The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Sonoma County, Other Bay Area Health Officials Urge Vigilance Amid Increase In Measles Cases
North Bay and Bay Area health officials are urging residents to be on the lookout for symptoms of measles after recent local cases and a rise in incidences across the state and country. (Espinoza, 3/31)

KQED: Why Are Bay Area Health Officials Warning About Measles?
Officials from public health departments across the Bay Area have urged residents to be vigilant for the symptoms of measles, especially after travel — and to be up-to-date on their measles vaccination. The announcement comes a little more than a week after Alameda County’s public health department warned Bay Area residents of a potential exposure to measles in an East Bay restaurant. (Severn, 3/30)

CIDRAP: Recent MMR Vaccination May Lead To False-Positive Measles Test Results 
Children who are given polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests that simultaneously look for multiple causes of a rash may test falsely positive for measles if they recently had a dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to a new study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. MMR vaccine includes live attenuated measles virus, which is detectable by PCR tests but does not cause active infections in people with healthy immune systems. From September 2022 to January 2023, however, the Tennessee Department of Health received two reports of measles detected by PCR panels conducted for rashes. (Soucheray, 3/29)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Sonoma County Nonprofits To Share In $7.9 Million To Address Homelessness
A tribal housing project in Cloverdale, a Petaluma street outreach team, and a rent subsidy program in Santa Rosa for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness would be awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars each under recommendations adopted by the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition. (Hay, 3/30)

Los Angeles Times: A Bay Area Cancer Patient Froze Her Eggs In Hopes Of Having Children. She Can't Afford To Finish IVF 
In between chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and all the other medical appointments that come with a cancer diagnosis, Katie McKnight rushed to start the in vitro fertilization process in hopes that she could one day give birth when she recovered. McKnight, 34, of Richmond, Calif., was diagnosed in 2020 with a fast-spreading form of breast cancer. IVF can help boost chances of pregnancy for cancer patients concerned about the impacts of the disease and its treatment on fertility. The process involves collecting eggs from ovaries and fertilizing them with sperm in a lab, then implanting them in a uterus. (Mays, 3/31)

CNBC: A Look At Why Many Women Undergo Egg Freezing, And The Costs Associated With It
Women who choose to undergo reproductive technology procedures such as egg freezing face a long road riddled with obstacles. Here’s a look into the driving forces behind egg freezing and the financial, social and emotional costs that come with it — based on personal experiences from women across the country. (Han, 3/30)

Politico: The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Losing The Battle On IVF. It’s Preparing To Win The War. 
Anti-abortion advocates worked for five decades to topple Roe v. Wade. They’re now laying the groundwork for a yearslong fight to curb in vitro fertilization. Since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have been strategizing how to convince not just GOP officials but evangelicals broadly that they should have serious moral concerns about fertility treatments like IVF and that access to them should be curtailed. (Messerly and Ollstein, 4/1)

The Washington Post: Most Sudden Infant Deaths Involved Unsafe Sleep Habits, Study Finds
More than three-quarters of sudden infant deaths involved multiple unsafe sleep practices, including co-sleeping, a recent analysis suggests. A study published in the journal Pediatrics looked at 7,595 sudden infant death cases in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention registry between 2011 and 2020. The majority of deaths occurred in babies less than 3 months old. (Blakemore, 3/31)

Medical Xpress: Could Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Be Caused By Unrecognized Brain Infections?
Some infants who pass away from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are known to have had acute minor infections. Could these have played a role in their death? Using next-generation molecular tools, a new study provides evidence that undiagnosed inflammation and occult infection can contribute to SIDS and the brainstem pathology seen in some infants. The findings are published in JAMA Neurology. (Fliesler, 3/27)

Stat: Scientists Uncover Potential Path To Treating Deadly Childhood Tumor
Most targeted cancer drugs work like tranquilizer darts, snaring an overzealous gene that has spurred the cell into murderously rapid growth. But many tumors don’t have a hyperactive gene. Like the mayhem in “Cat in the Hat,” they are enabled by parental absence. They grow because the genes that are meant to provide discipline, guiding the activity of other genes or self-destructing a cell whose DNA is too damaged, are broken or missing. (Mast, 4/1)

