The New York Times: California Tries New Tack On Gun Violence: Ammunition Control
Sold from vending machines in Pennsylvania, feed depots in Nevada, pharmacies in Georgia and jewelry stores in Texas, ammunition is in many states easier to buy than cold medicine. But in California, which already enforces some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, there is a movement underway against the unfettered sale of bullets. Gun control advocates here have pushed to limit internet sales, ban large-capacity magazines, require sellers to have licenses, raise taxes on bullets, and mandate serial numbers or other traceable markings on ammunition so that the police can more easily track them. (Urbina, 9/9)

In other news from Sacramento —

San Diego Union-Times: Middle And High Schools Would Start No Earlier Than 8:30 A.M. Under Bill Sent To Governor
Eileen Gaspar estimates that her high school daughter gets four to five hours of sleep a night. Her daughter goes to Olympian High in Chula Vista, where school starts at 7:30 a.m., so she’s out the door each morning by 6:45 a.m. But she has cheerleading practice every evening until about 7 p.m., and once she gets home, she has to shower, eat dinner then stay up late doing homework. (Taketa, 9/10)

The New York Times: California Says Nursing Homes Abandoned Elderly During Fire
As a firestorm descended on the Northern California city of Santa Rosa in October, staff members at two nursing homes abandoned their residents, many of them unable to walk and suffering from memory problems, according to a legal complaint filed by the California Department of Social Services. The state agency is now seeking to close the facilities and strip the managers of their licenses. (Fuller, 9/7)

Meanwhile —

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Assisted Living Facility Fined $10,000 For Man’s Repeated Falls
Nick Alexander was visiting his stepfather Aug. 28, 2016, at Carlton Senior Living, an assisted living facility in the Sacramento suburbs. He was concerned about Alan Nelson, who had fallen numerous times at the facility, and Nick Alexander was frustrated that no changes were being made. Nelson’s doctor prescribed the placement of alarms on his wheelchair and bed to alert staff at the facility when he was up and to reduce the potential for a fall. But no alarms had been installed, even though the family asked for them repeatedly. (Holzer, 9/5)

Capital Public Radio: The ‘S’ Word: How Suicide Is Devastating Amador County And Rural Communities
Mental illness isn’t visible. It doesn’t mottle flesh, shrivel muscles or cause a limp. It grows slowly and silently, chipping away at one’s vitality and sense of purpose. And if left unattended for too long, it can cause unbearable pain that drives people to end their own lives. That’s happening with alarming frequency in California’s rural communities, where economic downturn, slim mental health resources, transportation barriers and high rates of substance abuse are creating breeding grounds for suicide. (Caiola, 9/10)

In other public health news —

Orange County Register: Concussions In The NFL Have Increased Since Protocols Were Put In Place In 2012
A record 291 concussions were reported in the NFL in 2017. The NFL, NCAA and high school associations are increasing education and concussion protocols. What does that mean? From 2003 to 2009, the NFL’s now-defunct Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee concluded that “no NFL player” had experienced chronic brain damage from repeat concussions, and “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” (Snibbe, 9/8)

Sacramento Bee: An Officer With PTSD Shot A Mentally Ill Man. He’s Still On The Force. 
In California, the privacy of law enforcement personnel is closely guarded by the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights – a protection that was hotly debated in the state Legislature this year after the high-profile shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento. The Legislature recently passed Senate Bill 1421, which would would force law enforcement agencies to release the details of use-of-force investigations, as well as personnel records of cops who commit crimes while on duty. The bill is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. (Sullivan, 9/10)

In other news from across the state —

Sacramento Bee: CareForce Offering Free Medical Clinic Sept. 21-23
If you’re one of the approximated 112,000 people in the Sacramento area with little or no health insurance, a California volunteer group wants to help you see a doctor. Between Sept. 21 and 23, California CareForce, a charitable branch of the California Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, in partnership with local nonprofits and health care professionals, is providing a clinic at Cal Expo to offer free dental, vision and medical care to individuals and families in the region, according to a press release. (Wilson, 9/5)

The Bakersfield Californian: Rosedale School District Beefs Up Lunch Program
Students in the Rosedale Union School District may have noticed a few changes to their lunch menu this year. The district is making some significant changes to its meal program, including partnering with the Kern High School District to provide fresher meals to students. Since the start of the new school year, KHSD has been making the food and delivering it to the schools. (Luiz, 9/8)

The Desert Sun: Autistic 19-Year-Old Handcuffed And Injured After Run-In With La Quinta Police
Since she was a child Michelle Chartrand, who is on the autism spectrum, has struggled with academics, but her memory has always been sharp. That’s why the 19-year-old's mother said she believes her daughter's account of an encounter with sheriff's deputies that left the young woman with a cherry-red wound across her forehead and nose. (Hong, 9/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Doctor’s Legal Fight Highlights Medical Industry Pressures 
An ongoing legal battle between a Bay Area neurologist and her former employer is shedding light on financial pressures in medicine that experts say could intensify as more doctors’ practices get absorbed by large health systems. ... Hospitals and health systems are acquiring doctors’ practices at a much faster rate than in previous decades, and it’s making some doctors feel they have less independence to make medical decisions. (Ho, 9/9)

