San Francisco Chronicle: SF Still Restricted In Sweeps Of Homeless Encampments, Court Rules
San Francisco cannot remove homeless people from its streets and sidewalks unless it offers them immediate and available shelter, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday, upholding a magistrate’s restrictions on sweeps of homeless encampments in the city. (Egelko, 1/11)

Los Angeles Times: Limits On San Francisco's Clearing Of Homeless Encampments Upheld By 9th Circuit 
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals marked a substantial win for the Coalition on Homelessness, a progressive advocacy organization that secured a preliminary injunction by challenging San Francisco’s policies for clearing encampments as fundamentally unjust and illegal under past court decisions protecting the rights of homeless people to sleep in public in certain situations. (Rector, 1/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Tenderloin Businesses Worry About A New S.F. Site For Homeless
A half-dozen boarded up storefronts mar the two-block stretch of Little Saigon in the Tenderloin. Once a thriving commercial strip of immigrant-run businesses in the struggling neighborhood, Little Saigon has fallen on tough times. Now, business owners there say the situation could get much worse. In February, the San Francisco Community Health Clinic is expected to open a drop-in health and resource center at 645 Larkin St. — the former storefront of Turtle Tower, a longtime Vietnamese restaurant that shuttered last year. The city’s Department of Public Health has entered into a $1 million contract with the Community Health Clinic to provide health services to housed and unhoused Tenderloin residents. (Angst, 1/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Amid National Blood Shortage, Bay Area Blood Banks Urge Donations
Bay Area blood banks are urging residents to donate blood amid what the American Red Cross is calling a national shortage emergency. The number of Americans donating blood is at a 20-year low, the Red Cross said this week, and more than a third of the nation’s 59 community blood centers have only a one-day supply or less, according to America’s Blood Centers, the organization that represents 60% of the blood centers in the United States. (Ho, 1/12)

Reuters: CVS To Close Some Pharmacies Within Target Stores
CVS Health said on Thursday it will close some pharmacies that operate inside Target stores during the first several months of the year. The closures will begin in February and be completed by the end of April, a company spokesperson said. Prescriptions will be transferred to a nearby CVS Pharmacy prior to closing, the spokesperson added. (1/11)

Modern Healthcare: E-Visit Billing On The Rise, Study Finds
More providers are billing patients for electronic messages exchanged through patient portals, according to a new study. The practice of e-visits, as it is known, took off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Claims for the services peaked in April 2020 before falling to a low in June 2021, according to a wide-ranging study of claims data. However, those claims began rising again in 2022. (DeSilva, 1/11)

Reuters: Regeneron Asks US Court To Block Amgen's Eylea Biosimilar
New York-based biotech company Regeneron has sued rival Amgen in federal court in Los Angeles, alleging that Amgen's proposed biosimilar of Regeneron's blockbuster eye drug Eylea violates its patent rights. Regeneron said in its lawsuit filed on Wednesday that Amgen infringed dozens of its patents. It asked the court to block Amgen's version of Eylea, which earned Regeneron $6.26 billion in U.S. sales in 2022. (Brittain, 1/11)

CNN: Plastic Chemicals Linked To $249 Billion In US Health Care Costs In Just One Year, Study Finds
By contributing to the development of chronic disease and death, a group of hormone-disruptive plastic chemicals is costing the US health care system billions — over $249 billion in 2018 alone, a new study found. (LaMotte, 1/11)

CIDRAP: Study Highlights Contamination Of High-Touch Hospital Surfaces 
A study today in the American Journal of Infection Control illustrates the challenges hospitals face in trying to control the type of microbial contamination that can contribute to the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The study found that several high-touch surfaces in the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, including bed rails and nurse's station keyboards, harbored multiple colonies of bacteria despite the hospital's adherence to routine disinfection strategies. Of the 60 different types of pathogens isolated, 7 were classified as important in healthcare settings because of their potential to cause HAIs. (Dall, 1/11)

Politico: Abortion Rights Clashes With NIMBYism In California 
There would seem to be no place friendlier to abortion rights than Beverly Hills, where the City Council voted unanimously on a resolution supporting access to the procedure after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Which is why billboards going up Thursday in the famously wealthy city are such a surprise. “Los Angeles should be safe for abortion seekers,” the brightly colored signs read. “Fight back against attempts to shut down DuPont Clinic.” What’s going on? (Bluth, 1/11)

The New York Times: Women With Depression During Or After Pregnancy Face Greater Suicide Risk, Even Years Later 
Women who experience depression during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth have a greater risk of suicide and attempted suicide — risks that persist for years, two new studies report. A research team analyzed records of nearly a million women in Sweden’s national medical registries from 2001 through 2017, comparing 86,551 women who had perinatal depression with 865,510 women who did not. The groups were matched by age and year they gave birth. (Belluck, 1/10)

