Reuters: US To Provide Nearly $200 Million To Contain Bird Flu Spread On Dairy Farms
The Biden administration said on Friday it will provide nearly $200 million to fight the spread of avian flu among dairy cows, in the government's latest bid to contain outbreaks that have fueled concerns about human infections with the H5N1 virus. The virus has been detected among dairy cattle in nine states since late March. Scientists have said they believe the outbreak is more widespread based on U.S. Food and Drug Administration findings of H5N1 particles in about 20% of retail milk samples. (Douglas, 5/10)

Reuters: Final Tests Of US Dairy Samples Are Negative For Bird Flu Virus, US FDA Says
Final testing of U.S. retail dairy samples came back negative for viable H5N1 bird flu virus, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. The FDA said it finished its laboratory research into 297 retail dairy samples tested for bird flu, after previously reporting that preliminary results showed the commercial milk supply was safe. (5/10)

Stat: CDC Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard To Track Bird Flu Hotspots 
Reluctance among dairy farmers to report H5N1 bird flu outbreaks within their herds or allow testing of their workers has made it difficult to keep up with the virus’s rapid spread, prompting federal public health officials to look to wastewater to help fill in the gaps. (Molteni and Branswell, 5/13)

Los Angeles Times: Raw Milk Enthusiasts Uncowed By Bird Flu Risk In Dairy
Government scientists are warning consumers to stay away from raw milk, citing research showing “high viral load” of avian influenza in samples collected from infected cows — as well as a disturbing cluster of dead barn cats who’d consumed contaminated raw milk. “We continue to strongly advise against the consumption of raw milk,” said Donald Prater, acting director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration. (Rust, 5/12)

CalMatters: Should California Be Able To Require Sobriety In Homeless Housing?
Desperate for a way to help the tens of thousands of people living in tents, cars and RVs on California’s streets, lawmakers are attempting to upend a key tenet of the state’s homelessness policy. Two new bills would allow state funding to support sober housing — a significant departure from current law, which requires providers to accept people regardless of their drug and alcohol use. (Kendall, 5/13)

Los Angeles Times: Homelessness Down In Long Beach, Up In Orange County, Counts Find
For the first time in seven years, the city of Long Beach saw local homelessness decline year over year — but officials in next-door Orange County were disappointed to learn their unhoused population had continued to grow. The divergent trends were documented in point-in-time counts conducted in January. Those surveys are meant to provide on-the-ground snapshots of homeless populations to help identify the needs of particular communities and shape local response efforts. (Vives, 5/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Court Dismisses First Amendment Lawsuit Filed Against Palomar Health By One Of Its Directors 
Declaring the issues it alleged “moot,” a federal judge recently dismissed a free speech rights lawsuit that a Palomar Health director filed against her own organization. (Sisson, 5/13)

Bay Area News Group: Breakthrough Therapies Are Saving Lives. Can We Afford Them?
Last month, Stanford became the first hospital in the nation to use a new $515,000 cell therapy to treat a patient with advanced melanoma. A related approach, costing $420,000 to $475,000, is offering hope to patients with lethal blood cancers. (Krieger, 5/12)

The Hill: 1 In 8 Adults Has Taken Ozempic Or Other GLP-1 Drug: Survey
A poll from the health policy nonprofit KFF found that 1 in 8 adults say they’ve taken a GLP-1 agonist, the obesity and diabetes medications that include Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound. Among those surveyed, 12 percent said they had used a GLP-1 agonist, with 6 percent saying they’re currently using one. The majority — 62 percent — of them said they were using the drugs to treat a chronic condition such as diabetes or heart disease, while the remaining 38 percent they took the medications just to lose weight. (Choi, 5/10)

Axios: U.S. Health Care Is Increasingly Like A Casino
For the decade-ish that I've been reporting on health care, insurance coverage has dominated conversations about who has access to care. But in the post-pandemic era, it's become clear that having insurance is only the first step toward receiving quality care. (Owens, 5/12)

Axios: Employers Facing Rising Health Costs Get Tough On Providers
Employers trying to rein in rising health costs are also taking the fight directly to health care providers. New transparency around the price of health care services and workers' mounting frustration with costs are emboldening some employers to get tough in negotiations with hospitals and provider groups. (Reed, 5/13)