Military.com: More Specialty Drugs Cost Less With New Pharmacy's Addition To Tricare Home Delivery 
Tricare beneficiaries with prescriptions for specialty drugs can now get more of them at the lower copays of Tricare Home Delivery with the addition of Accredo, a specialty pharmacy, to the program. Two pharmacies, Express Scripts and Accredo, are now part of Tricare Home Delivery. Defense Health Agency officials confirmed that some users will have mail-order prescriptions with both Express Scripts and Accredo if they have both non-specialty and specialty prescriptions. (Miller, 3/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: Hundreds Back Magic Mushrooms At Oakland Wellness Conference
Supporters of psilocybin want voters in 2026 to legalize consumption of what’s commonly referred to as magic mushrooms for medicinal and therapeutic use, as well as make it legal to grow and sell the psychedelic substance. The idea that California should follow Colorado and Oregon in decriminalizing psychedelics felt long overdue for the hundreds of people who flocked to Oakland’s Kaiser Convention Center on Saturday for the Church of Ambrosia’s fourth annual “Spirituality and Beyond” conference. (Cano, 3/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: How One Bay Area School District Is Using Tech To Tackle Mental Health
Students at San Mateo’s Abbott Middle School were struggling last year. There were frequent fights, a lot of disengaged kids, too many behavioral problems and kids pulled the fire alarm six times, disrupting classes, school officials said. Parents were concerned. So was Superintendent Diego Ochoa, who runs the San Mateo-Foster City School District. (Tucker, 4/1)

Reveal: Cashing In On Troubled Teens
The first time Trina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was 12 years old. She was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day. But instead, Trina would end up spending years cycling in and out of North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage, Alaska. At times, she was ready to be discharged, but Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services couldn’t find anywhere else to put her – so Trina would stay locked in at North Star, where she would experience violent restraints and periods of seclusion. Then, shortly before her 15th birthday, Trina was sent to another facility 3,000 miles away: Copper Hills Youth Center in Utah. (Lurie, 3/30)

The Hill: Teens’ Latest Social Media Trend? Self-Diagnosing Their Mental Health Issues 
Teenagers are increasingly using social media to self-diagnose their mental health issues, alarming parents and advocates who say actual care should be easier to access.  A poll by EdWeek Research Center released this week found 55 percent of students use social media to self-diagnose, and 65 percent of teachers say they’ve seen the phenomenon in their classrooms. (Lonas, 3/30)

The Press-Enterprise: California’s Heat-Stricken Warehouse Workers Won’t Soon Be Cooled Due To Holdup In New Protections
For six years, Inland warehouse workers looked to Sacramento to beat the heat. Relief arrived Thursday, March 21, when a state board approved rules protecting workers in a range of settings from sweltering indoor temperatures. But those rules could be put on ice for months if not longer, frustrating activists who warn that indoor heat threatens warehouse workers’ health, if not their lives. (Horseman, 4/1)

CBS News: Public Advised To Stay Out Of Ocean Water Due To High Bacteria Levels
Yet another powerful storm that doused Southern California has led to potentially high bacteria levels flushing down inland rivers and streams and into the ocean, prompting health officials to issue an advisory on Saturday. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials say that the heavy rains could cause discharge from drains, creek and rivers that is contaminated with bacteria, chemicals, debris and trash from city streets into the ocean. (Fioresi, 3/30)

The New York Times: Heart Pump Is Linked to 49 Deaths, the F.D.A. Warns
A troubled heart pump that has now been linked to 49 deaths and dozens of injuries worldwide will be allowed to remain in use, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to issue an alert about the risk that it could puncture a wall of the heart. The tiny Impella pumps, about the width of a candy cane, are threaded through blood vessels to take over the work of the heart in patients who are undergoing complex procedures or have life-threatening conditions. (Jewett, 3/29)

AP: A Biased Test Kept Thousands Of Black People From Getting A Kidney Transplant. It's Finally Changing 
Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news: She should have been put on the transplant list in 2015 instead of 2019 — and a racially biased organ test was to blame. As upsetting as that notification was, it also was part of an unprecedented move to mitigate the racial inequity. Evans is among more than 14,000 Black kidney transplant candidates so far given credit for lost waiting time, moving them up the priority list for their transplant. Neergaard, 4/1)

Stat: U.K. Decision On ALS Drug Has Neurologists, Advocates Up In Arms
Neurologists and patient advocates are up in arms over a policy decision by a U.K. health agency that they say will imperil access to an ALS treatment that’s available in the U.S. and on its way to approval in the European Union. (Joseph, 4/1)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Repeated Failures By San Diego County Jail Health Provider Prompt Sheriff To Order It To Fix Deficiencies
The prime contractor delivering health care services in San Diego County jails failed to pay outside hospitals and other specialty providers, limiting the Sheriff’s Department’s ability to send sick and needy people in custody into treatment, newly disclosed records show. (McDonald, 3/31)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Biotech News: Veteran Life Science Execs Raise $150M For Cancer Drug Targeting Hard-To-Treat Tumors 
The day that Athena Countouriotis, then the CEO of Turning Point Therapeutics, announced that the San Diego biotech was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb for $4.1 billion, people were already asking her: what’s next? (Rocha, 3/30)

Berkeleyside: Lanes, Sidewalks On San Pablo Ave. To Close Amid Disability Access Upgrades
Some traffic lanes, driveways and sections of sidewalk along San Pablo Avenue will be closed in phases in Berkeley and Albany over roughly the next year, as part of an effort to improve access and mobility for people with disabilities, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) said. The work to bring curbs into compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will begin in mid-April, the agency said. (Gecan, 3/29)