Times Of San Diego: San Diego's First 'Safe Sleeping' Legal Camping Location For Homeless To Open Thursday 
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced that the city’s first new Safe Sleeping program site in the Golden Hill neighborhood will open Thursday, offering legal camping for those experiencing homelessness. The city’s Central Operations Yard has a capacity to hold 136 tents, each in a space measuring 13 feet by 13 feet. The number of people at the site may be larger than 136, as each tent can accommodate two people and clients may have a partner or caretaker, officials said. (Ireland, 6/28)

Voice of OC: Old Sears Building At Buena Park Mall To Be Turned Into 1,300 Housing Units
Residential buildings as tall as seven and five stories will rise from a defunct retail space in northern Orange County, after all sides of a statewide housing debate collided in Buena Park on Tuesday. Buena Park City Council members unanimously approved plans to build 1,300 units from one to three bedrooms, as well as studios and three-story townhomes, at the Buena Park Mall’s old Sears property on the corner of La Palma and Stanton Avenues. (Pho, 6/28)

San Francisco Chronicle: After COVID-19, Some Bay Area Chefs Face Tragic Loss Of Smell, Taste
Sergio Monleón, chef-owner of the popular Berkeley tapas bar La Marcha, was in a panic. Just as he was preparing to open his new concept restaurant Ibéxico in 2021, he suddenly lost his sense of smell. “I remember washing my hands and not being able to smell the soap,” he said. “That was the first time I had COVID.” (Vaziri, 6/28)

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)

The Washington Post: California's First Major Heat Wave Of The Year May Break Record Temperatures 
Triple-digit temperatures aren’t uncommon in California in the summertime, but the first major heat wave of the season is about to push readings toward record territory. Excessive heat watches and heat advisories blanket much of the state from the Central Valley to Orange County, with a few areas set to approach 110 degrees. The worst of the heat will come between Friday and Sunday, with high temperatures peaking 10 to 15 degrees above average. While humidity won’t be an issue, the hot temperatures alone will be hazardous, especially for the unhoused and other vulnerable populations. (Cappucci, 6/28)

The Washington Post: Living Near Green Spaces Could Add 2.5 Years To Your Life
Want to live longer? Living near more green spaces could be part of the answer. A study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances suggests that if you have long-term exposure to more greenery where you live, on average you may be adding 2.5 years to your life. (Chiu, 6/28)

NPR: Opioids No More Effective Than Placebo For Common Back Pain, A Study Suggests 
Back and neck pain afflicts millions of American adults, driving many to seek relief from their family doctor or even the local emergency room. When these episodes of pain are acute and nonspecific — meaning there's no clear cause or explanation — it's generally advised to start off with everyday remedies like over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, and alternatives like heat therapy, massage or exercise. (Stone, 6/28)

Reveal and The New York Times Magazine: A Mother's Worst Nightmare
One morning in the summer of 2020, Jade Dass woke up and vomited. She assumed she was hung over; she’d been depressed lately and sometimes self-medicated with too much wine. But then a woman in her online counseling group suggested that she might be pregnant. Dass looked in the mirror and realized she was probably right. At 26, Dass had spent the previous 10 months in recovery from an opioid addiction. Her boyfriend of three years, Ryne Bieniasz, was in recovery, too. Since getting out of rehab in 2019, they had been trying to re-establish their lives, but they had trouble finding work and a place to live. Eventually they made their way to a remote horse farm east of Phoenix, doing odd jobs in exchange for housing. (Walter and Lewis, 6/29)

Military.com: Research On Psychedelics, Marijuana As Alternative Treatment For Vets Advancing In Congress
Psychedelic drugs and marijuana could be evaluated as treatments for post-traumatic disorder and other conditions afflicting veterans under bills advancing through Congress. The version of the annual defense policy bill approved by the House Armed Services Committee last week would require the Pentagon to conduct a clinical trial on treating service members' PTSD, traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy with drugs including MDMA, commonly called ecstasy, and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms. (Kheel, 6/28)

Stat: Psychedelics Group Wrestles With New Pharma Identity
He could have been a rock star, a religious icon, the way ecstatic applause from thousands of attendees greeted the man dressed in a crisp, all-white suit as he strode onto a backlit stage. He was neither. This was Rick Doblin, the founder and evangelist of a movement to legalize psychedelic MDMA and bring the drug into mainstream medicine. The scene in a Denver conference hall last week was a world away from the first conference Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) held in 1990, when Doblin spoke alongside Timothy Leary — the ex-Harvard professor who popularized the phrase “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” That was just a few years after MDMA, also known as ecstasy, was criminalized, deemed a Schedule 1 drug “of no medical use.” (Goldhill, 6/29)

AP: Biden's Brother Says The President Is 'Very Open-Minded' About Psychedelics For Medical Treatment 
President Joe Biden’s youngest brother said in a radio interview Wednesday that the president has been “very open-minded” in conversations the two have had about the benefits of psychedelics as a form of medical treatment. Frank Biden made the comments during a call into The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM. The host had just interviewed a Wall Street Journal reporter who recently wrote about powerful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and employees who believe the use of psychedelics and similar substances can help lead to business breakthroughs. (Madhani and Bedayn, 6/28)