Axios: Legal Battle Over Health Costs Could Change Workplace Benefits
An emerging legal battle over workplace health insurance could empower employees to fight back against high costs and put new pressure on their employers. (Reed, 5/13)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Charged Private Insurers 254% Of Medicare In 2022: Rand
Hospital-negotiated prices rose from 2020 to 2022, especially among dominant facilities in their respective markets, a new report shows. Commercial insurers' payments to hospitals amounted to, on average, 254% of Medicare rates in 2022, up from 243% in 2021 and 241% in 2020, according to data from Rand, a nonprofit research firm. Rand researchers used claims data from more than 4,000 hospitals in 49 states and Washington, D.C. (Kacik, 5/12)

Axios: Hospital Prices Paid By Private Insurers Vary Widely, Report Finds
Private health insurance on average pays hospitals 2.5 times what Medicare does for the same services, with some states seeing relative prices of more than 3 times greater, according to a new RAND report. (Reed, 5/13)

Politico: Hospitals’ New Message For Patients: Stay Home
Hospitals want you to visit them less often. ... Hospital executives think they can more than make up the revenue by shifting their exam and recovery rooms to patients’ homes. And Congress is urging them on, with legislation in the works to help hospitals expand their at-home offerings and to allow Medicare to continue paying for telehealth after lawmakers first granted temporary permission after Covid struck. (Payne, 5/11)

The Boston Globe: First Recipient Of Genetically Engineered Pig Kidney Has Died 
Rick Slayman, the first man to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig, has died, according to a statement from his family and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he underwent the historic operation in March. (Stoico, 5/12)

California Healthline: FDA Said It Never Inspected Dental Lab That Made Controversial AGGA Device
Johns Dental Laboratories stopped making the Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance last year after a KFF Health News-CBS News investigation into allegations of patient harm. The company had “never” reported any complaints about its products to the FDA, according to the agency. (Kelman and Werner, 5/13)

Stat: Study: Adult Vaccinations Pay For Themselves In Societal Benefits
The number of children who received their routine vaccinations declined during the pandemic, so public health officials have been focusing on getting kids back up to date. They should also be paying attention to adults as a new, first-of-its-kind report quantifying the economic impact of adult immunizations makes clear. (Phyllis Arthur, 5/13)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: 105-Year-Old Vet’s Family Seeks Help Amid Release From Care Facility 
Debbie Little and Robert Lownes were at their father’s Windsor home early Saturday to prepare it for his return. They were harried, rushed, anxious. The 105-year-old World War II Army veteran was to be discharged the next day from the skilled nursing facility in Santa Rosa where he’d been rehabilitating from an April 18 fall. (Hay, 5/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Sewage Stench Is Back And People Want To Know What They're Breathing. Why Aren't Promised Air Monitors Online? 
The San Diego Air Pollution Control District (APCD) has been working to install various air-monitoring stations across South County that can monitor concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and other compounds in the air that contribute to poor air quality. (Murga, 5/12)

Southern California News Group: California Actor Found Guilty Of Soliciting Investments For Phony COVID-19 Cure
A part-time actor from Huntington Beach who in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic had fraudulently touted a cure and treatment for the virus was found guilty by jury Friday, May 10, of 11 counts of wire fraud for soliciting investors for his bogus treatments, federal authorities said. (Percy, 5/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Geomagnetic Solar Storms Can Have A Surprising Impact On Human Health
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the weekend’s three rare solar storms that produced light shows visible from Northern California could potentially cause severe geomagnetic disturbances in Earth’s atmosphere. During solar storms, there are more explosions — or solar flares — ejected from the sun’s surface. ... Perhaps less well-known are the impacts such solar events have on human health. But periods of intense solar activity can disrupt the body’s circadian rhythm, nervous system, heart rate and blood pressure — even if they’re not visible to the human eye in the form of an aurora, researchers say. (Ho, 5/10)

Fortune: Colon Cancer Rates Have Tripled In Teens
First came public pleas for millennials and Gen Zers to be aware of the signs  of colon cancer, which has seen such a rise in young adults that it’s now the No. 1 cause of cancer deaths in men under 50 and No. 2 in women under 50. This week, that plea expanded to adolescents, with news that colorectal cancer rates among kids between 10 and 14 and teens from 15 to 19 have risen by 500% and 333% percent, respectively, over two decades. (Greenfield, 5/10)

