Los Angeles Times: Free Food For Students Available During LAUSD Strike 
With Los Angeles Unified schools closing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday due to a strike, many parents might be left to wonder whether empty classrooms will lead to empty stomachs. The majority of LAUSD’s students come from low-income families — many of whom face food insecurity. Each day, the nation’s second-largest school district provides hundreds of thousands of meals to those families. But with the support staff who normally pack and serve meals going on strike amid long-running contract talks, and with teachers joining them in solidarity, the district is finding other ways to provide food. (De Loera, 3/20)

KVPR: LA Schools Are Shuttered As Union Workers Begin A Massive 3-Day Strike
LAUSD is the second biggest school district in the country, with 420,000 students – the majority from families who live at or below the poverty line and depend on schools for far more than just classroom instruction. District officials are working with the city and local volunteers to provide students with breakfasts and lunches, as well as to help families with child care for working parents during the planned three-day walkout. (Carrillo, 3/21)

Los Angeles Times: LAUSD Strike: How To Survive The 3-Day Walkout
Los Angeles Unified School District workers are expected to walk out Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Schools will be closed. Families will be able to pick up prepackaged meals from about two dozen locations across the school system on Tuesday only, and only from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Each family can receive six meals per student — for breakfast and lunch on each of the three strike days. (Blume, 3/20)

Los Angeles Daily News: LA Mayor Bass’ First 100 Days: As Promised, Homeless Crisis Front And Center 
Anyone who’s been paying attention since Bass assumed office in mid-December knows she’s been laser-focused on tackling homelessness and has devoted much time and energy on rolling out her signature initiative, Inside Safe, to move people indoors while cleaning up homeless encampments. (Tat, 3/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: Supes Question Rash Of Evictions From Housing Programs
San Francisco supervisors pressed city officials Tuesday to find solutions for the concerning number of formerly homeless people who have been evicted from the same supportive housing programs that pulled them off the streets — a pattern that one supervisor said “defies logic.” The Board of Supervisors committee hearing, called for after a Chronicle investigation exposed the revolving door back to the streets, heard frustrations from city leaders and formerly homeless people alike on the practice of evicting people who fall behind on rent, while failing to provide a safety net for those who are forced to leave. (Palomino and Thadani, 3/20)

Voice of OC: Will Huntington Beach’s 90-Day Plan To End Homelessness Work?
Huntington Beach officials are on a mission to end homelessness in three months. Surf City’s new Republican council majority elected last year campaigned on a 90-day plan to end homelessness in the city and to challenge state mandates for local officials to zone for over 13,000 new homes in Huntington Beach. At their meeting tonight, the Huntington Beach City Council is expected to vote on their proposed plan. (Elattar, 3/21)

San Diego Union-Tribune: 12 Project Roomkey Trailers To Open For San Diego Homeless 
Twelve campers donated to the city of San Diego in the early days of the pandemic will become temporary residences for people experiencing homelessness under a plan approved Monday by the City Council. (McDonald, 3/20)

CalMatters: Mobile Home Parks Need Help. What's California Doing?
Bobby Riley moved to Stockton Park Village to live out his days in peace. In 2018, the 87-year-old retired construction worker tucked his used camper trailer into the farthest lot of the horseshoe-shaped mobile home court off a tree-lined street in the outskirts of Stockton. The community’s handyman, Buzz, helped him build a porch and a patio to ground his trailer and enclosed it with a white wooden fence. He set up a swingset on the grassy common area across the way for when his granddaughter, Brooke, came to visit. But the little piece of heaven he sought soon became a living hell. (Tobias, 3/20)

AP: Federal Judge Blocks Key Parts Of California Handgun Law
A federal judge on Monday blocked key provisions of a California law that drastically restricts the sale of new handguns in the state, saying parts of the legislation violate the Second Amendment. A lawsuit challenging the law was filed last year by the California Rifle & Pistol Association and other gun rights supporters following a landmark 2022 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that set new standards for evaluating firearm restrictions. The ruling left many laws aimed at regulating and limiting the sale and use of guns — in California and nationwide — at risk of being struck down. (Dazio, 3/21)

CalMatters: What To Know About Gavin Newsom Legacy Tour
Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to talk about “the California way.” And as he barnstormed the state with sweeping plans to transform its approach to homelessness, criminal justice and health care, he laid out his ideas for what that “way” means — and his legacy. Throughout his State of the State tour, the governor was often joking and jovial. But on Sunday, the fourth and final day, he took on a more somber tone, standing behind the lectern of a makeshift event space that was once a nine-bed emergency room to talk about improving mental health care. (Kamal and Koseff, 3/20)

Berkeleyside: What Berkeley’s New Mental Health Crisis Team Will Look Like
Berkeley is securing resources for its new, 24/7 mental health response team, which will be dispatched to handle emergencies in public spaces and private homes. Officials have begun hiring about 21 staff members for the fledgling Specialized Care Unit, hoping they will begin responding to Berkeley residents facing drug and mental-health emergencies starting in June. The pilot program, which follows two and a half years of planning and research sparked by calls for police reform in the summer of 2020, will operate independently from the Berkeley Police Department. (Egitto, 3/20)

Houston Chronicle: COVID Underscores Latino Migrants’ ‘Urgent’ Mental Health Needs: Study
Pandemic hardships such as poverty, poor living and working conditions and limited health care access made evident an urgent need to address undocumented Latino immigrants’ mental health needs, according to a new Rice University study. (Romero, 3/20)

