VC Star: Ventura County Homeless Population Dips For First Time Since 2017
The number of homeless people in Ventura County has decreased for the first time since 2017. The total population fell by 83 to 2,358, results from the latest homeless count shows. (Varela, 4/21)

Los Angeles Times: How L.A. Homeless People Who Built Their Own Makeshift House In Gentrifying Highland Park
In a city of multimillion-dollar houses and celebrity estates, Cesar Augusto’s home stands apart. The walls consist of discarded fencing and wood paneling repurposed by Augusto, a tarp serves as a roof, and the front yard is the industrial backdrop of a city’s flood channel. Balanced on a thin slice of land between the 110 Freeway and the Arroyo Seco flood channel, the home — not a house in the conventional sense — is framed under a stand of trees by a white lattice fence and window shutters. (Solis, 4/22)

Los Angeles Times: Mayor Bass' Ambitious Housing Program Calls On L.A.'s Wealthy. Can She Pull It Off? 
Philanthropic and real estate leaders react with hope and skepticism to Mayor Karen Bass' plan to use outside donations to buy real estate. (Smith, 4/21)

Slate: The Absurd Case About Whether Doctors Can Let You Bleed Out In The ER Is Reaching SCOTUS
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a dispute over whether states can decline to abide by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. EMTALA is a federal law requiring stabilizing care for all ER patients, including abortion care, even if it conflicts with a state’s own stricter abortion rules. Moyle v. United States consolidates two cases—Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. (Lithwick, 4/22)

Mother Jones: With This Week’s Abortion Case, Supreme Court Faces Grim Reality Of Overturning Roe 
At issue in this case is a radical idea: that states can force pregnant people in need of abortions to preserve their life and health to choose between waiting it out at grave risk or traveling across state lines as medical refugees. The high court has already signaled that it is likely to gut EMTALA’s protections for pregnant people, as it has blocked their enforcement in Idaho while the case is pending. Arriving at the court less than two years after it overturned Roe, this case presents the justices with the unvarnished reality that decision created: it has forced women into dire yet preventable health crises. (Levy, 4/22)

Axios: Drive Time For Abortions Are Longest In Low-Income, Diverse Areas Across U.S.
People driving the longest distances to get an abortion are more likely to come from congressional districts with lower incomes and more diverse populations, according to data analysis by the left-leaning Center for American Progress provided exclusively to Axios. (Rubin, 4/21)

Stat: After Dobbs Decision, Hospitals Reluctant To Discuss Maternal Care 
The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has transformed not just abortion access but maternal health care across the United States, causing physicians in states with restrictive laws to shift treatment of conditions including ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. The full scale of the impact, though, has been obscured in a polarized political climate where physicians are often afraid to speak out, or are blocked by their hospitals from talking about their experiences post-Dobbs. (Goldhill, 4/22)

LAist: How To Have The Pregnancy You Deserve, According To Black Parents And Maternal Health Experts
We already know that the health and mortality stats about Black babies and mothers don’t look good. The statistics about racial disparities point to a long history of systemic issues, with structural racism at the root. But if you’re pregnant, how can you set yourself up for the healthy pregnancy you deserve? Sometimes it helps to hear from others who have been through it before. During Black Maternal Health Week, we asked Black parents and maternal health advocates to share wisdom and affirmations for parents-to-be. (Ritoper and Yu, 4/21)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Debt, Deferred Maintenance Deal Slow To Rescue Tri-City Medical Center 
Plans made in the fall had UC San Diego Health running financially distressed Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside by the end of March, but the deal still is not complete. (Sisson, 4/21)

VC Star: Clinicas Faces More Accusations Of Retaliation In New Whistleblower Lawsuit
The former leader of a now closed HMO alleges in a whistleblower lawsuit he was terminated by parent company Clinicas del Camino Real in retaliation for reporting alleged work improprieties. (Kisken, 4/22)

Reuters: UnitedHealth CEO To Testify Before US House Panel On Cyberattack At Tech Unit 
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty will testify before a U.S. House subcommittee on May 1 about a recent cyberattack at the company's technology unit and its impact on patients and providers, the Energy and Commerce Committee said on Friday. The hack at Change Healthcare, a provider of healthcare billing and data systems, on Feb. 21 disrupted payments to doctors and healthcare facilities nationwide for a month. (4/19)

