San Francisco Chronicle: New San Francisco Overdose Figures Show Slight Decline In Deaths
The number of people dying from accidental drug overdoses in San Francisco dipped slightly in February but remains high, according to figures released Tuesday from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Sixty-four people died from overdoses in February, including 47 from the synthetic opioid fentanyl. That represents a small drop from January, when 67 people died, including 54 from fentanyl. But it is an increase from a year ago, in February 2023, when 52 people died from overdoses. (Ho, 3/12)

KQED: San Francisco Promotes Treatment For Stimulant Use Disorder Amid Overdose Epidemic
The rate of overdose deaths in San Francisco remained steady in the first two months of 2024, according to data released Monday from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The new data shows there were 131 overdose deaths in San Francisco between January and February of this year. That’s compared to 136 overdose deaths over the same period a year ago. There were 811 overdose deaths in San Francisco in all of 2023. (Johnson, 3/12)

CNN: Biden Administration Announces Focus On ‘Flooding The Zone’ With Life-Saving Overdose Reversal Medicine 
The Biden administration launched an initiative Wednesday that it describes as a nationwide call to increase training on and access to life-saving opioid overdose reversal medications, dubbed the Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose. (Christensen, 3/13)

Los Angeles Times: Fatal Shooting Of Autistic Teen Raises Concerns About Police Response To People With Mental Health Issues
Ryan Gainer, a teen with autism, was a cross-country runner who worked out his frustrations with six-mile runs and dreamed of becoming an engineer. On Saturday afternoon, the 15-year-old became upset that his parents had demanded he complete his household chores before he would be allowed to play video games or listen to music on his computer, according to DeWitt Lacy, a civil rights attorney representing Ryan’s family. (Fry, 3/12)

Voice Of San Diego: ‘She’s Not Gravely Disabled Enough’: How One Woman Fell Through The Cracks Of A Broken Mental Health System
For weeks, Ashley Goldfarb’s parents prayed that she’d land at the county’s psychiatric hospital. The 25-year-old’s mother heard doctors at the Midway District facility would be the most likely in the region to seek forced residential treatment for her daughter who had bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Ashley was also homeless and sometimes used drugs. (Halverstadt, 3/12)

CalMatters: California Legislature Wants To Promote Happiness
A new select committee on happiness holds its first hearing to figure out how to make Californians happier. (La, 3/12)

CapRadio: New California Bill Would Finally Give Teachers Paid Pregnancy Leave
Teachers and legislators rallied together at the Capitol steps earlier this month to advocate for legislation that will grant public school employees up to 14 weeks of paid pregnancy leave. Among those in attendance was California Teachers Association member, kindergarten teacher and recent mother Erika Jones. She reminded those not in the school system that “teachers have absolutely zero paid pregnancy leave.” (Prabha, 3/12)

CNN: New Study Challenges Scale Of Maternal Health Crisis In The US 
Hundreds of women in the United States die from complications related to pregnancy, childbirth and the time after giving birth each year, and the country’s high maternal death rate makes it an outlier among developed nations. But a new study suggests that maternal mortality rates in the US may be lower and more stable than federal data suggests – though still very high. (McPhillips and Howard, 3/13)

AP: Federal Courts Move To Restrict 'Judge Shopping,' Which Got Attention After Abortion Medication Case 
Federal courts moved Tuesday to make it harder to file lawsuits in front of judges seen as friendly to a point of view, a practice known as judge shopping that gained national attention in a major abortion medication case. The new policy covers civil suits that would affect an entire state or the whole country. It would require a judge to be randomly assigned, even in areas where locally filed cases have gone before a single judge. (Whitehurst, 3/12)

VC Star: Gold Coast Health Plan Offers $75M In Care Incentives, Grants
In February, the California Department of Health Care Services announced 18 of 25 Medi-Cal plans statewide faced fines ranging from $25,000 to $890,000 because they didn't meet care standards in various areas. Gold Coast was fined $33,000 for 2022, an improvement from the $87,000 penalty for 2021. (Kisken, 3/13)

Modern Healthcare: Inexperienced New Clinicians A Top 2024 Patient Safety Concern
Medical and nursing school graduates' training issues during the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to major safety challenges in 2024, according to nonprofit patient safety organization ECRI. About 400,000 new nurses passed their licensing examination over the course of the pandemic as the industry grappled with a lack of mentors and training programs, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. ECRI worries inexperienced, ill-prepared clinicians could contribute to cases of preventable patient harm. (Devereaux, 3/12)

