Bay Area News Group: Santa Clara County Investigating 19 Deaths As Possibly Heat-Related
Officials in Santa Clara County are investigating 19 deaths to determine whether those deaths were heat-related, after a record-breaking heat wave baked much of the Bay Area in the days before and after the Fourth of July. (Rowan, 7/11)

LAist: Southern California's Record-Breaking Heat Wave Exposes Health Risks For Unhoused Population
Extreme heat — like the record-breaking heat wave that’s been scorching Southern California for weeks — is a growing health hazard across the nation, according to the National Weather Service. It’s the No. 1 cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S., more than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined. But for L.A. County’s unhoused population, who live under conditions where water, shade and showers are already scarce, the health risks associated with the heat are even worse. (Botel, 7/12)

NPR: Hiking In High Temperatures And How To Stay Safe
A child collapses and later succumbs to the heat after hiking in scorching temperatures on a Phoenix trail. A couple runs out of water near California's Joshua National Park and are airlifted from a dry creek bed. Three hikers die at the Grand Canyon in less than a month amid extreme heat. A stifling heat wave in the Western U.S. has turned some of its most alluring nature trails deadly. Here's why hiking in extreme heat can be so dangerous and how to keep yourself safe. (Hartounian, 7/12)

Los Angeles Times: Lawsuit: L.A. Officials Continue To Stall Homeless Housing In Venice
Advocates for low-income housing sued the city of Los Angeles this week, accusing City Councilmember Traci Park, City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and other officials of violating fair housing laws by blocking a proposed affordable housing development in Venice. The project, known as the Venice Dell, includes 140 units of housing for low-income and formerly homeless residents on what’s now a city-owned parking lot along the neighborhood’s famed canals. (Dillon, 7/12)

Modern Healthcare: Physician Fee Schedule Proposal Renews Telehealth Flexibilities
Advocates for telehealth viewed the proposed physician payment rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as a win but emphasized the need for Congressional action. CMS’ proposed regulation of the 2025 Medicare physician fee schedule, published on Wednesday, renewed a series of telehealth flexibilities that started during the public health emergency amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But telehealth advocates say more actions will be needed by Congress before the industry can operate with certainty. (Turner, 7/11)

Stat: New Medicare Rules Offer A Lifeline For Digital Therapeutics Firms
In what could prove to be a lifeline for a new crop of health tech startups, Medicare regulators proposed new codes that support payment for digital mental health treatments, like apps that deliver cognitive behavioral therapy. The new codes in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule released this week would allow clinicians to bill for supplying apps and other digital treatments as part of behavioral health treatment, as well as for time spent on services related to a patient’s use of these devices. (Aguilar, 7/11)

Los Angeles Times: He Says He Flagged H5N1 Outbreak In Cow Herd But Was Ignored
The virus has — so far — caused only minimal illness among humans, yet has spread rapidly among birds, sea mammals and other species with devastating effect. Although U.S. health officers have repeatedly assured Americans that H5N1 bird flu poses little risk to their well-being, some experts have become increasingly critical of what they see as the government’s failure to aggressively monitor the spread of virus among cattle and other farm animals. The virus has been reported in 145 dairy herds across 12 states, but critics say this is likely an underestimate. (Rust, 7/12)

The Washington Post: 1 In 10 People Infected During Pregnancy Develop Long Covid, Study Finds
Nearly 1 in 10 people infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy developed long covid, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. Thursday’s study, which highlights the consequences of the virus during pregnancy, suggests long covid is more prevalent among people infected while pregnant than in the population overall. (Malhi, 7/11)

CIDRAP: Study: Initial COVID-19 Infection Severity Predicts Reinfection Severity
A new study that used health data from 212,984 Americans who experienced COVID-19 reinfections found that severe SARS-CoV-2 infections tended to foreshadow similar severity of subsequent infections. The researchers also found that long COVID was more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. The findings were published today in Communications Medicine. (Soucheray, 7/11)

