Los Angeles Daily News: Officials Warn Of Poor Air Quality From July 4 Fireworks All Across Southern California 
The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an advisory warning that particle pollution from July 4 fireworks may cause hazardous air quality Tuesday night into Wednesday across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. (Evains, 7/4)

Los Angeles Times: He Walked Out Of Hospital, Collapsed And Died. State Finds Facility Isn't Responsible
California public health officials will not hold a San Diego County medical facility responsible for failing to detain a patient who died after leaving the hospital’s intensive care unit Aug. 11, 2022 .A California Department of Public Health “statement of deficiencies” obtained last week instead finds that Paradise Valley Hospital in National City should have more thoroughly documented the condition and circumstances of Alberto Herrera, 32, who fell unconscious in front of a nearby taco shop after walking out against the advice of his caregivers. (Sisson, 7/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: Here’s Where It Was Hottest In Bay Area’s 1st Big Heat Wave Of Summer
Highs pushed near 100 degrees in the Bay Area’s inland valleys and reached well into the 70s along the coast Saturday as soaring temperatures were on track to make this weekend the hottest of the year to date. The heat was expected to peak by Sunday and taper off throughout next week, according to the National Weather Service’s Bay Area division. (Castro-Root, 7/1)

CNN: El Niño Is Here And The World Must Prepare For More Extreme Heat, UN Weather Agency Warns
Governments must prepare for more extreme weather events and record temperatures in the coming months, the World Meteorological Organization warned Tuesday, as it declared the onset of the warming phenomenon El Niño. El Niño is a natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings warmer-than-average sea-surface temperatures and has a major influence on weather across the globe, affecting billions of people. (Regan, 7/5)

East Bay Times: Cooking With A Gas Stove Is Like Living With A Smoker, Study Finds
Cooking with a gas stove in your kitchen can emit as much benzene into a home as second-hand tobacco smoke, depending on ventilation and the size of the house, according to new research from Stanford University. (Phillips, 7/5)

The Hill: Federal Judge Limits Biden Administration Contact With Social Media Platforms
A federal judge blocked Biden administration officials Tuesday from communicating with social media companies, as two Republican state attorneys general challenge the legality of the administration’s efforts to curb disinformation. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed by former President Trump, granted a preliminary injunction barring a wide swath of officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the FBI from communicating with the companies. (Shapero, 7/4)

CalMatters: California's Winners And Losers In Bids For More State Budget Aid
Although all three said more state financing was vital to keep their services alive, they were hard sells because Capitol politicians were confronting a $30-plus billion budget deficit. When the final budget was drafted, one of those three – the state’s public transit systems – had pretty much scored what they were seeking. A second – the state’s hospitals – got a partial win. The third – city and county providers of programs for the state’s huge population of homeless people – struck out. (Walters, 7/3)

The Bakersfield Californian: Frustrated With Challenges To Local Ambulance Services, Kern Health Officials Explore New Ways Of EMS Care 
On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors received the mandatory 2022 Ground Ambulance Report, which maps out the health of the county’s ambulance services, measured in response times, customer anecdotes about service and ambulance offload times, among other metrics. (Donegan, 7/1)

Los Angeles Times: He Walked Out Of Hospital, Collapsed And Died. State Finds Facility Isn't Responsible
California public health officials will not hold a San Diego County medical facility responsible for failing to detain a patient who died after leaving the hospital’s intensive care unit Aug. 11, 2022 .A California Department of Public Health “statement of deficiencies” obtained last week instead finds that Paradise Valley Hospital in National City should have more thoroughly documented the condition and circumstances of Alberto Herrera, 32, who fell unconscious in front of a nearby taco shop after walking out against the advice of his caregivers. (Sisson, 7/3)

Bay Area News Group: New Santa Clara County Valley Health Center Could Be At De Anza College 
A new Santa Clara County health clinic could be coming to De Anza College, providing healthcare access to thousands of uninsured and underinsured residents and students. (Hase, 7/5)

Stat: Gilead And Teva Defeat Antitrust Lawsuit Over HIV Medicines
In a setback to AIDS activists, a federal court jury on Friday cleared Gilead Sciences and Teva Pharmaceuticals of allegations that the companies struck an illegal deal that inflated prices for HIV medicines. A lawsuit filed four years ago accused Gilead of using a range of controversial business tactics that led the U.S. health care system to overspend for HIV medicines. These included so-called pay-to-delay settlements of patent litigation and moves that purportedly stalled development of safer versions of medicines that had years left of patent protection. (Silverman, 6/30)