Los Angeles Times: Harassment Is Routine For Doctors, Scientists On Social Media
It began with life-saving advice in the midst of the pandemic. It ended with death threats. “When I posted a picture of myself with my badge in my white coat after my COVID-19 vaccination I received hundreds of harassing anti-vaxx messages including death threats." The medical professional on the receiving end of those threats was hardly alone. A new survey of physicians and biomedical scientists in the U.S. found that nearly two-thirds experienced harassment on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Errico, 6/28)

Axios: Health Systems Plagued By Spot Shortages Scramble For Essentials
Health systems that had to ration supplies during the pandemic are now facing disruptions of basic needs like syringes, surgical tourniquets, chest tubes and compounds for CT scans — and spending huge sums on workarounds. The big picture: Drug shortages aren't the only supply problem plaguing U.S. health care as providers navigate an increasingly volatile environment characterized by acute spot shortages and manufacturing and logistics issues. The crunch isn't expected to ease for at least a year. (Bettelheim, 6/29)

USA Today: Health Rankings Report: Which States Are Best, Worst For Access?
A new report sheds light on glaring disparities and preventable deaths in the U.S., finding surges in deaths from treatable causes, gaps in maternal health care and inequities in health care access. The Commonwealth Fund’s 2023 Scorecard on State Health System Performance ranked states based on health care access and affordability, reproductive health care access and outcomes, premature death rates, medical debt and other factors between 2019 and 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Hassanein, 6/29)

NPR: Growing View Of Gun Violence As An Epidemic May Help U.S. Limit It
Six months into the year, more than 21,000 people have died because of gun-related injuries in the United States. Doctors and public health officials have a word to describe the rising number of people killed or hurt by guns in recent years: epidemic. (Adams, 6/29)

Reuters: US Abortion Pill Access Could Hinge On Whether Doctors Had Right To Sue
A prominent U.S. lawsuit to ban the abortion pill mifepristone has focused on the drug's safety and approval process. But the outcome may ultimately rest on a different issue: whether Ingrid Skop, an anti-abortion doctor in Texas, and other physicians behind the lawsuit can justify suing in the first place. That’s because of the legal concept known as standing, which holds that plaintiffs must have suffered harm or face an imminent injury traceable to the defendant — in this case, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill in 2000. (Hals, 6/29)

Reuters: Five Doctors Backing The US Legal Case Against The Abortion Pill
A legal case making its way through the courts could remove the abortion pill mifepristone from the market or restrict access to the drug. The case is being led by medical groups and doctors who are opposed to abortion and hinges in part on the testimony of the doctors to establish the right to bring the case, a legal doctrine known as standing. Here is a closer look at some of them. (Hals, 6/29)

FiveThirtyEight: Nonreligious Americans Are The New Abortion Voters 
Surveys conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life and the Pew Research Center found that abortion has become much more important to religiously unaffiliated Americans than it was in the past, while becoming less of a critical concern for white evangelicals. These findings suggest that an entirely different group of people could become the next generation of “abortion voters” — a label once associated with the religious right. (Cox and Thomson-DeVeaux, 6/29)

PBS NewsHour: Why Post-Roe Abortion Restrictions Worry Domestic Violence Experts 
Domestic violence, which includes intimate partner violence, is often misrepresented as a private family issue, according to Justice. But this form of violence is “extremely pervasive,” she said, and people should “really talk about it in terms of a public health crisis, impacting millions of people in the U.S.” (Santhanam, 6/28)

Los Angeles Times: Internal Report Details Rampant Diarrhea Among Children At Overcrowded Border Facility
Diarrhea was rampant, children were losing weight, and parents had to clean soiled clothing in sinks because guards would not provide them with clean items, mothers at an overcrowded Texas border facility in Laredo told Department of Homeland Security investigators last month, according to an internal report obtained by The Times. (Aleaziz, 6/28)

Reuters: Exclusive: WHO's Cancer Research Agency To Say Aspartame Sweetener A Possible Carcinogen - Sources
One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators. Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization's (WHO) cancer research arm, the sources said. (Rigby and Naidu, 6/29)

Reuters: Menopause Hormone Pills Associated With Dementia, Causation Unclear 
Use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to ease the effects of menopause, even for short periods, was associated with a higher risk for dementia in a nationwide study from Denmark, but the cognitive declines may not have been due to the treatment, researchers said on Wednesday. The study, published in The BMJ, contradicts some earlier studies that suggest HRT may protect against cognitive decline if the treatments are started near menopause onset. (Lapid, 6/28)

The Washington Post: Torn ACL Injuries Can Heal Without Surgery, New Study Finds
In the new study published this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 90 percent of 80 ruptured ACLs studied showed signs of healing and repair on scans about three months later. The patients had followed a newly developed protocol of bracing and physical therapy. (Reynolds, 6/28)

California Healthline: More States Drop Sales Tax On Disposable Diapers To Boost Affordability
Last month, Florida joined a growing number of states like California in banning sales taxes on diapers to make them more affordable for older adults and families with young children. Though diapers are essential for many, they are not covered by food stamps. Nor are incontinence products for older adults typically covered by Medicare. The cost can easily add up on a fixed income. (Critchfield, 6/29)