The New York Times: Science Does Not Support Claims That Contraceptives Are ‘Abortion-Inducing’
During his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Thursday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh referred to some forms of birth control as “abortion-inducing drugs.” The phrase is a characterization that some anti-abortion religious groups use, but it is not supported by scientific evidence. Judge Kavanaugh used the phrase while answering questions by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, about a 2015 dissent he wrote in a case brought by a Catholic organization over a requirement in the federal health care law that employers include contraception coverage in employee health plans. (Belluck, 9/7)

The New York Times: Democrats Sow Disorder In The Senate Over Kavanaugh And The Court
Boorish. Rude. Disrespectful. Insulting. Grandstanding. Hyperventilating. Deranged. Ridiculous. Drivel. Those were among the words angry Senate Republicans used this week to assail the conduct of Democrats at a Supreme Court hearing that was often tense and sometimes toxic. (Hulse, 9/7)

Bloomberg: Facing Long Odds On Kavanaugh, Democrats Make It All About Trump
Facing an uphill battle to derail Donald Trump’s second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Senate Democrats fanned out on Sunday to cast Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight as a referendum on White House accountability. Liberals fear that elevating Kavanaugh to the nine-person court could create the most conservative panel since the 1930s and lead to legal reversals on precedents including women’s abortion rights. (Bain and Brody, 9/9)

Politico: Judiciary Committee Vote Next Hurdle For Kavanaugh
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has announced that he will hold a committee on Sept. 13. Democrats can delay a panel vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for one week. At that point, Grassley would be expected to push Kavanaugh’s nomination through his panel and onto the Senate floor, setting the stage for a big political win for President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Democrats can only slow down Kavanaugh’s nomination at that point — they can’t stop it without GOP help. Senate Republicans currently have a 51-49 majority, with the replacement for the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Jon Kyl, having been sworn in on Wednesday, giving McConnell another vote to work with to get Kavanaugh through the Senate. (Bresnahan, 9/7)

The Hill: Obama Calls 'Medicare For All' A 'Good' Idea
Former President Obama on Friday called "Medicare for all" a "good" idea during a speech in Illinois where he launched his midterm campaign efforts for Democrats. "Democrats aren't just running on good, old ideas like a higher minimum wage. They're running on good, new ideas like Medicare for all," Obama said. (Hellmann, 9/7)

Politico: Obama Touts Medicare For All As Evidence Of Democrats’ New Ideas
“They’re sabotaging the Affordable Care Act, already cost more than 3 million Americans their health insurance,” Obama said in a wide-ranging speech that also criticized the Trump administration‘s policies. “And if they’re still in power next fall, you better believe they're coming at it again. They’ve said so.” The remarks at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign launched Obama's midterm campaigning and drew attention to calls for universal health coverage, a cause that has rallied progressives in congressional races and statewide initiatives. (Demko, 9/7)

McClatchy: Medicare For All: GOP Says Single-Payer Hurts Entitlements
Two months before Election Day, some Republicans have embraced an unexpected new way to attack Democratic candidates: The party of Medicare for All, they charge, actually wants to take away Medicare from senior citizens. It’s an attack Democrats hotly contest, dismissing it as proof positive the GOP is failing to find a winning message in a challenging political climate. (Roarty and Glueck, 9/7)

The New York Times/ProPublica: Top Cancer Researcher Fails To Disclose Corporate Financial Ties In Major Research Journals
One of the world’s top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent years, omitting his financial ties from dozens of research articles in prestigious publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. The researcher, Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, is the chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has held board memberships or advisory roles with Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb, among other corporations, has had a stake in start-ups testing cancer therapies, and played a key role in the development of breakthrough drugs that have revolutionized treatments for breast cancer. (Ornstein and Thomas, 9/8)

In other national health care news —

Stat: That Alarm About The Cancer Risks Of CRISPR? It's Still Ringing
When papers from two independent research groups reported in June that CRISPR genome editing is more likely to succeed in cells that have lost their cancer kill switch, it raised fears that edited cells used to treat patients might initiate tumors. That inference is still the subject of intense debate — including over whether Nature Medicine should even have published the studies — but one thing is beyond question: The papers sent other scientists scurrying to their labs to check their results. (Begley, 9/10)

The Associated Press: Doctors Explore Lifting Barriers To Living Organ Donation
Surgeons turned down Terra Goudge for the liver transplant that was her only shot at surviving a rare cancer. Her tumor was too advanced, they said — even though Goudge had a friend ready to donate, no matter those odds. "I have a living donor — I'm not taking away from anyone. I'm trying to save my own life," she pleaded. Finally, the Los Angeles woman found a hospital on the other side of the country that let the pair try. (9/10)

NPR: Could Alzheimer's Be An Infectious Disease?
Dr. Leslie Norins is willing to hand over $1 million of his own money to anyone who can clarify something: Is Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia worldwide, caused by a germ? By "germ" he means microbes like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. In other words, Norins, a physician turned publisher, wants to know if Alzheimer's is infectious. (Stetka, 9/9)

Stat: New Flu Drug Shows Strong Potential, But Clinical Trial Results Also Raise Concerns
A new, fast-acting flu drug showed strong potential but also some surprising and even concerning results in two newly published clinical trials. The drug, baloxavir marboxil, cut the time people were sick with flu symptoms by a little over a day. And it dramatically reduced the amount of viruses that people with infections had in their upper respiratory tracts, suggesting they might be less likely to infect others through coughs and sneezes. (Branswell, 9/10)