San Francisco Chronicle: California Expects ‘Major Heat Risk’ In Some Areas. Here's Where
The cool weather pattern in the inland valleys of the Bay Area comes to a close this week as a warm ridge of high pressure is forecast to start raising above-average temperatures across California on Wednesday and Thursday. This shakeup in the weather pattern could translate into an elevated heat risk in parts of the Bay Area this week. (Diaz, 6/27)

Sacramento Bee: First Excessive Heat Watch Of Year Warns Northern California Of Possible 110-Degree Temps
Just as summer begins, Northern California’s dreadful heat is back. Triple-digit temperatures are expected to scorch the Sacramento area this week, and it has prompted the National Weather Service to issue the first excessive heat watch of the year. (Truong, 6/27)

San Diego Union-Times: Be Cool: As Summer Settles In, San Diego Public Health Officials Want To Make Sure You Are Safe
As summer takes root and daytime temperatures climb higher across the region, San Diego County leaders on Tuesday gathered to promote a network of “cool zones” designed to provide safe spaces for people who lack air conditioning. Not only do the cool zones provide relief from summertime heat, they can save consumers on the cost of monthly energy bills, officials said. (McDonald, 6/27)

Axios: Sick Sea Lions Wash Up On California Beaches Due To Toxic Algae
Hundreds of sea lions and dolphins are washing up dead or sick on California beaches due to a toxic offshore algae blooms, officials warn. (Falconer, 6/27)

San Diego Union-Times: New County Budget Pushes Past $8 Billion, Steers More Money To Mental Health, Housing And Homelessness
San Diego County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an $8.17 billion budget that boosts spending 11 percent over last year, and adds money for mental health, housing and homelessness. The revised 2023-24 spending plan adds $60 million and 50 new staff positions to the draft budget released last month. Most of the extra funding will go to the Public Safety Group, while two-thirds of the additional positions are slated for Land Use and Environment. (Sullivan Brennan, 6/27)

San Diego Union-Times: San Diego Finalizes Controversial Homeless Camping Ban In Repeat 5-4 Vote 
The San Diego City Council finalized Tuesday the city’s controversial new ban on homeless encampments on public property — a ban that critics say criminalizes homelessness and severe poverty. The 5-4 vote, which came after two hours of public testimony that was nearly unanimous in opposition, mirrors the council’s initial approval on June 13. (Garrick, 6/27)

inewsource: Mayor Todd Gloria’s Homeless Shelter Plan Could Cost $66M
Mayor Todd Gloria sold the San Diego City Council on a controversial camping ban using a homeless shelter expansion strategy that mostly hasn’t been funded yet. Councilmembers voted 5-4 Tuesday during the second and final public hearing to make it illegal to camp citywide if shelter beds are available, and anytime, regardless of shelter availability, near schools, parks, transit hubs and along waterways. (Dulaney, 6/27)

CapRadio: Sacramento Says It’s ‘Not Required’ To Fund Any More Measure O Homeless Services This Year
Sacramento residents who have registered complaints about homeless encampments through the city’s new online form are receiving a surprising response: The automated reply says the city is “not required” to pay for any more homeless services this fiscal year under Measure O. Voters passed the initiative in November to address Sacramento’s growing homelessness crisis, specifically the hundreds of encampments that occupy Sacramento public spaces. (Nichols, 6/27)

CalMatters: Why California Is Looking To Texas For Homeless Solutions
LaVoy Darden is looking for someone. Making the rounds through Houston’s homeless encampments as an outreach specialist for a local nonprofit group, he offers snacks, builds trust, and puts people on a waitlist for affordable housing. On good days he gets to tell them they’re moving into a home. (Kendall, 6/28)

Courthouse News Service: California Lawmakers Advance Bills To Enhance Reproductive Health
The California Senate Public Safety Committee heard strong support Tuesday for a bill that would add protections for those seeking abortion and gender-affirming care. The question is whether supporters can now agree on the language of the proposed law. (Riquelmy, 6/27)

The Bakersfield Californian: Local Lawmakers Weigh In On News Of California Budget Agreement
Building new police stations, combating fentanyl overdoses and various rehabilitation projects around Kern County will be addressed through the $21 million dollars coming to Kern County, according to a statement from Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Delano. About half of that total amount — $11 million — will go toward creating a local task force to help law enforcement and health care providers addressing fentanyl overdoses. About $500,000 is set to be used to warn the public of the drug's dangers through an awareness campaign, according to a statement by Bains. (6/27)

