San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Nonprofits: Homeless Shelter Operator Accused Of Fraud
An embattled San Francisco homeless shelter operator was barred Monday from seeking or receiving any new city contracts over allegations it submitted fake invoices and collected more than $100,000 for work that was never completed. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu suspended the Providence Foundation of San Francisco, accusing the nonprofit and its executive director Patricia Doyle of misleading the city into covering fraudulent costs and depriving “vulnerable San Franciscans of critical services that the City earmarked for their benefit.” (Angst, 5/6)

Los Angeles Times: California Legislature Demands Data After Homelessness Audit
Democrats and Republicans expressed frustration Monday as they grilled Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top housing officials in a tense legislative hearing about how billions of state dollars have been spent on the worsening homelessness crisis. The hearing by the Assembly budget subcommittee on accountability and oversight came after a state audit released last month found that California has failed to adequately track the outcomes of its vast spending on homelessness programs, raising questions about efficacy and transparency. (Mays, 5/7)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Embattled Sonoma County Homeless Provider Collapsed After Failing To Pay Employees 
Employees of the for-profit homeless services provider DEMA Consulting and Management went unpaid for a month before a wave of resignations and layoffs completed the embattled contractor’s sudden collapse on Wednesday, The Press Democrat has learned. (Graham, 5/4)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Council Members Skeptical Of New Shelters Amid Possible Cuts To Existing Homelessness Programs 
Several San Diego City Council members have expressed deep hesitation about advancing two of the mayor’s shelter proposals, at least for the moment, amid the threat of cuts to a range of other homelessness programs. (Nelson, 5/6)

CalMatters: Did California’s Massive COVID Homeless Shelter Program Work?
California’s massive effort to shelter homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic was a success, according to a new report that says the effort changed the state’s homeless services system for the better. But at the same time, the researchers pointed out a troubling dearth of available data on the program. With the little information they were able to access, they found that people who left the program had at least a 40% chance of returning to homelessness. (Kendall, 5/7)

Becker's Hospital Review: 10 Best States For Healthcare: California is No. 6
Among states, Hawaii ranks No. 1 overall for healthcare, according to U.S. News & World Report's annual best states rankings published May 7. The media company examined how each state ranks in 71 metrics across eight categories: natural environment, crime and corrections, healthcare, education, economy, infrastructure, fiscal stability, and opportunity. Within healthcare, U.S. News examined data from the CDC, CMS and other sources to determine the best states for healthcare access, quality and public health. Each subcategory within healthcare received equal weight. (Gooch, 5/7)

Bay Area Reporter: LGBTQ Agenda: Under Deadline, Biden Administration Issues New Health, Foster Care, Sex Harassment Rules
LGBTQ groups are applauding new rules from the Biden administration on health care, foster care, and workplace harassment. The flurry of executive branch actions comes just weeks before a looming deadline established by the Congressional Review Act. (Ferrannini, 5/7)

Berkeleyside: 'Street Trauma Prevention' Role Proposed For Berkeley Fire
The City Council on Tuesday will consider a budget referral for a position that, if successful, could bridge the divide between groups with differing priorities for city streets. The position would be responsible for, among other duties, keeping roads clear for medics to reach crashes in time to save lives. (Gecan, 5/6)

USA Today: Nursing Home Staffing And Spending Questioned By Democratic Lawmakers
Three U.S. senators and two U.S. representatives have called out the corporate spending of three large nursing home companies amid the industry's opposition to the Biden administration's rule to set minimum staffing levels. In letters sent Sunday to executives of three large chains, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Richard Blumenthal and Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Lloyd Doggett questioned the nursing homes' spending on executive compensation, stock buybacks and dividends as the industry protests a new staffing rule for nursing homes. (Alltucker, 5/6)

AP: Medicare And Social Security Go-Broke Dates Pushed Back
The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security have been pushed back as an improving economy has contributed to changed projected depletion dates, according to the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report Monday. Still, officials warn that policy changes are needed lest the programs become unable to pay full benefits to retiring Americans. Medicare’s go-broke date for its hospital insurance trust fund was pushed back five years to 2036 in the latest report, thanks in part to higher payroll tax income and lower-than-projected expenses from last year. (Hussein and Murphy, 5/6)

Modern Healthcare: New Bill Targets Drug Shortages Through Medicare, Medicaid
In a bid to curtail the ongoing problem of drug shortages, the Senate Finance Committee proposed legislation offering incentives to hospitals and other providers to stockpile certain medications. The bill, which would be known as the Drug Shortage Prevention and Mitigation Act, looks to spur manufacturing of drugs at risk of short supply by inducing providers to sign longer-term purchasing arrangements. (McAuliff, 5/6)

CBS News: Antioch Mental Health Crisis Team Touts Positive Results, No In-Custody Deaths After 1 Year
Across the Bay Area, communities are looking for ways to deal with mental health crises without involving police. Antioch created it's own private crisis response team, and after 12 months the city's mayor says results have been positive. ... While it may be difficult to measure success on such a thing, the numbers are looking good. One number stands out from the rest. Zero. That's how many people have died while in police custody since the community response team was created. (Ramos, 5/6)