Modern Healthcare: White House Presses UnitedHealth On Change Outage At Meeting
Senior federal officials met with a wide array of healthcare company and trade group executives Tuesday as they urged UnitedHealth Group and other insurance companies to do more to aid providers harmed by the ongoing Change Healthcare outage. UnitedHealth Group — which operates Change Healthcare through its Optum subsidiary and sells insurance through its UnitedHealthcare subsidiary — and the rest of the industry can do more to mitigate cash flow problems arising from a cyberattack that has disrupted healthcare operations for weeks, the White House, the Health and Human Services Department and other authorities said during the meeting, according to an HHS news release. (Berryman, 3/12)

Modern Healthcare: State Nursing Home Staffing Mandates Signal Trouble For CMS
Nursing home staffing mandates in three states could be a harbinger of the difficulties ahead for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services when it implements a federal staffing mandate. Illinois, Rhode Island and New York paused penalties for nursing homes that violate state staffing mandates as the governors feared the cost of compliance could force nursing homes to limit patient access or close their doors. Their experiences point to problems CMS could encounter carrying out a federal staffing mandate, but the agency is adamant its final rule will be workable for nursing homes. (Eastabrook, 3/12)

AP: New AI Tools Can Record Your Medical Appointment Or Draft A Message From Your Doctor 
Don’t be surprised if your doctors start writing you overly friendly messages. They could be getting some help from artificial intelligence. New AI tools are helping doctors communicate with their patients, some by answering messages and others by taking notes during exams. It’s been 15 months since OpenAI released ChatGPT. Already thousands of doctors are using similar products based on large language models. One company says its tool works in 14 languages. (Johnson, 3/13)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Federal Judge Strikes Down California Law Limiting High-Frequency Gun Purchases
In what is becoming a familiar pattern, a San Diego federal judge ruled Monday that a California gun law is unconstitutional because of the lack of any historically similar laws. The latest regulation to be overturned — though it will remain in effect for the time being, pending appeal — is the state’s ban on high-frequency firearms purchases, otherwise known as the one-gun-a-month law. It restricted California residents from buying more than one firearm within a 30-day period. (Riggins, 3/12)

CapRadio: California's Proposed Foster Care Cuts Could Increase Homelessness, Advocates Say
Advocates for California’s foster youth are criticizing Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to cut several programs they say are critical to keeping foster youth from falling into homelessness. Newsom proposed the cuts in January as part of his plan to close the state’s multi-billion budget deficit. (Nichols, 3/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Lawmakers Urge FEMA Not To Leave Cities Hanging On COVID Hotel Costs
California’s House lawmakers are asking the federal government to reconsider its decision to make local governments foot the bill for $300 million in COVID housing expenses that cities believed would be paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Thirty-five California House Democrats and Rep. David Valadao, R-Bakersfield, sent a letter to FEMA on Monday requesting the agency provide full reimbursements for local governments that housed thousands of homeless people in empty hotels during the pandemic to cut down on transmission in crowded shelters and tents. (Stein, 3/12)

CIDRAP: By 2022, COVID Pandemic Had Shaved 1.6 Years From Global Life Expectancy, Research Reveals
In a stunning reversal of decades of progress, global life expectancy at birth fell 1.6 years from 2019 to 2021, with 16 million of 131 million total deaths in 2020 and 2021 directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19, reveals one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind published yesterday in The Lancet. (Van Beusekom, 3/12)

The New York Times: Marking The 4-Year Anniversary Of The Covid Pandemic 
Covid was declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020. Even as the threat of severe illness and death has faded, the pandemic’s effects linger. (Bosman, 3/13)

CIDRAP: Pneumococcal Vaccines May Protect Against Viral Respiratory Infections, Study Finds 
In addition to preventing pneumococcal disease, pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) are associated with some protection against viral respiratory tract infections (RTIs), according to a systematic literature review published yesterday in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. (Dall, 3/12)

Stat: UCLA Team Creates Talking Throat Patch For Voice Disorders
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have built a soft, adhesive patch capable of turning throat movements into speech. The patch, written about in a paper published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, is made out of a material that converts motion into electricity. This material, developed by the UCLA team in 2021, could be a game-changer for sensors and wearables limited by their power sources. (Lawrence, 3/12)

NBC News: Over 1 In 10 High School Seniors Report Using Delta-8 THC
More than 11% of high school seniors report using delta-8 THC — a compound closely related to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana that’s legal in many states thanks to a loophole in the 2018 farm bill — according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, is one of the first to offer a nationwide snapshot of teenage use of delta-8, a little-researched cannabis product with psychoactive effects that has grown in popularity in recent years. (Syal, 3/12)

