Times Of San Diego: Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas Breaks Ground On $263M Tower With Opening Set For 2025 
Work to expand Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas took a step forward this week with the start of construction on the $263 million Lusardi Tower. Scripps leaders, philanthropists and local public officials gathered at the North County campus Thursday for a ceremony commemorating the groundbreaking of the three-story, 224,000-square-foot facility. (6/11)

The Bakersfield Californian: Adventist Charts New Future For Bakersfield Heart Hospital 
Strategic investments are planned that could boost Bakersfield Heart Hospital's reputation as a top provider of cardiac care after its rescue this month by Adventist Health. (Cox, 6/10)

Times Of San Diego: Illumina CEO Francis DeSouza Resigns In Aftermath Of Carl Icahn Proxy Fight
Illumina CEO Francis deSouza, who survived a proxy challenge from corporate raider Carl Icahn, has resigned from the San Diego genetic sequencing pioneer effective Sunday. In an unusual Sunday morning announcement, the company’s board said it had accepted deSouza’s resignation and appointed vice president and General Counsel Charles Dadswell as interim CEO. (Jennewein, 6/11)

Stat: Illumina Became A Case Study Of Succession Planning Gone Wrong
The sudden resignation of Francis deSouza as the CEO of Illumina Sunday represents anything but an orderly transition — and it leaves a black mark on both his six-year tenure and his luckless quest to acquire the cancer diagnostics firm Grail. (Herper, 6/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Long COVID Risk Slashed By Cheap Diabetes Drug, Study Finds
A cheap, widely available drug shows promise in reducing the risk of long COVID, the persistent symptoms of illness that affect some people after infection with the novel coronavirus. In a new study by researchers at the University of Minnesota, metformin, a drug commonly prescribed to control blood sugar levels in individuals with Type 2 diabetes, has emerged as a potential game-changer in the fight against long COVID. (Vaziri, 6/9)

Los Angeles Times: The Coronavirus Has Made Itself At Home In Animals. Why That Ramps Up The Risk For People
At least 32 animal species in 39 countries have had confirmed coronavirus infections. For the most part, the animals do not become very ill. Still, some are capable of transmitting the virus to other members of their species, just like the asymptomatic humans who became “silent spreaders.” The coronavirus’ ability to infect so many different animals, and to spread within some of those populations, is worrying news: It means there’s virtually no chance the world will ever be rid of this particularly destructive coronavirus, scientists said. (Healy, 6/9)

NBC News: Experts Weigh In On The Best Time To Come Out Of Covid Isolation
With much of the Covid testing done in private or not at all anymore, it is likely that many Americans don't bother with isolation anyway. So, who is still following the CDC guidance? Schools, nursing homes and businesses. The current recommendation to isolate for five days is a "hangover" from when the CDC moved from a 10-day isolation recommendation to five days in late 2022, just as the first wave of omicron was taking hold in the U.S., said Harvard University epidemiologist Bill Hanage. (Edwards and Syal, 6/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Capt. Crozier Finally Talks About COVID Chaos That Cost Him His Career
Capt. Brett Crozier became the center of an international story in March 2020 after The Chronicle published his email begging top Navy brass to send more help as COVID-19 quickly spread among the 5,000 sailors on the nuclear aircraft carrier he commanded in the early, chaotic days of the pandemic. The leak and the turmoil that followed eventually cost Crozier — and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, who fired him — their jobs. Crozier, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time, said he would have done it again, even though he was on track to becoming an admiral. (Garofoli, 6/11)

Sacramento Business Journal: Applications Now Open For Grants To Help Small Businesses Recoup Covid-19 Sick Pay Costs
Small businesses can now apply for grants of up to $50,000 to help them make up for the costs of providing employees with state-mandated paid Covid-19 sick leave. (Hamann, 6/9)

AP: The Great Grift: How Billions In COVID-19 Relief Aid Was Stolen Or Wasted 
An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid. (Lardner, McDermott and Kessler, 6/12)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Area Faces Housing Crisis, Racial Inequality
The Sacramento region is at a tipping point. And the next few years will determine what shape we leave it in for the next generation. The region’s housing is less expensive than California’s coastal cities, a selling point that motivated thousands of new residents to move inland since the start of the pandemic. Yet housing prices and rents have skyrocketed the past three years, and fewer than one-third of residents here can now afford to buy the median-priced home. (Lillis, 6/12)