Stateline: There's A New Pill For Postpartum Depression, But Many At-Risk Women Face Hurdles
The first pill for postpartum depression approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now available, but experts worry that minority and low-income women, who are disproportionately affected by the condition, won’t have easy access to the new medication. About 1 in 8 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression, federal data shows. Suicide and drug overdoses are among the leading causes of pregnancy-related death, defined as death during pregnancy, labor or within the first year of childbirth. (Hassanein, 1/11)

CNN: More Pharmacists Can Now Prescribe Birth Control In The US And Soon, Prescriptions Might Not Be Needed At All 
As of Monday, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, 29 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws allowing pharmacists to prescribe or provide contraception without a doctor’s prescription. Those states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. (Howard, 1/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Study Reveals Immune System Anomalies In People With Long COVID
A new analysis of blood samples from people with the vexing set of conditions known as long COVID lends fresh evidence to the idea that bits of the coronavirus can remain in the body wreaking havoc for years after infection, say researchers at UCSF and Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. (Asimov, 1/11)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Survivors At Higher Risk For Digestive Diseases, Study Suggests 
Adult COVID-19 survivors are at higher risk for digestive diseases, including gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction, peptic ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), gallbladder disease, nonalcoholic liver disease, and pancreatic disease—even among patients with mild infections, according to a study published yesterday in BMC Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 1/11)

CIDRAP: COVID Vaccine Performed Well At Preventing Hospital Illness In Teens 
Data on how well and how long mRNA COVID vaccines protect adolescents from severe COVID-19 infections are scarce, but newly published findings from a large, matched cohort study from young people in four Nordic countries found high efficacy that lasted as long as a year. (Schnirring, 1/11)

The Atlantic: A New Vaccination Crisis Has Emerged
For years now, health experts have been warning that COVID-era politics and the spread of anti-vaxxer lies have brought us to the brink of public-health catastrophe—that a Great Collapse of Vaccination Rates is nigh. This hasn’t come to pass. In spite of deep concerns about a generation of young parents who might soon give up on immunizations altogether—not simply for COVID, but perhaps for all disease—many of the stats we have are looking good. (Engber, 1/11)

Fox News: Teen Drug Overdoses Hit Record High In 2022, Driven Primarily By Fentanyl Poisoning
A record number of high school teens died of drug overdoses in 2022 in an alarming trend driven primarily by fentanyl poisonings from counterfeit pills, according to a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Boston researchers found that an average of 22 adolescents ages 14 to 18 years old died each week in the U.S. from drug overdoses in 2022. (Llenas, 1/11)

New York Post: Jelly Roll Recalls Drug-Dealing Past, Pushes Congress To Act On Fentanyl Legislation In Powerful Speech: ‘I Hurt People’
Jelly Roll brought up his past demons in front of Congress Thursday, when he gave a powerful speech against the deadly use of fentanyl in America. The rapper and country music star, whom won the new artist of the year award at the 2023 CMA Awards, addressed the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and urged legislators to establish a bill to combat the supply and distribution of the synthetic opioid in the U.S. at a hearing on “stopping the flow of fentanyl.” Jelly Roll, 39, whose real name is Jason DeFord, was candid about his past run-ins with the law, multiple arrests and serving jail time for drug charges and aggravated robbery. “I brought my community down. I hurt people,” he continued. “I believed when I sold drugs genuinely that selling drugs was a victimless crime. I truly believed that.” (Daniel, 1/11)

USA Today: New Drug Addiction Study Suggests 'Just Say No' May Not Be For All
The study published Wednesday in the academic journal Addiction builds on growing evidence that addiction is a chronic disease, akin to diabetes or high blood pressure. People addicted to cocaine and methamphetamine saw improved health and recovery even with reduced use of the drug, researchers found. The study contrasts hardline approaches focused on complete abstinence, moving instead toward modern ideas on risk reduction to tamp down addiction. (Cuevas, 1/11)

CBC News: Landmark Study Finds Prescribing Opioids Dramatically Reduced Deaths, Overdoses For Drug Users In B.C. 
A study conducted by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control has found that prescribing medical-grade opioids dramatically reduced the rates of deaths and overdoses for drug users living in B.C. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, is described as "the first known instance of a North American province or state providing clinical guidance to physicians and nurse practitioners for prescribing pharmaceutical alternatives to patients at risk of death from the toxic drug supply." (Ghoussoub, 1/11)

The Wall Street Journal: More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis 
Thousands of teenagers and young adults have developed delusions and paranoia after using cannabis. Legalization efforts have made cannabis more readily available in much of the country. More frequent use of marijuana that is many times as potent as strains common three decades ago is leading to more psychotic episodes, according to doctors and recent research. “This isn’t the cannabis of 20, 30 years ago,” said Dr. Deepali Gershan, an addiction psychiatrist at Compass Health Center in Northbrook, Ill. Up to 20% of her caseload is patients for whom she suspects cannabis use triggered a psychotic episode. (Wernau, 1/10)

