The New York Times: Only Romaine Lettuce From Central And Northern California Is Unsafe, F.D.A. Says
It’s O.K. to eat romaine lettuce again, federal health officials said on Monday — as long as you’re sure it wasn’t grown on California’s north and central coast. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said investigators had traced the romaine lettuce associated with an outbreak of E. coli that has sickened 65 people in 12 states and Canada to “end of summer” romaine lettuce harvested from that region. (Kaplan, 11/26)

The Associated Press: US Officials: It’s OK To Eat Some Romaine, Look For Labels
People shouldn’t eat romaine that doesn’t have the label information, the FDA said. For romaine that doesn’t come in packaging, grocers and retailers are being asked to post the information by the register. Romaine harvesting recently began shifting from California’s Central Coast to winter growing areas, primarily Arizona, Florida, Mexico and California’s Imperial Valley. Those winter regions weren’t yet shipping when the illnesses began. The FDA also noted hydroponically grown romaine and romaine grown in greenhouses aren’t implicated in the outbreak. (Choi, 11/26)

The Washington Post: Only Romaine Lettuce From Certain Parts Of Calif. Should Be Avoided, FDA Says In New Warning
The new warning from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came as the number of people sickened by the outbreak grew to 43 people in 12 states. Sixteen of those people have been hospitalized, including one person with severe kidney failure. No deaths have been reported. The updated information follows an unusually broad warning that federal health officials issued two days before Thanksgiving, telling consumers to throw away any romaine lettuce they may already have purchased. (Sun, 11/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Regulators Tie Tainted Romaine Lettuce To California
The current E. coli outbreak is the third linked to leafy greens within the past year. The FDA said 11 more people had been sickened in the outbreak, bringing the total to 43 people in 12 states. Sixteen people have been hospitalized, and one has developed a form of kidney failure, according to the CDC. Twenty-two people have also fallen ill in Canada, and officials in that country have advised people in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick to avoid eating the lettuce. (Newman, 11/26)

KQED: As Fire Trauma Lingers, Santa Rosa Health Care Center Takes The Long Road 
The Santa Rosa City Schools District started the center temporarily in an empty school building during the holidays last year after the Tubbs fire when it was clear families were going to continue to need help during the school break. It's since become a permanent community clinic of sorts, open three days a week after school. Clients now include a secondary wave of families who are renters who have been displaced, sometimes by home owners who needed to move back in. (McEvoy, 11/26)

In other public health news —

The California Health Report: New Initiative Encourages Community-Generated Efforts To Prevent Domestic Violence
A new initiative to combat domestic violence in California is supporting several high-risk populations — including refugees, immigrants, low-wage workers, Native Americans and rural residents — to develop their own community-based strategies for prevention. Safety Through Connection, a program by the Oakland nonprofit Prevention Institute, is providing $50,000 to five coalitions of community-based organizations that have not previously worked on reducing domestic violence — but that have proven track records in creating change — to spend a year examining the issue and developing interventions. (Kandil, 11/26)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Nurses To Strike In Protest Of Limited Staffing 
More than 7,000 nurses who work in one of the country’s largest public health systems are expected to begin a strike at 7 a.m. Tuesday, protesting what they describe as unsafe and illegal patient-to-nurse ratios and generally inadequate staffing. Registered nurses and nurse practitioners at Los Angeles County hospitals and community-based clinics will participate, including those who work in emergency rooms, operating rooms, intensive care units and mental health centers, according to Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents the nurses. (Agrawal, 11/26)

Los Angeles Times: Whether Home Is A Van, A Motel Or A Garage, L.A.'s Suburban Poor Children Learn To Survive 
In my day, a few families converted their garages into what were called rumpus rooms, but I don’t recall anyone renting out garages as mini-apartments. Such conversions have been happening in Los Angeles for at least a few decades, but teachers at Telfair who grew up in the neighborhood say living in garages is more common now. If the statistics are accurate, about 60 of Telfair’s more than 700 students went to sleep in garages last year. (Lopez, 11/27)

In more California news —

LAist: Students Demand USC Listen To Their Ideas After The Tyndall Scandal 
In the wake of the massive sex abuse scandal involving former USC gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall, the school formed committees and task forces to figure out how to prevent something similar from happening in the future. But that initial effort didn't include students. This semester, a group of students set out to change that. (Guzman-Lopez, 11/26)