USA Today: USDA Warns Of Canned Meats Illegally Imported From Philippines
Multiple ready-to-eat meat products were illegally imported from the Philippines, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a public health alert. The department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS, issued the alert on Wednesday, according to a news release. The items were shipped to Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia, the FSIS said, adding that the Philippines is not eligible to export meat and poultry products to the U.S. (Martin, 7/11)

Reuters: Musk's Neuralink Says Tiny Wires Of Brain Chip In First Patient Now Stable
The tiny wires of Neuralink's brain chip implant used in the first participant in a trial run by Elon Musk's company have become "more or less very stable", a company executive said on Wednesday. The company had in May said that a number of tiny wires inside the brain of Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a 2016 diving accident, had pulled out of position. (Leo and Roy, 7/11)

Stat: CAR-T Therapy’s Risks And Benefits Are Becoming Clearer
Researchers were perplexed when the Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating whether CAR-T therapy, one of the most effective treatments for blood cancers, could cause lymphoma. This was always a theoretical risk of genetically engineered therapies like CAR-T, but it never materialized in the decades after the technology’s birth. So, when the agency pointed late last year to a couple dozen cases of T cell lymphoma in patients who had previously been treated with CAR-T cells, it felt like an old question had been reignited. (Sajani and Chen, 7/12)

CIDRAP: RSV Monoclonal Antibody Nirsevimab 83% Effective In Babies
The New England Journal of Medicine has published results of a randomized controlled trial showing an estimated effectiveness of nirsevimab (Beyfortus) against hospitalization for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated bronchiolitis in babies of 83%. Nirsevimab was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2023, and little real-world data on efficacy are available. The study aimed to establish efficacy rates during the most recent RSV season at six hospitals in France. (7/11)

Reuters: Pfizer Moves Forward With Once-Daily Weight-Loss Pill
Pfizer plans to move a reworked, once-a-day version of its weight-loss pill danuglipron into clinical trials later this year, the company said on Thursday, after scrapping a twice- daily version of the drug late last year. The new drug is part of the second generation of weight-loss pills under development by companies including Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will offer patients a more convenient alternative to injections. (Erman and Mishra, 7/11)

Modern Healthcare: Insurers, Employers See Payoffs Switching To Smaller PBMs
Smaller pharmacy benefit managers may be having more than a moment as some health insurers and employers show the major players the door. Insurance companies and employers fed up with commonplace industry practices are ditching PBMs owned by CVS Health, Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group, and instead are inking contracts with smaller competitors pushing transparent business models. (Berryman, 7/11)

Military Times: Looking For A Mental Health Provider? Tricare’s Directory May Not Help
The vast majority of listings for behavioral health providers in Tricare’s online directories may be inaccurate, hampering military families’ access to mental health care, government auditors said in a report published Monday. The Government Accountability Office concluded that around 8 in 10 of those listings could be incorrect after posing as Tricare beneficiaries on hundreds of covert calls to providers. The watchdog agency encountered a host of problems with the directories, from faulty contact information to incorrectly showing whether a provider is taking new Tricare patients. (Jowers, 7/11)

The Washington Post: Report: NIH, Federal Agencies Should Boost Research On Women’s Health
Research into chronic conditions affecting women is significantly lacking, and the National Institutes of Health and other agencies should do more to investigate issues that lead to worse medical treatment for women, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says. Women are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and depression, according to the study requested by NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health and published Wednesday. (Malhi, 7/11)

CNN: Secondhand E-Cigarette Aerosols Expose Kids To Less Nicotine Than Cigarettes, Study Finds, But Can Still Be Risky
Children who live in homes where adults use e-cigarettes are exposed to significantly less nicotine through secondhand aerosols than children in homes where adults use traditional cigarettes, a new study shows. But vaping still exposes kids to nicotine and may present other risks, too. To keep children completely nicotine-free, according to the researchers, people shouldn’t smoke or vape around kids at all. (Christensen, 7/11)