Los Angeles Times: California Tried And Failed To Ban For-Profit ICE Detention Centers. What Does That Mean For Other States?
California’s landmark ban on private prisons and immigrant detention facilities saw its fate sealed when a federal court officially repealed the 2020 law. ... The ban was enacted amid mounting reports of unsafe conditions and health violations at detention facilities, including moldy food, overuse of solitary confinement and dangerous delays in medical care. (Castillo, 6/28)

Los Angeles Times: Border Patrol Officials Complained Of 'Overuse Of Hospitalization' As 8-Year-Old Died
As an 8-year-old was dying in Border Patrol custody last month, officials at the Texas detention center where she had been held were complaining about the facility’s “overuse of hospitalization,” according to an internal report obtained by The Times. Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, who suffered from sickle-cell disorder and a heart condition, had developed a 101.8 degree fever during the five days she was at the detention facility in Donna, Texas. (Aleaziz, 6/28)

CapRadio: California Deemed A ‘Surge State’ For Abortions Post-Roe
Data collected from abortion providers since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 shows California is performing an average of 473 more abortions per month than it was in the months before the Dobbs decision.  Altogether, the #WeCount Project, which was developed to track how the distribution of abortions changed in the U.S. after federal protections were removed, found that California has provided 4,260 more abortions in the  nine months after Dobbs than it would have, based on numbers from the two months prior to the decision. (Wolffe, 6/27)

CBS News: The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Is A Game Changer For U.S. Women. Here's Why. 
The new law effectively patches a legal gap between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) in which pregnant women could fall through the cracks in the workplace. "We have heard from workers who say they were put in that impossible position of choosing between a paycheck and a healthy pregnancy," said Elizabeth Gedmark of A Better Balance, an advocacy group for pregnant workers. (Cerullo, 6/27)

Becker's Hospital Review: California System, Nurses Reach Agreement With 'Historic' Pay Increase
Members of Professional Resource for Nurses have approved a tentative agreement with Mountain View, Calif.-based El Camino Health. The union represents non-administrative, non-management, non-supervisory registered nurses at El Camino Health, a subsidiary of El Camino Hospital District. Union members approved the new three-year contract on June 25, according to a hospital news release. The contract runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2026.  (Gooch, 6/27)

ProPublica: How Often Do Health Insurers Deny Patients’ Claims? No One Knows.
It’s one of the most crucial questions people have when deciding which health plan to choose: If my doctor orders a test or treatment, will my insurer refuse to pay for it? After all, an insurance company that routinely rejects recommended care could damage both your health and your finances. The question becomes ever more pressing as many working Americans see their premiums rise as their benefits shrink. (Fields, 6/28)

Modern Healthcare: Joint Commission To Launch Health Equity Certification Program 
The Joint Commission will strengthen health equity standards within its hospital accreditation programs and launch a certification focused on disparities in patient care. The nonprofit accrediting agency added mandates on strategy and data collection for health system leaders earlier this year, including standards on screening patients for social determinants of health and stratifying safety and quality data by race and ethnicity. Beginning Saturday, those standards will be designated as national patient safety goals. (Hartnett, 6/27)

California Healthline: Will The Doctor See You Now? The Health System’s Changing Landscape
The primary care landscape is changing in ways that could shape patients’ access and quality of care now and for decades to come. A solid and enduring relationship with a primary care doctor — who knows a patient’s history and can monitor new problems — has long been regarded as the bedrock of a quality health care system. But investment in primary care in the U.S. lags that of other high-income countries, and America has a smaller share of primary care physicians than most of its European counterparts. (Appleby and Andrews, 6/28)

The Washington Post: How Troubles At A Factory In India Led To A U.S. Cancer-Drug Shortage
The Intas Pharmaceuticals plant churned out medicine in a sprawling industrial park in western India, far from the minds of American cancer patients until its problems became theirs. The factory accounted for about 50 percent of the U.S. supply of a widely used generic chemotherapy drug called cisplatin, a reality that few understood until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected the site in November. (Gilbert, 6/27)

Stat: The Cancer Drug Shortage Isn’t New — And Neither Are The Solutions
A young girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, had come into Yoram Unguru’s clinic with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common of all childhood cancers. One of the drugs needed for treatment was methotrexate. The only problem was that the drug was in short supply. “Oftentimes we can cure kids of their disease, but we can’t do that without the drugs,” said Unguru, a pediatric hematologist oncologist at Children’s Hospital at Sinai in Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “It’s just so, so maddening.” (Chen, 6/28)