The New York Times: Trump Moves To Lower Medicare Drug Costs By Relaxing Some Patient Protections
The Trump administration proposed on Monday to cut costs for Medicare by reducing the number of prescription drugs that must be made available to people with cancer, AIDS, depression, schizophrenia and certain other conditions. Under the proposal, health insurance plans that provide drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries would no longer have to cover all of the drugs in six “protected classes.” The change would take effect in 2020 and would lead to lower out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries, the administration said. (Pear, 11/26)

The Hill: Trump Administration Looks To Give Private Medicare Plans Negotiating Power On Drugs
Currently, private Medicare health plans are required to cover all or “substantially all” drug in six “protected” classes, such as HIV treatments, antidepressants and cancer drugs, regardless of cost. This gives pharmaceutical companies little incentive to make the drugs affordable, administration officials said. “The lack of any ability for Part D plans to manage drugs in the protected classes has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to command high prices on protected class drugs in Part D, without patients getting a good deal,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. (Weixel, 11/26)

The Associated Press: Proposed Changes On Medicare Drugs Create Winners And Losers
Verma said the changes, if finalized, would ultimately save money for beneficiaries by sharpening competition among the insurers who deliver Medicare Advantage and prescription coverage. "At the end of the day, the patient remains in the driver's seat," she said. "They decide which plan to pick." (11/26)

Stat: HHS Proposes Letting Private Medicare Plans Exclude New Types Of Drugs
It was the first in a series of changes that the Trump administration put forth in a new regulation late on Monday, all of which largely nibble around the edges of the underlying problem of high drug prices. Each of the polices are nonetheless likely to inflame drug companies and allied patient advocates who have said similar policy proposals could limit patient access to medicines. Under current law, private Medicare drug plans are required to cover “all or substantially all” drugs in six classes: 1) antidepressants; 2) antipsychotics; 3) anticonvulsants; 4) immunosuppressants for treatment of transplant rejection; 5) antiretrovirals; and 6) antineoplastics. The original intent was to make sure insurers did not deny vulnerable patients access to potentially life-saving drugs. (Florko, 11/26)

The New York Times: Chinese Scientist Claims To Use Crispr To Make First Genetically Edited Babies
Ever since scientists created the powerful gene editing technique Crispr, they have braced apprehensively for the day when it would be used to create a genetically altered human being. Many nations banned such work, fearing it could be misused to alter everything from eye color to I.Q. Now, the moment they feared may have come. On Monday, a scientist in China announced that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls who were born this month. (Kolata, Wee, and Belluck, 11/26)

Los Angeles Times: Why Geneticists Say It's Wrong To Edit The DNA Of Embryos To Protect Them Against HIV
The ethical debate over “designer babies” has focused on using gene-editing to select such traits as eye color, intelligence or athletic prowess. But He focused on another trait that is highly prized in China: resistance to HIV. He had recruited seven couples in which the prospective father was HIV-positive and the mother was not. The couples were offered free fertility treatments and the chance to have a gene called CCR5 disabled in their embryos. The edit was made when the woman’s eggs were fertilized with her husband’s sperm in a laboratory dish. Of 22 embryos created, 16 got the experimental treatment. Eleven of those embryos were implanted into six women before the twin pregnancy was achieved, He told the Associated Press. (Healy, 11/26)

NPR: Chinese Researcher Used CRISPR To Edit Embryonic DNA Of Twin Girls
He is now facing investigation by a local medical ethics board to see whether his experiment broke Chinese laws or regulations. The university where He worked issued a statement that officials were "deeply shocked" by the experiment, which it stressed was conducted elsewhere. He, the statement says, has been on unpaid leave from the university. (Stein, 11/26)

Stat: What We Know — And Don’t — About Claim Of The First Gene-Edited Babies
No one knows exactly how He Jiankui, on leave from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, did it. Scientists gathered in Hong Kong at an international summit on human genome editing will have to wait until Wednesday to hear He describe his work in more detail. Here’s what we do know. (Cooney, 11/26)