Times Of San Diego: San Diego County Supervisors Approve Proposal To Reduce Healthcare Costs
The county Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted 4-0 in favor of proposals intended to make quality healthcare more accessible and affordable for residents. As proposed by Vice Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, the plan calls for increasing reimbursement rates for Medi-Cal recipients and reduce the cost of prescription drugs for San Diegans, via advocacy at federal and state government levels. (Ireland, 3/12)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Sonoma County Board Of Supervisors Endorses Tax Measure For Child Care, Health Care
A tax measure coming to voters in November to support child care and health care officially has the backing of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. (Murphy, 3/12)

Voice of OC: Santa Ana Leaders Gear Up To Fight Needle Exchange Program Again
As state public health officials consider reintroducing needle exchanges in Santa Ana, city officials are reiterating their longstanding protest against the practice. It’s an issue Santa Ana grappled with last year. City officials say the program – run by the Harm Reduction Institute – threatens the public health and safety of residents with littered syringes. (Rios, 3/13)

Los Angeles Daily News: Orange County Leading A Grim Trend, Cancer Among Younger People 
Over the past five years, youth-cancer rates have jumped in most big counties in California, with Orange County leading the Southern California region in that grim statistic, according to data from the National Cancer Institute. (Kang, 3/12)

The Hill: Biden Campaign Launches Battleground State Effort To Hit Trump On Social Security, Medicare
President Biden’s reelection campaign launched an effort in battleground states this week to hit former President Trump over his threats to Social Security and Medicare, the campaign first told The Hill. The campaign will hold more than 13 press conferences through Friday across key swing states with local elected officials and seniors, all focused on protecting entitlement programs. The events will take place in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Milwaukee; Madison, Wisc.; Lansing, Mich.; Las Vegas and Phoenix. (Gangitano, 3/12)

The New Republic: Trump Is Threatening To Gut Social Security. Take His Word For It. 
Donald Trump has offered a new way to win over older voters: suggesting that the government gut Medicare and Social Security spending. While calling in to CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, the former president brought up the idea of cutting  “entitlements” such as Social Security and Medicaid. (Oamek, 3/11)

Politico: The CDC Could Shrink Under A Second Trump Administration
Fueled by a distrust of the CDC’s handling of Covid-19 and the recommendations it made on measures like masking and vaccines, many conservatives want the agency dismantled — and hope a second Trump administration could make it happen. Their proposed approach, outlined in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project offered by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, would drastically reduce the CDC’s size by splitting it in two: One agency responsible for public health surveillance work, like data collection on outbreaks, and another responsible for “limited” public health recommendations — with a strict firewall between them. (Cirruzzo, 3/11)

NBC News: Abortion Is A Top Concern For Trump As He Considers His VP Pick
Former President Donald Trump has been laser-focused on the abortion views of his potential VP picks, viewing the issue as a potential vulnerability for Republicans. In particular, he asked campaign aides and club members what they thought of the vocal anti-abortion-rights views of Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. (Burns, 3/13)

Politico: In 2020, The Biden Campaign Knew Age Was His Achilles’ Heel. Here’s What They Did. 
Not all viral attacks are damaging. But in 2020, the Biden campaign found that the “Sleepy Joe” storyline was — and came up with a plan to fight back. (Issenberg, 3/12)

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Provider Anti-Burnout Bill Advances In Congress
A bill to support healthcare workers struggling with burnout, stress and other work-related mental health problems advanced in Congress on a unanimous subcommittee vote Tuesday. The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Reauthorization Act of 2024, named after a New York physician who died by suicide in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, authorizes five years of grant programs, building on the previous, shorter-term legislation, which expires at the end of the year. (McAuliff, 3/12)

The Hill: McConnell: Battle To Repeal Affordable Care Act ‘Largely Over’ 
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) poured some cold water on former President Trump’s recent comments about launching another effort to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, telling reporters Tuesday the fight over the law seems “largely over.” McConnell said he would not weigh in directly on the “development” of Trump’s policy agenda and acknowledged the possibility that Republicans would tackle health care reform if Trump can come up with a viable policy alternative. (Bolton, 3/12)

CIDRAP: Senator Questions CDC's Proposed Post-Exposure Doxycycline Recommendation
US Senator Marc Rubio (R-FL) yesterday sent a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, expressing his concerns about the CDC's proposed guidelines recommending the use of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxy-PEP) to reduce sexually transmitted infections (STIs). (Dall, 3/12)