Voice Of San Diego: City With Two Unsheltered Residents Is Cracking Down On Homelessness
Following in the footsteps of the city of San Diego, officials in Poway are preparing to step up enforcement of homeless encampments. But the difference between the size of the community they are targeting is stark. The latest point-in-time count, released Thursday by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, shows a 22 percent spike in 2023 of unsheltered people in the region – a 12-year high. Poway had two unsheltered residents as of January, down from 23 in the prior count.  (Gray, 6/9)

Los Angeles Times: A Metro Worker Revived 21 Riders Overdosing On Opioids
Walking along a rail platform, a veteran transit worker spotted a package of the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone, picked it up and slipped it in his vest. He couldn’t imagine that he would use the medicine less than two hours later. But looking back on that evening in February 2022, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. (Uranga, 6/9)

Southern California News Group: California Doctor Who Became Opioid ‘Drug Dealer’ Gets 12 Years In Prison
A Tustin doctor who illegally distributed opioid pills linked to the death of an off-duty Costa Mesa fire captain, the suspected gunman in the Borderline Bar & Grill mass shooting and at least five overdose deaths was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison Friday, June 9, authorities said. (Percy, 6/12)

Stat: Top Health Officials Call For More Research On Fentanyl Test Strips
The government’s top addiction scientists and key public health officials are calling for more research into fentanyl test strips. Amid a devastating overdose epidemic, the U.S. must ensure that test strips are legal and widely available, the officials wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine perspective published Saturday. Additionally, they argued, the U.S. should work to develop new products and technologies that facilitate drug-checking. (Facher, 6/10)

The Mercury News: Bay Area Students Invent Device To Help Them Survive School Shootings
They came up with SIREN, a 3-by-6-inch device that screws onto ceilings like a smoke detector. It’s equipped with a microphone and a computer program trained to identify a gunshot, and with multiple devices located across a school, it can pinpoint exactly where a shot is coming from. Within five seconds, SIREN can send a map of the school — and the location of the shot — through an SMS message to all students, teachers, staff and the local police department. (Miolene, 6/11)

Los Angeles Daily News: Brandon Tsay Once Shunned The Spotlight; Then He Disarmed A Mass Shooter 
Brandon Tsay was never one for the spotlight. In fact, he preferred to shine it on others. Talk to those closest to him and they’ll tell you he was the guy behind the scenes — the deejay curating the music. The one making sure the lighting was just right for the ballroom dancers at his family’s Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio. And then one night, on a festive Lunar New Year’s eve in a San Gabriel Valley town celebrating its robust Asian American culture, everything changed. (Liu, 6/11)

WMFE: Orange County Has A Mental Health Problem. Here's What Authorities Plan To Do
About 60% of Orange County's 1.4 million residents don’t have adequate access to mental health and behavioral services, according to county authorities. Thus, the county has decided to lead the way and invest in new mental health and behavioral services, said Donna Wyche, the manager of the county’s mental health and homelessness division. Wyche made the announcement of the county's plan Tuesday during a commissioner meeting. (Pedersen, 6/9)

San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland Teens See More Violence, Feel Sadder Than U.S. Counterparts
Oakland teenagers were more likely to witness violence and to feel despair than their counterparts around the U.S., according to recently released data from a nationwide survey of high school students. (Hosseini, 6/9)

Marin Independent Journal: Three Twins Ice Cream Founder Finds New Calling In Helping First Responders Look After Their Mental Health
Experiencing a great sense of loss, Gottlieb did something he’d never done before — therapy. His positive, life-changing experience, along with his desire to help destigmatize it for others, lead him to start Crain, a platform to support first responders with results-oriented mental health tools to combat stress and reduce burnout. (Bidwell, 6/12)