The Denver Post: Can Cannabis Motivate You To Exercise More? Study Suggests Yes
Cannabis users are often stereotyped as lazy couch potatoes satisfying their munchies with junk food. But a new study from the University of Colorado pushes back against that generalization, highlighting how marijuana plays an important role in fitness for some and how the substance even can be used as a motivational tool for exercise. The study, published last month in Sports Medicine, evaluated 42 runners and compared data points from their experiences exercising both sober and after smoking a joint. (Ricciardi, 1/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Weight-Loss Drugs Don’t Cause Suicidal Thoughts, FDA Says 
There is no evidence popular weight-loss drugs cause suicidal thoughts, federal officials said. The Food and Drug Administration’s preliminary analysis Thursday showed no clear relationship between adverse-event reports of suicidal thoughts or actions and the drugs for weight-loss and diabetes, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1s. Millions of people have started taking drugs that can help some users shed a fifth of their body weight or more.  (Whyte, 1/11)

AP: Drugs Like Ozempic And Wegovy Show No Link With Suicide, FDA Says
But the agency also said officials cannot definitively rule out that “a small risk may exist” and that they’ll continue to look into reports regarding more than a dozen drugs, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Patients taking the drugs should report any concerns to health care providers, the FDA said. The review follows a recent federally funded study that showed that people taking semaglutide, the medication in Ozempic and Wegovy, had a lower risk of suicidal thoughts than those taking other drugs to treat obesity and diabetes. The review came after European regulators said they were investigating anecdotal reports that people taking semaglutide had thoughts of self-harm. (Aleccia, 1/11)

The Washington Post: House Republican Revolt Scrambles Plan To Prevent Government Shutdown
Congress began leaving Washington on Thursday for the long holiday weekend without a plan for how to prevent a government shutdown next week, as a revolt over spending brewed among hard-right House Republicans. Funding for 20 percent of the government is set to expire on Jan. 19, and the rest expires on Feb. 2. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have agreed on an overall $1.66 trillion spending deal for the 2024 fiscal year, but lawmakers won’t have time to enact it before the deadlines. So the Senate on Thursday took procedural steps to be able to pass a stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, to keep the government open while members work on long-term spending legislation. Members left town after that and are due to return on Tuesday. (Bogage and Sotomayor, 1/11)

Reuters: Millions Of US Women, Children Risk Hunger Without More Aid Funding, White House Says
The U.S. Congress must raise spending on a food assistance program for low-income women and children or 2 million could be turned away this year, Biden administration officials said on Thursday. A bitterly divided Congress has for months failed to reach agreement on 2024 government spending levels and is racing to avert a partial shutdown on Jan. 19. An eventual deal should include $1 billion more for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden on a call with reporters. (Douglas, 1/11)

Argus-Courier: Local Experts To Discuss Gun Crisis In Forum At Petaluma’s Lucchesi Community Center
Gun deaths have become all too common in a society awash with firearms, say members of the Petaluma chapter of the American Association of University Women. That’s why the group is bringing experts to Lucchesi Community Center later this month to discuss the causes and effects of gun deaths, and how they can be prevented. (Frances, 1/11)

Bay Area News Group: Michael Strahan's Daughter Reveals First Symptoms Of Brain Tumor
Isabella Strahan, the 19-year-old daughter of “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan, opened up on her father’s show Thursday about undergoing treatment for a malignant brain tumor, which was diagnosed in late October. (Ross, 1/11)

Fresno Bee: Fresno’s Warming Centers Should Be Open Longer, More Often 
Leo Bardo lost both his blankets Monday afternoon. They were stolen by a fellow member of Fresno’s unhoused community hours before nighttime temperatures dipped to near freezing. (Marek Warszawski, 1/10)

CalMatters: Would State Spend Extra Billions To Improve Children's Wellbeing?
More than a third of California’s roughly 39 million people are under 27 years old, three-quarters of them are nonwhite, and their families’ incomes are, for the most part, relatively low. Children Now, a 33-year-old advocacy organization based in Oakland and led by former Assemblyman Ted Lempert, contends that the state is stingy when it comes to children’s wellbeing. (Dan Walters, 1/9)

San Francisco Chronicle: Come To California, If You Want To Live Longer Than Most Americans
The cost of living in the Golden State is among America’s highest. But less well known is that our high costs buy you more living. Literally. On average, Californians live to 79, which beats the American average by more than two years, along with the average of all but three other states. (Joe Mathews, 1/12)

East Bay Times: A Terrible Phone Call And How Others Can Light Up The Darkness
Early Nov. 10, my phone rang with terrible news: My wife, Nancy, has a highly aggressive form of breast cancer. (David French, 1/12)