartum depression is a leading cause of maternal death, but its diagnosis and treatment is spotty at best, negligent at worst. Now San Diego-based start-up Dionysus Digital Health is pitching a blood test to check for the condition, even before symptoms appear. The company says it has pinpointed a gene linking a person's moods more closely to hormonal changes. The test uses machine learning to compare epigenetics — how genes are expressed — in your blood sample with benchmarks developed during a decade of research into pregnant people who did and didn't develop postpartum depression. (Hunter, 4/29)
Military Health Care
The Washington Post: Supreme Court To Hear Cases On Veterans' Benefits, Pet Food And Visas Next Term In a case that could have significant implications for those who serve in the military, the Supreme Court will weigh a matter involving two veterans who argue they were improperly denied medical benefits for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder related to their service. Joshua Bufkin, who served in the Air Force from 2005 to 2006, and Norman Thornton, who served in the Army on active duty from 1988 to 1991, say they should get care under a benefit-of-the-doubt rule that requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide access to treatment when it is a close call whether the applicant qualifies. Both cases had evidence for and against them receiving benefits. (Jouvenal, 4/29)
Law and Order
AP: Dozens Of Deaths Reveal Risks Of Sedating People Restrained By Police The practice of giving sedatives to people detained by police has spread quietly across the nation over the last 15 years, built on questionable science and backed by police-aligned experts, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found. Based on thousands of pages of law enforcement and medical records and videos of dozens of incidents, the investigation shows how a strategy intended to reduce violence and save lives has resulted in some avoidable deaths. (Foley, Johnson and Lum, 4/26)
AP: At Least 16 People Died In California After Medics Injected Sedatives During Encounters With Police At least 16 people died in California over a decade following a physical encounter with police during which medical personnel also injected them with a powerful sedative, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found. Several of the deaths happened in the San Francisco Bay Area, including two in recent years involving people restrained by the Richmond Police Department. Other places with cases included Los Angeles, San Diego and cities in Orange and San Bernardino counties. (Foley and Johnson, 4/26)
Bay Area News Group: San Leandro To Pay $3.9 Million Settlement Amid Claims Officers Beat, Tased Mentally Disabled Man In 2019 San Leandro is expected to pay $3.9 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming the city's police officers brutally beat a mentally disabled man in 2019, causing his brain to bleed so badly that he suffered repeated strokes. Sorrell Shiflett, 37, suffers from a traumatic brain injury that left him with a child-like demeanor, civil rights attorney Adante Pointer said. The injury, which Shiflett suffered while being robbed at gunpoint in 2008, left him with Broca's aphasia. The condition makes it difficult to communicate and quickly comprehend others' words and actions. (Rodgers, 4/29)
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