ABC13 Houston: 'Close The Chapter': Son Of Victim Of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski Feels 'Closure' After Convicted Terrorist's Death 
Novato, Calif., resident Jonathan Epstein says the death of Ted Kaczynski means closure for his family. "My first reaction was 'Finally we can close that chapter on this part of our life.' I was glad to hear the news," Epstein said. His father, UCSF Geneticist Dr. Charles Epstein, was one of the Unabomber's targets in 1993 when a package was delivered to the family's Tiburon home. "I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, when I got a call from my aunt who said my father opened a mail bomb," Epstein said. Dr. Epstein was severely injured and lost several fingers in the blast. Jonathan says there was no reason for the attack, because his father's research was focused on understanding Down's Syndrome. (Barnard, 6/11)

WMFE: Orange County Issues Mosquito Advisory After Eastern Equine Encephalitis Discovery
The state Department of Health issued an advisory to Orange County residents urging caution as area mosquitoes are testing positive for a deadly disease. Orange County Mosquito Control found 50% of a sentinel chicken coop tested positive for Eastern Equine Encephalitis disease along the perimeter of the county. The disease is rare but is deadly and can cause serious neurological problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Pedersen, 6/9)

The New York Times: Noise Could Take Years Off Your Life. Here Are The Health Impacts
On a spring afternoon in Bankers Hill, San Diego, the soundscape is serene: Sea breeze rustles through the trees, and neighbors chat pleasantly across driveways. Except for about every three minutes, when a jet blazes overhead with an ear-piercing roar. A growing body of research shows that this kind of chronic noise — which rattles the neighborhood over 280 times a day, more than 105,000 each year — is not just annoying. It is a largely unrecognized health threat that is increasing the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks worldwide, including for more than 100 million Americans. (Baumgaertner, Kao, Lutz, Sedgwick, Taylor, Throop and Williams, 6/9)

The New York Times: Are You Exposed To Too Much Noise? Here’s How To Check
You can search your ZIP code in an online noise map developed by the Transportation Department. But keep in mind that the map uses 2018 data and accounts only for transport-related noise — and, like all modeled data, it is based on approximations — so it pales in comparison with on-the-ground measurements. (Baumgaertner, 6/9)

Reuters: Biden Administration Near Deal To Preserve Preventive Care Coverage, For Now
A mandate that U.S. health insurers cover preventive care like cancer screenings and HIV-preventing medication at no extra cost to patients could remain in place while the Biden administration appeals a court order striking it down, following a tentative agreement announced on Friday. The agreement between the administration and conservative businesses and individuals that sued to challenge the mandate is not yet final, according to a filing with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. (Pierson, 6/9)

AP: Compromise May Mean Continued Reprieve For 'Obamacare' Preventive Care Mandates 
Attorneys told a federal appeals court Friday they are close to an agreement that could temporarily maintain government requirements that health insurance plans include coverage of HIV-preventing drugs, cancer screenings and other preventive care while a court battle over the mandates plays out. An agreement could be ready to present to the court by Tuesday, attorneys for opponents of the mandates and the Biden administration, which is defending the mandates, said in a brief report filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. (McGill, 6/9)

Stat: FDA Panel Unanimously Endorses Eisai’s Alzheimer’s Drug Leqembi
Expert advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted unanimously in favor of expanding the approval of Leqembi, an Alzheimer’s disease treatment from Eisai and Biogen, further clearing the way for what could be the first widely available medicine that delays the disease’s progress. (Feuerstein and Garde, 6/9)

Reuters: U.S. Government Sets Penalties On 43 Drugs Over Price Hikes
The Biden administration on Friday announced it would impose inflation penalties on 43 drugs for the third quarter of 2023, having fined 27 earlier this year, in a move it said would lower costs for older Americans by as much as $449 per dose. Drugmakers hiked the price of these 43 drugs by more than the rate of inflation and are required to pay the difference of those medicines to Medicare, the federal health program for Americans over age 65. (Wingrove, 6/9)

Stat: Chamber Sues Over Medicare Drug-Price Negotiation 
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the federal government over its new Medicare drug-price negotiation program on Friday, arguing that Congress tried to take too much power away from the courts. (Cohrs, 6/10)

Axios: Drug Patent Reforms Set Off Senate Tug Of War
A fight is heating up over a plan to keep drugmakers from gaming the patent system that would potentially lower drug prices as senators weigh a broader health care package. But the outcome is far from certain, given the range of competing health care interests. (Sullivan, 6/12)