NPR: Scientists With African, Asian Names Less Likely To Be Mentioned In News Stories
When one Chinese national recently petitioned the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become a permanent resident, he thought his chances were pretty good. As an accomplished biologist, he figured that news articles in top media outlets, including The New York Times, covering his research would demonstrate his "extraordinary ability" in the sciences, as called for by the EB-1A visa. But when the immigration officers rejected his petition, they noted that his name did not appear anywhere in the news articles. (Peng, 4/19)

VC Star: Ventura County's COVID-19 Response Scrutinized In After-Action Study
Ventura County responded quickly and effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic but struggled at times to find protective equipment, enforce public health orders and meet an unprecedented demand from the public for information, according to an 85-page report on the COVID response. (Kisken, 4/21)

CIDRAP: Report: Less Than Half Of Nursing Home Residents Up To Date On COVID Vaccines
In this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers review COVID-19 activity and vaccination in US nursing homes from October 2023 through February 2024 and find up to 26% of nursing homes reported at least one case of COVID-19 during each week of the study period. Weekly rates of incident SARS-CoV-2 infection ranged from 61.4 per 10,000 nursing home residents during the week ending February 11, 2024, to 133.8 per 10,000 during the week ending December 3, 2023. The cumulative weekly SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was highest in the Midwest region (130.1 per 10,000 residents) and lowest in the South (93.1 per 10,000). (Soucheray, 4/19)

CIDRAP: US Respiratory Virus Activity Continues To Tail Off
Respiratory virus activity from flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continues to decline across most of the country, with only two jurisdictions—North Dakota and Wyoming—reporting high activity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in updates today. (Schnirring, 4/19)

AP: COVID-19: How The Search For The Pandemic's Origins Turned Poisonous
The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months. The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country. (Kang and Cheng, 4/22)

The Washington Post: The Pandemic Cost 7 Million Lives, But Talks To Prevent A Repeat Stall
In late 2021, as the world reeled from the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus, representatives of almost 200 countries met — some online, some in-person in Geneva — hoping to forestall a future worldwide outbreak by developing the first-ever global pandemic accord. The deadline for a deal? May 2024. The costs of not reaching one? Incalculable, experts say. (Sellers, 4/21)

CIDRAP: GAO Report: HHS Mpox Failures Show Persistent Emergency Response Gaps
Even with the lessons learned from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) failed to respond effectively or coordinate a national response to the 2022 mpox outbreak, with state leaders citing a lack of communication and uneven access to tests and vaccines, according to a new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).Moreover, HHS still lacks a "coordinated, department-wide after-action program to identify and resolve recurring emergency response challenges," the report read. (Soucheray, 4/19)

CBS News: U.S. Measles Cases Reach 125 This Year, Topping 2022's Large Outbreaks
At least 125 measles cases have been reported across 17 states so far this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday, up from 121 cases last week. More cases have now been reported this year than in all of 2022, the most recent annual peak of measles infections. Cases of measles had surged that year from outbreaks linked to unvaccinated Afghan refugees. (Tin, 4/19)

Barron's: U.S. Could Vaccinate A Fifth Of Americans In A Bird Flu Emergency
If the virus currently causing an outbreak of avian influenza among U.S. dairy cattle were to begin spreading widely among humans, the federal government says it could distribute enough vaccines within four months to inoculate a fifth of the U.S. population. If the virus currently causing an outbreak of avian influenza among U.S. dairy cattle were to begin spreading widely among humans, the federal government says it could distribute enough vaccines within four months to inoculate a fifth of the U.S. population. How effective that vaccine would be, and whether those doses would do enough to blunt the impact of a human pandemic, isn’t clear. Two clinical trials of the vaccine likely to be used, under way since last year, have yet to produce data. (Nathan-Kazis, 4/20)

Stat: H5N1 Bird Flu Genetic Sequences Released By USDA 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been under pressure from scientists both at home and abroad to share more data on the H5N1 bird flu outbreaks in dairy cows, uploaded a large number of genetic sequences of the pathogen late Sunday. (Branswell, 4/24)

USA Today: Bird Flu, Lack Of Vaccine Prompt 'Great Concern' For Top WHO Official
World Health Organization’s top scientist said this week the recent bird flu outbreak is of “great concern” to public health, and vaccine development to halt the virus is “not where we need to be.” The virus, known as Type A H5N1, which typically circulates among poultry and wild birds, has spread to mammals, including cows, cats and at least two people in the U.S. in recent years. The new development experts are eyeing is that the virus is now passing from mammal to mammal. (Cuevas, 4/19)