Reuters: More Than 100 Scientists In China Say Baby Gene Editing Is 'Crazy'
More than 100 scientists, most of them in China, have condemned as "crazy" and unethical altering human genes after a geneticist claimed he had changed the genes of twin girls to create the first gene-edited babies. In an open letter circulating online, the scientists said the use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to edit the genes of human embryos was risky, unjustified and harmed the reputation and development of the biomedical community in China. (11/27)

The Associated Press: Q&A On Scientist's Bombshell Claim Of Gene-Edited Babies
There is wide scientific agreement that rewriting DNA before birth — to prevent an inherited disease or to give a baby some "designer" trait — isn't yet safe to try outside laboratory experiments that do not lead to human births. "Grossly premature and deeply unethical," is how noted U.S. bioethicist Henry Greely of Stanford University characterized the claim. (11/26)

Stat: An Outsider Claimed Genome-Editing History; The World Snapped To Attention
“I am trying to understand what may have motivated the work he describes,” said a scientist who helped organize a major Hong Kong summit on human genome editing that starts Tuesday and who asked not to be named. “As far as I can tell, it was a combination of hubris, naivete, and perhaps a genuine desire to help people in need. He does not seem to have anticipated the profound public backlash against his work and the way it was conducted and publicized.” He clearly knew the attention that his announcement would get. He reportedly worked with an American public relations specialist; gave advance interviews to the Associated Press, which has a global reach; timed the big reveal to the start of the summit; and posted a series of YouTube videos in English celebrating the achievement. (Joseph, Robbins and Begley, 11/26)

The Washington Post: Chinese Scientist’s Claim Of Gene-Edited Babies Creates Uproar
The unverified claim by He came on the eve of an international summit dedicated to discussing the emerging science and ethics around powerful tools that give scientists unprecedented potential to tweak traits and eliminate genetic diseases — but that have raised fears of “designer babies.” By editing the DNA of human embryos, scientists change not just the genes in a single person, but also their potential offspring — in effect, altering the human species. (Johnson, 11/26)

Stat: Rice Opens Investigation Into Researcher Who Worked On CRISPR'd Babies
Rice University said Monday that it had opened a “full investigation” into the involvement of one of its faculty members in a study that purportedly resulted in the creation of the world’s first babies born with edited DNA. Michael Deem, a bioengineering professor at Rice, told the Associated Press in a story published Sunday that he helped work on the research in China. (Joseph, 11/26)

Politico: Watchdog Office To Probe Mar-A-Lago Members' Influence At VA
The Government Accountability Office will investigate whether members of Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, improperly influenced the Department of Veterans Affairs, including over a $10 billion contract to modernize veterans’ health records, according to a letter from the watchdog office released by Democratic lawmakers Monday. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) had requested an investigation in August following reports that Trump confidant Ike Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and Bruce Moskowitz, a West Palm Beach doctor, used their access to the club — and the president — to delay and shape a plan to overhaul digital health records at the VA. (Woellert, 11/26)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: FDA Says It Will Overhaul Criticized Medical Device System
U.S. health officials said Monday they plan to overhaul the nation's decades-old system for approving most medical devices, which has long been criticized by experts for failing to catch problems with risky implants and related products. The Food and Drug Administration announced plans aimed at making sure new medical devices reflect up-to-date safety and effectiveness features. The system targeted by the actions generally allows manufacturers to launch new products based on similarities to decades-old products, not new clinical testing in patients. (11/26)

The Associated Press Fact Check: Obama Didn't Have Family Separation Policy
President Donald Trump is falsely asserting that the federal policy that split migrant families at the border was practiced by his predecessor, Barack Obama, as well. The Obama and Trump administrations operated under the same immigration laws but the "zero tolerance" policy that drove children from their parents was Trump's. (11/27)

The Associated Press: CVS, Aetna Draw Closer To Closing $69B Combination
Shares of CVS Health and Aetna are rising with the companies now saying they expect to close their $69 billion tie-up later this week. The companies say in regulatory filings that they have the final regulatory approval needed and expect to close on or around Wednesday. CVS Health Corp. had told investors earlier this month that it expected to close the deal for the nation's third-largest health insurer before Thanksgiving. But its shares slipped last week after the drugstore chain and pharmacy benefit manager said it still lacked approval from two states. (11/26)