The Hill: Cancer Cases In US Linked To Modifiable Risk Factors
Four in 10 cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths among U.S. adults 30 years old and older in 2019 were linked to “modifiable” risk factors like smoking, drinking, poor diet and not getting vaccinated, according to a new study from the American Cancer Society. Lead author of the study Farhad Islami, senior scientific director of cancer disparity research at the American Cancer Society, explained that modifiable risk factors are typically behavioral. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Think You Will Live To 100? These Scientists Think You’re Wrong
Human lifespan has a limit and we might have reached it. S. Jay Olshansky, who studies the upper bounds of human longevity at the University of Illinois Chicago, believes people shouldn’t expect to live to 100. Most, he contends, will reach between 65-90. (Dockser Marcus, 7/11)

The Hill: Abortion Bans' Impact: Senate Report Highlights Travel, Access Issues
A report from Senate Democratic staff shows the cascading effects of abortion bans across all states, even those where the procedure is still legal. The report, led by staff of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and joined by all the Democratic women senators, as well as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), was based off interviews with more than 80 health care providers and advocates. (Weixel, 7/11)

The Hill: House Democrats Call For Investigation Into Crisis Pregnancy Center Funding
A pair of Oversight Committee Democrats are asking a government watchdog to investigate the amount of federal funding directed toward crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), anti-abortion nonprofits designed to convince people not to terminate pregnancies. In a letter sent Thursday to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and shared first with The Hill, ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) asked for a study into how much federal money CPCs have received annually and from which federal accounts. (Weixel, 7/11)

AP: Majority Of U.S. Adults Support Protecting Access To IVF: AP-NORC Poll
Relatively few Americans fully endorse the idea that a fertilized egg should have the same rights as a pregnant woman. But a significant share say it describes their views at least somewhat well, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The new survey comes as questions grow around reproductive health access in the continued fallout from the decision by the Supreme Court to end federal abortion protections. (Long and Thomson-Deveaux, 7/12)

Los Angeles Times: California's Workplace Heat Standards Make A Cruel Exception
A state board recently voted unanimously to create long-awaited indoor heat standards for California workers. After a final legal review, that will mean protections for millions of people with jobs in warehouses, kitchens and other workplaces that are getting dangerously hot as the climate warms. (Nicholas Shapiro and Bharat Jayram Venkat, 7/8)

Sacramento Bee: California Leaders Ignore Health Insurers' Latest Scheme To Make Patients Pay More
Legislators and regulators need to understand what patients go through every day to survive. Looking at the financial hardships alone, even with health insurance, many patients must hit certain cost-sharing amounts, like a deductible, before their insurer will start to cover their medical bills. (Lynne Kinst, 7/11)

Los Angeles Times: Cities In L.A. County Shouldn't Criminalize Homeless After Ruling 
Within hours of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass vs. Johnson last week allowing cities and counties to criminalize homelessness, Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park co-authored a motion asking city officials to examine existing anti-camping restrictions in L.A. and those in the other 87 cities in the county. (7/7)

CalMatters: Decline Of LA Homelessness Not Worth Celebrating — Yet
The politics and progress against homelessness are reaching an inflection point in Los Angeles, and the next few months may determine whether the region turns the corner on this issue or loses patience with leadership. Last week brought the tiniest bit of good news that underscores the delicacy of the moment: The annual count of those living outside was released and, for the first time in years, the numbers were down — but only fractionally. (Jim Newton, 7/11)

Fresno Bee: A Bill To Address California's Nursing Shortage Would Do More Harm Than Good
A California bill authored by Asm. Esmeralda Soria, D-Merced, proposes to address California’s nursing shortage by allowing community colleges to develop baccalaureate of science in nursing (BSN) degrees. Fresno State and the California State University system oppose Assembly Bill 2104 as it is currently drafted. (Saul Jimenez-Sandoval, 7/8)

Fresno Bee: Good News For Valley Children's Hospital Overshadowed By Executives High Pay
Since last winter, when it was ranked among the top 3% in the country as a children’s hospital, Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera has had many other opportunities to celebrate a cherished institution that protects the health of our youngest residents. (7/12)