Hollywood Reporter: Jason Sudeikis, ‘Ted Lasso’ Cast Promote Mental Health Awareness at White House 
Jason Sudeikis and members of the Ted Lasso cast dropped in on Monday’s White House press briefing to discuss mental health awareness, and in the process took just a single question from coach Ted Lasso’s favorite journalist, Trent Crimm. Sudeikis, alongside Ted Lasso co-creator Brendan Hunt, writer Brett Goldstein and fellow castmembers Toheeb Jimoh and Hannah Waddingham took the stage with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ahead of the group’s private meeting with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden. The Emmy-winning show’s cast and creative team dropped by the nation’s capital to promote and discuss addressing mental health in an effort to support one’s overall well-being. (White, 3/20)

Bloomberg: Not Just TikTok, All Social Media Platforms Pose Risks: Transparency Group
The national-security and mental-health risks posed by TikTok are shared by other social media platforms, according to an advocacy group that’s urging Congress to also hold US companies accountable ahead of high-profile testimony from TikTok’s chief executive officer. (Edgerton, 3/20)

Los Angeles Times: Glendale Officials Accused Of Cutting Line For COVID Vaccinations
Members of the Glendale City Council cut in line for scarce COVID-19 vaccinations when they first became available, and the chief of the city’s Emergency Medical Services was demoted when he protested, according to a lawsuit filed by the former chief. Brian Julian, who remains a battalion chief in Glendale’s Fire Department, says in the suit that he lost his position as “EMS chief” and suffered a pay cut just eight days after he complained in January 2021 about the alleged cheating. (Finnegan, 3/20)

Los Angeles Times: How Immune Are We? A Question Essential For Post-Pandemic Life
The pandemic’s formal end on May 11 marks neither victory nor peace: It’s a cessation of hostilities with a dangerous virus that is still very much with us. To maintain such an uneasy truce, Americans will have to stay protected enough to prevent humanity’s viral foe from staging a break-out of our shaky accord. Providing that assurance, in turn, assumes scientists and public health officials all agree on what it means to be “protected enough,” and that they can tell whether people are meeting that mark. (Healy, 3/20)

CNBC: Biden Signs Legislation To Declassify Certain Intelligence On Covid Pandemic Origins
President Joe Biden on Monday signed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on any possible links between a lab in China and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The House and the Senate unanimously passed the legislation earlier this month. (Kimball, 3/20)

Reuters: Moderna Expects To Price Its COVID Vaccine At About $130 In The US 
Moderna Inc expects to price its COVID-19 vaccine at around $130 per dose in the U.S. going forward as purchases move to the private sector from the government, the company’s president Stephen Hoge said in an interview on Monday. ... Moderna previously said it was considering pricing its COVID vaccine in a range of $110 to $130 per dose in the United States, similar to the range Pfizer Inc said in October it was considering for its rival COVID shots sold in partnership with BioNTech. (Wingrove, 3/20)

Stat: 8 Burning Questions Senators Should Ask Moderna's Bancel
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel has some explaining to do. Bancel will appear alone before Sen. Bernie Sanders’ health committee on Wednesday, where he’ll have to defend his company’s suggestion it will likely quadruple the price of its Covid vaccines once sales transition from bulk federal purchases to the open market. The Senate hearing will be a watershed moment for Bancel, a biotech superstar forged during the pandemic. (Branswell, Cohrs and Garde, 3/21)

CIDRAP: Survey: Most Teens Lacked Sleep, Struggled With Schoolwork In 2021 During COVID 
Three quarters of US high school students didn't get enough sleep, and two-thirds had difficulty completing schoolwork, in 2021 amid the pandemic, according to a survey study published late last week in Preventing Chronic Disease. ... Most respondents (76.5%) reported sleeping for an average of less than 8 hours per school night, and 66.6% said they struggled more with schoolwork than they did before the pandemic. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adolescents aged 13 to 18 sleep 8 to 10 hours a night. "Short sleep duration among adolescents is linked to higher risk of injury, worse metabolic and mental health, and difficulty focusing," the researchers wrote. (Van Beusekom, 3/20)

AP: Anthony Fauci Documentary On PBS Covers A Career Of Crises 
There’s a moment in the new PBS documentary about Dr. Anthony Fauci when a protester holds up a handmade sign reading, “Dr. Fauci, You Are Killing Us.” It says something about Fauci that it’s not initially clear when that sign was waved in anger — in the 1980s as AIDS made its deadly rise or in the 2020s with COVID-19 vaccine opponents. “American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci,” offers a portrait of an unlikely lightning rod: A government infectious disease scientist who advised seven presidents. Fauci hopes it can inspire more public servants like him. (Kennedy, 3/21)

CNN: Candida Auris, An Emerging Fungal Threat, Spread At An Alarming Rate In US Health Care Facilities, CDC Says
Clinical cases of Candida auris, an emerging fungus considered an urgent threat, nearly doubled in 2021, according to new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There was also a tripling of the number of cases resistant to echinocandins, the first-line treatment for Candida auris infections. (Chavez, 3/20)

Bloomberg: Candida Auris: All You Need To Know About The Symptoms, Spread Of Deadly Fungus
Candida auris (C. auris) was first described in Japan in 2009, with the earliest known infections in the US dating back to 2013. Cases grew exponentially through the end of 2021, according to a paper published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which says it poses a serious global health threat — noted that a further 2,377 clinical diagnoses and 5,754 cases identified through screening were reported last year. (De Wei, 3/21)