The New York Times: Scientists Fault Federal Response To Bird Flu Outbreaks On Dairy Farms 
In the month since federal authorities announced an outbreak of bird flu on dairy farms, they have repeatedly reassured the public that the spate of infections does not impact the nation’s food or milk supply, and poses little risk to the public. Yet the outbreak among cows may be more serious than originally believed. In an obscure online update this week, the Department of Agriculture said there is now evidence that the virus is spreading among cows, and from cows to poultry. (Mandavilli and Anthes, 4/19)

Phys.org: H5N1 Strain Of Bird Flu Found In Milk: WHO
The H5N1 bird flu virus strain has been detected in very high concentrations in raw milk from infected animals, the WHO said Friday, though how long the virus can survive in milk is unknown. ... "It is important for people to ensure safe food practices, including consuming only pasteurized milk and milk products," said Wenqing Zhang, head of the global influenza program at the World Health Organization.

The New York Times: Bird Flu Is Infecting More Mammals. What Does That Mean For Us? 
H5N1, an avian flu virus, has killed tens of thousands of marine mammals, and infiltrated American livestock for the first time. Scientists are working quickly to assess how it is evolving and how much of a risk it poses to humans. (Mandavilli and Anthes, 4/22)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego May Dramatically Scale Back Pure Water Project 
With San Diego more than half done with the first phase of its Pure Water sewage recycling system, city officials say they are considering major changes to how they will handle the second, larger phase. (Garrick, 4/21)

Military Times: Army Adds Cognitive Test To Track New Soldier Brain Health
The Army will begin conducting a cognitive assessment for a baseline measurement of brain health to measure the effects of any future trauma for all new soldiers at basic training and cadets before they are commissioned. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth referenced the new program, which will begin in June, during budget testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. (South, 4/22)

San Francisco Chronicle: Woman Dies At Facility Run By S.F.’s Largest Drug Treatment Provider
A woman died Thursday at a sober living facility run by HealthRight 360, San Francisco’s largest addiction treatment provider. The woman, who was in treatment at the program, is the fifth person in the past 13 months to die in a facility run by HealthRight 360. Four men in the nonprofit’s programs died of overdoses from March 2023 through February 2024. The woman’s cause of death was not immediately known Friday. (Angst, 4/19)

San Diego Union-Tribune: 16 San Diego County Senior Living Communities Recognized For Excellence Among Nation's Finest 
A national outlet announced this week that it has recognized senior living communities in San Diego County for excellence in caring for older adults. (Mapp, 4/19)

Voice of OC: On A Mission To End Hunger In Orange County
Local food bank leaders, food pantry organizers, the groups that fund them, nonprofits and government officials are sitting down together for the first time ever to map out how best to tackle hunger in Orange County. The Orange County Hunger Alliance, made up of both local food banks and Abound Food Care, is hosting a meeting this summer to go over the results of a $250,000 county funded survey aimed at finding key barriers to meeting the community’s food needs. (Elattar, 4/22)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Thousands Of People Seeking Help Did Not Get A Police Response. That's A Good Thing. 
Three years ago, the county launched a pilot program to replace ill-equipped law enforcement officials with mental health experts for those in crisis. The effort started small with just a handful of professionals responding to calls in North County. But it quickly expanded. Today, there are nearly four dozen Mobile Crisis Response Teams countywide handling hundreds of calls for nonviolent emergencies each month. And the program continues to grow. (Murga, 4/20)

The Mercury News: Why Haven’t Blue States Rushed To Join Gov. Newsom’s Call For Constitutional Amendment On Guns?
Recent ads from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political action committee continue to push his effort to shake up the national gun debate with a constitutional amendment that would nationalize key California firearm restrictions. “If Congress and the courts will not take action to help make our communities safer from gun violence, then we — the people — must do it ourselves,” say the ads on social media from Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy. (Woolfolk, 4/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF’s $1.7 Million Toilet Saga Concludes With Potty-Themed Party
Rarely, if ever, has a single stainless steel toilet garnered so much attention. The party marked the end of more than a year of bureaucratic wrangling and public hand-wringing over the bathroom’s cost, which ultimately came to about $200,000 after a Nevada company donated a prefabricated unit. (Mishanec, 4/21)