The New York Times: Are Schools Too Focused On Mental Health?
In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness. Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. (Barry, 5/6)

Vox: What Researchers Want You To Know About Teen Suicide 
Between 2000 and 2015 in an affluent, predominately white community in the US, 19 young people died by suicide through what’s known as suicide clusters. These clusters refer to an unusually high rate of suicide for a community over a short period of time, often at least two deaths and one suicide attempt, or three deaths. Suicide clusters are an extreme example of youth mental health struggles — an issue that’s been getting more attention since the pandemic and one that’s at the center of an increasingly charged national conversation around social media and phones. (Cohen, 5/7)

Reuters: US FDA Panel To Discuss First Psychedelic-Assisted PTSD Treatment Next Month 
The U.S. FDA's panel of independent advisers will on June 4 deliberate whether they should recommend approval for the first MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, Lykos Therapeutics said on Monday. This would be the first FDA panel of outside experts to review a potential new PTSD treatment in 25 years. (5/6)

CNN: Genes Known To Increase The Risk Of Alzheimer’s May Actually Be An Inherited Form Of The Disorder, Researchers Say
Alzheimer’s disease may be inherited more often than previously known, according to a new study that paints a clearer picture of a gene long known to be linked to the common form of dementia. (Goodman, 5/6)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Commissioner Giner's Mission: Remove The Obstacles Keeping San Diego From Resolving The Border Sewage Crisis 
Bureaucratic blunders, mismanagement, partisan politics, cross-border politics, understaffing, equipment failures. The list of reasons for the longstanding sewage crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is long. (Murga, 5/5)

Oaklandside: Community Leaders In Deep East Oakland Are Working To Improve Air Quality
Two dozen East Oakland residents gathered recently in a small building in Oakland’s Castlemont neighborhood. Another 20 people, a mix of community members, government officials, and nonprofit leaders joined via Zoom. They gathered to create what is known as a community emissions reduction plan, a community-led, long-term strategy to reduce harmful pollution emissions in the area. (Rhoades, 5/6)

Los Angeles Times: ‘Nothing Is Untouched’: DDT Found In Deep-Sea Fish Raises Troubling Concerns For Food Web
In a highly anticipated study, researchers have identified tiny zooplankton and mid-to-deep-water fish as potential links between the contaminated sediment and the greater ecosystem. For the first time, chemical analyses confirmed that these deep-sea organisms are contaminated by numerous DDT-related compounds that match similar chemical patterns found on the seafloor and animals higher up on the food chain. (Xia, 5/6)

CIDRAP: GAO Report Shows Strategic National Stockpile Challenges During COVID, Mpox 
In a new report on the US Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that, during recent public health crises such as COVID-19 and mpox, local officials weren't clear on how and from whom to request supplies, and some tribal officials cited a lack of the facilities to receive and store delivered supplies. (Soucheray, 5/6)

Axios: Exclusive: Report Urges Sustained U.S. Biodefense Buildup
A new report calls on all levels of government to strengthen U.S. biodefense measures and urges policymakers to codify parts of a national strategy to address an array of biological threats. Threats in the form of infectious disease outbreaks, lab accidents and biology-based weapons are expected to increase in the coming years, according to the report's authors and other experts. (Snyder, 5/7)

CIDRAP: Studies Yield More Clues About H5N1 Avian Flu Susceptibility, Spread In Dairy Cows
Two new preprint studies shed more light on why high H5N1 avian flu viral loads have been seen in the milk of infected dairy cows and what the genetic sequences say about transmission among cattle and to other species, with one suggesting cows could be an influenza mixing vessel. (Schnirring, 5/6)

Los Angeles Times: Mother's Loss Launches A Global Effort To Fight Antibiotic Resistance
In November 2017, days after her daughter Mallory Smith died from a drug-resistant infection at the age of 25, Diane Shader Smith typed a password into Mallory’s laptop. Her daughter gave it to her before undergoing double-lung transplant surgery, with instructions to share any writing that could help others if she didn’t survive. The transplant was successful, but Burkholderia cepacia — an antibiotic-resistant bacterial strain that first colonized her system when she was 12 — took hold. After a lifetime with cystic fibrosis, and 13 years battling an unconquerable infection, Mallory’s body could take no more. (Purtill, 5/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why 'SHARP' Failed To Reform San Francisco's Sex Crime Response System
Six years after The Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, was created, there’s little evidence it has met its goals, according to more than a dozen interviews and a Chronicle review of thousands of pages of public records. (Cassidy and Neilson, 5/7)

Los Angeles Times: Their Daughter Killed Herself With A Deputy's Gun. They're Still Looking For Answers
When he got home from work early on a Sunday afternoon in March, Alex Gutierrez called for his youngest daughter and smiled as she popped out of her room to greet him. She was usually buoyant and effusive, but this time she really hammed it up, hugging and kissing the case of Propel Fitness Water he’d brought home from the store. That it was her favorite seemed only fitting for a girl always in motion. The 67-year-old La Puente man laughed at his teen’s performance, then headed inside to take a nap. In the past, 17-year-old Johanna Gonzalez had struggled with mental health problems, hearing voices and flying into uncontrollable fits and outbursts. But today seemed to be a good day. (Blakinger, 5/7)