California Healthline: Patients Squeezed In Fight Over Who Gets To Bill For Pricey Infusion Drugs
To drive down costs, insurers are bypassing hospital system pharmacies and delivering high-priced infusion drugs, including some used in chemotherapy, via third-party pharmacies. Smarting from losing out on billing for those drugs, hospitals and clinics are trying to convince states to limit this practice, known as "white bagging." (Liss, 7/5)

California Healthline: 'An Arm and a Leg' Podcast: Credit Card, Please
What do you do when a medical provider asks you to provide a credit card upfront? In this episode, we hear advice about your options in this situation. (Weissmann, 7/5)

The New York Times: With End Of Affirmative Action, A Push For A New Tool: Adversity Scores
For the head of admissions at a medical school, Dr. Mark Henderson is pretty blunt when sizing up the profession. “Mostly rich kids get to go to medical school,” he said. In his role at the medical school at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Henderson has tried to change that, developing an unorthodox tool to evaluate applicants: the socioeconomic disadvantage scale, or S.E.D. (Saul, 7/2)

Stat: After Affirmative Action Ruling, Medical Educators Look To 'Holistic Review'
After having a day to read through the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, some medical school and educational leaders are more hopeful that a path exists for them to diversify future classes and the health care workforce as they scramble to understand its impact on the next admissions cycle and the class of 2024. Several told STAT they saw the court’s ruling as explicitly endorsing the use of “holistic review,” a tool used increasingly by medical, dental, and nursing schools and other institutions to build classes that better reflect the demographics of the nation. For years, medical schools have been seeking to train physicians who better resemble the patients they treat — a key part of the effort to reduce health disparities. (McFarling, 6/30)

CBS News: How Many Americans Still Haven't Caught COVID-19? CDC Publishes Final 2022 Estimates
Virtually every American ages 16 and older — 96.7% — had antibodies either from getting vaccinated, surviving the virus or some combination of the two by December, the CDC now estimates. The study found 77.5% had at least some of their immunity from a prior infection. (Tin, 7/3)

Times Of San Diego: Hospitals In San Diego, Statewide Seeing Fewer COVID Patients
The number of COVID-positive patients in California hospitals continues to decline, dropping to 752, a decrease of 29 over the previous day, according to the latest state figures. (Sklar, 7/2)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF’s Bob Wachter Hosts Final COVID Forum, Taking Stock Of Pandemic
It’s the end of an era for Dr. Bob Wachter. Or, more accurately, a turning point. Wachter bid farewell to his COVID-specific Grand Rounds forum after a three-year run, leaving a lasting impact. Having amassed over 4 million YouTube views and 274,000 followers on Twitter with his diligent pandemic updates, the chair of medicine at UCSF said last week that he plans to revisit the subject as needed in the next academic year. However, he anticipates delving into other pressing medical topics as more Americans strive to resume their normal lives. (Vaziri, 7/3)

CalMatters: California Homeless Services Fold With Uncertain Money
A new homeless outreach program pairing a social worker with a police officer in Grass Valley, a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, seemed to be working. The state-funded effort sent the team to homeless encampments, where they helped build trust among vulnerable people and persuaded them to accept help, according to nonprofit Hospitality House, which ran the program. (Kendall, 7/3)

Vox: What A Major New Study On Homelessness In California Tells Us
A lack of clear data on those without housing makes it harder to understand how they lost their shelter, how they survive — or don’t survive — and easier for half-baked theories and myths to spread about homeless individuals themselves. That’s what makes an ambitious new study out of California — where 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population lives — so significant. Led by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (BHHI) at the University of California San Francisco, researchers sought to reflect the experiences of all people ages 18 and older experiencing homelessness in the state. (Cohen, 7/5)

NPR: U.S. Maternal Deaths Keep Rising. Here's Who Is Most At Risk
The number of people dying in the U.S. from pregnancy-related causes has more than doubled in the last 20 years, according to a new study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. And while the study found mortality rates remain "unacceptably high among all racial and ethnic groups across the U.S.," the worst outcomes were among Black women, Native American and Alaska Native people. (Huang and Greenhalgh, 7/4)

San Francisco Examiner: How SF Abortion Access Funding Was Spent, One Year Later
But The City faced a two-year deficit of about $780 million as it entered a new round of budget negotiations in 2023, and the funding for abortion access was not included this time around. The omission of new abortion funding highlights the predicament in which predominantly pro-choice cities and states like San Francisco and California find themselves. (Shanks, 7/3)