Stat: Young Cancer Survivors At Increased Risk For Depression, Anxiety
Thanks to advances in treatments, children’s chances of surviving cancer are higher than ever before. But the trauma that patients experience as they deal with the disease can pose a lifelong risk to their mental health, according to a recent analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics. The meta-analysis of 52 clinical studies measured the prevalence and severity of psychological disorders in over 20,000 young cancer survivors. Overall, childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer survivors were 57% more likely to develop depression, 29% more likely to develop anxiety, and 56% more likely to develop psychotic disorders in the years following treatment compared to their siblings or healthy members of a control group. (Iskandar, 6/28)

AP: The Great Grift: More Than $200 Billion In COVID-19 Aid May Have Been Stolen, Federal Watchdog Says 
More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives, according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs that helped small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years. The numbers issued Tuesday by the U.S. Small Business Administration inspector general are much greater than the office’s previous projections and underscore how vulnerable the Paycheck Protection and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs were to fraudsters, particularly during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. (Lardner and McDermott, 6/27)

Reuters: Lysol Creates 'Air Sanitizing Spray' Effective Against Coronavirus 
Reckitt's Lysol disinfectant brand said on Tuesday that it would start selling in the U.S. an "air sanitizing spray" that kills 99.9% of airborne viruses and bacteria. The spray, which Reckitt said helps reduce the spread of airborne pathogens such as cold, Influenza and Coronavirus, has been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Naidu, 6/27)

CIDRAP: Study Suggests Vaccination Plays Role In Making Omicron Waves Less Severe 
A new analysis suggests that the Omicron variant has comparable intrinsic severity to the ancestral (Wuhan) SARS-CoV-2 strain, but its effective severity is substantially lower because of vaccination. (Soucheray, 6/27)

Time: This Blood Type Could Make You More Vulnerable To COVID-19 
In the studies, type A was linked to anywhere from a 25% to 50% increased risk of infection, depending on the particular variant involved. Type A blood group cells were particularly vulnerable to getting infected with Omicron variant viruses. The reason has to do with SARS-CoV-2’s affinity for type A blood proteins. The virus has receptors that help it to bind to cells with antigens from blood type A, so they’re “stickier” for the virus, says Dr. Sean Stowell, an associate pathology professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. With more virus attached to cells, the virus is more likely to find the keyhole it needs to infect cells, called the ACE2 receptor. “Blood group A doesn’t itself help the virus get into cells, but because it makes cells more sticky to the virus, the chance that the virus can find ACE2 receptors and get into cells is higher. Since the group A antigens are all over the place in someone with type A blood, the virus can land on a cell surface more readily than in someone with type O blood,” he says.

Bloomberg: Gonorrhea Vaccine By GSK Aims For Speedy FDA Review 
GSK Plc’s experimental gonorrhea vaccine got fast-track designation from US regulators, putting the shot in position to become the first preventive for a common, often-undetected infection that’s gaining resistance to treatment. (Griffin, 6/27)

Stat: Food As Medicine: CMS Rules Hamper 'Prescribing' Of Fruits, Veggies
Research shows that affordability is the leading barrier to healthy eating among low-income Americans. Without targeted assistance to purchase healthy foods, Medicaid members struggling to afford the nutritious food they need, buy the less nutritious food they can afford. Studies indicate that, faced with the impossible tradeoffs that characterize poverty, people will maximize satiating calories rather than nutritional value. It’s doubtful that Medicaid members will continue purchasing a comparable amount of fresh produce once their Fresh Connect enrollment ends. (Adam Shyevitch, 6/27)

Axios: SNAP Combats Racial Divides, Study Finds
Racial disparities in food insecurity persist among low-income households that don't participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but not among those that do, according to a new study. Why it matters: Food insecurity is considered a critical public health threat, and the new evidence suggests that SNAP can be an effective tool in minimizing inequities created by a lack of access to nutritious foods. (Horn-Muller, 6/27)

The Washington Post: Melted, Pounded, Extruded: Why Many Ultra-Processed Foods Are Unhealthy
Would you eat food that’s been predigested? Experts say that’s what we’re doing when we consume many popular packaged foods — those breads, cereals, snack chips and frozen meals that have been refined, pounded, heated, melted, shaped, extruded and packed with additives. (O'Connor and Steckelberg, 6/27)