Reveal: They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies.
Medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction. But in many states, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. This week, we tell the story of one young mother who thought she was doing the right thing by taking her prescription, only to be reported to the state of Arizona and investigated for child abuse and neglect. (Walter, 7/1)

Stat: Psychedelics Near Approval, But How Do They Work? 
The founder of Field Trip, a chain of shuttered ketamine clinics currently facing insolvency, put forward an unexpected theory of how psychedelics work to treat depression last month. “The truth is, almost all of the effect of psychedelic-assisted therapy could be placebo,” said Ronan Levy, speaking at a five-day conference on the emerging field of psychedelic medicine. “Personally I don’t have a problem with that. The outcomes are the outcomes, and that’s really what matters in my view.” While there’s evidence to support the idea (which, if correct, would make Field Trip’s $5,250 price for six ketamine sessions an unusually expensive placebo effect), attendees at Psychedelic Science 2023 heard an array of explanations for the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs for people with various mental illnesses. (Goldhill, 7/3)

Stat: Ozempic's Maker Bought Prescribers Over 450,000 Meals Last Year
Novo Nordisk spent $11 million on meals and travel for thousands of doctors last year, federal records show, as part of its push to promote Ozempic and other weight loss-inducing diabetes drugs. The pharmaceutical company bought more than 457,000 meals to educate doctors and other prescribers about its portfolio of drugs known as GLP-1 agonists, according to the newly released data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Florko, 7/5)

CNN: Forget TikTok Claims: ‘Nature’s Ozempic’ Is No Such Thing, Experts Say
 If TikTok and Reddit influencers are to be believed, the plant-based compound called berberine can be a replacement for such popular diabetes and weight loss drugs as Ozempic and Wegovy. Using berberine as a supplement has become so trendy, in fact, that it has been dubbed “Nature’s Ozempic” by social media users. Some manufacturers are jumping on the trend. (LaMotte, 7/4)

CIDRAP: Review Shows Average Mpox Incubation Period Is 7 Days, Symptoms Vary 
A 21-study meta-analysis finds that the median incubation period for the global mpox outbreak that began last year is 7 days, symptoms vary widely, and immunocompromised people with HIV make up 36.1% of documented cases. The study is published in Archives of Virology. (Soucheray, 6/30)

Axios: Most Hepatitis C Patients Encounter Barriers To Treatment: CDC
Only a third of Americans infected with hepatitis C from 2013 to 2022 were treated and cured, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control that pointed to barriers to diagnoses, drugs and preventive services. Overcoming those barriers will require comprehensive screening and treatments for all persons regardless of insurance status, the report said. (Dreher, 7/30)

CIDRAP: Artificial Intelligence Better Predicts Death In Pneumonia Patients, Study Suggests 
A deep-learning (DL) model that analyzes the initial chest x-rays of patients who have community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) may predict the risk of death by 30 days more accurately than an established risk-prediction tool, finds a new study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology. (Van Beusekom, 7/3)

Fox News: Measles Protection Is Paramount Before Traveling Outside The US, Says CDC 
A recent health alert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns travelers to protect themselves against measles before heading out to visit other countries this summer. A recent rise in cases of measles sparked the health advisory urging people to check that they've had two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine at least two weeks before leaving on international trips, the CDC said. (McGorry, 7/4)

NPR: July Has Already Seen 11 Mass Shootings. The Emotional Scars Won't Heal Easily
Monday night, a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest killed five people in a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood. Two children — ages 2 and 13 — were injured. Another shooting occurred the same night at a street festival in Fort Worth, Texas, killing three people and wounding eight. One day earlier, in Baltimore's Brooklyn Homes neighborhood, a shooting at a block party killed two people and left 28 injured. (Chatterjee, 7/4)

California Healthline: More States Legalize Sales Of Unpasteurized Milk, Despite Public Health Warnings
Distrust of public health authorities, who say drinking raw milk is dangerous, fuels demand for unpasteurized milk products, leaders on both sides of the issue say. (Leys, 7/5)

NBC News: Brain Scans Of Coffee Drinkers Show Its Effects Go Beyond Caffeine
The results, published last week in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, suggest that, indeed, certain changes in brain activity were attributable only to coffee, while others were attributable to caffeine, as well. The scans revealed that both groups — those who consumed caffeine and those who drank coffee — had decreased activity afterward in a part of the brain that puts people in a resting state. That indicated that people were more ready to start their days and engage with others after consuming either beverage. Decades of research has already shown that caffeine, a psychostimulant, can help people feel more aroused and alert. (Bendix, 7/2)