CNN: Healthy Alternatives To Replace Ultraprocessed Foods In Your Diet 
Many people love their ultraprocessed foods. Sodas, chips, ice cream, lunch meat and other prepared foods are staples of the American diet. They are hard to avoid, too. More than 70% of the US food supply is made of ultraprocessed food. But a diet heavy in ultraprocessed food isn’t good for us, science has shown. (Hetter, 5/11)

USA Today: AI, ChatGPT Show Promise In Making Medical Visits More Effective
Dr. Rebecca Mishuris remembers her mother, also a doctor, bringing home her patients' medical charts every night and working on them long after she'd gone to bed. ... But no more. Since last summer, she's been piloting two competing software applications that use large-language models and generative artificial intelligence to listen in on, transcribe and summarize her conversations with patients. At the end of a patient visit it takes her just two to three minutes to review the summary for accuracy, cut and paste a few things into the patient's health record and hit save. (Weintraub, 5/11)

Modern Healthcare: AI Uses In Nursing, Patient Care Concern Unions At HCA, Kaiser
Union leaders and technology experts say health systems should be open with nurses about how they plan to use artificial intelligence and educate them on such tools in light of staffing and other concerns. Hundreds of nurses at Kaiser Permanente and HCA Healthcare protested last month, worried about the systems’ use of AI to measure the severity of patients' illnesses and perform other clinical tasks. The nurses cited concerns about the technology’s potential to put patient safety at risk and cause job losses. (Devereaux, 5/10)

The Wall Street Journal: How Helpful Are Mental-Health Chatbots?
Interest in mental-health chatbots is rising, fueled by advances in AI’s ability to conduct sophisticated conversations. But how much therapy can they really provide? Chatbots are still no substitute for a human therapist, researchers say. Not only do some of these tools have trouble helping patients in crisis, they don’t always offer a sufficient level of personalization or provide advice that is guaranteed to be accurate. (Wang, 5/12)

Fortune: Parents Are Drugging Their Kids To Get Them To Sleep
New survey results from Sleep Doctor reveal that 79% of parents have given their child a substance to get them to sleep—with 66% using melatonin, 35% using Benadryl, and 20% turning to prescription sleep aids. Others reported using everything from herbal and over-the-counter aids to CBD, THC, and even alcohol. Millennial and Gen Z parents were most likely to have drugged kids for slumber, with 84% and 83%, respectively, saying they had done so. (Greenfield, 5/12)

Newsweek: Baby Milk Recalled As Health Warning Issued
A Washington-based company is recalling a goat milk product and urging consumers to immediately stop using the product as baby formula. Healthwest Minerals Inc, doing business as Mt. Capra Products, of Chehalis, announced on Friday that it is recalling 1,506 boxes of Goat Milk Formula Recipe Kit on the advice of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because the product does not provide sufficient nutrition when used as infant formula. (Rahman, 5/12)

Newsweek: Boys' IQs May Be Impacted By Moms' Pregnancy Stress Levels
High levels of stress during the late stages of pregnancy may impair IQ scores in young boys, a new study suggests. Researchers at Odense University Hospital in Denmark found that increased cortisol, a stress hormone, in the third trimester may have a lasting impact on boys aged seven, but not girls. The findings highlight the important role cortisol plays in the in utero development of boys and girls independently. (Smith, 5/10)

NPR: As Schools Reconsider Cursive, Research Homes In On Handwriting's Brain Benefits
In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material. (Lambert, 5/11)

NPR: Want To Protect Your Kids' Eyesight? Get Them To Play Outside
Spending at least two hours outside each day is one of the most important things your kids can do to protect their eyesight. "We think that outdoor time is the best form of prevention for nearsightedness," says Dr. Noha Ekdawi, a pediatric ophthalmologist in Wheaton, Ill. And that's important, because the number of kids with nearsightedness – or myopia – has been growing rapidly in the U.S., and in many other parts of the world. (Godoy, 5/13)

Los Angeles Blade: Trump Vows To Reverse Trans Student Protections ‘On Day One’
During a call-in interview Friday on a Philadelphia-based right-wing conservative talk radio show, former President Donald Trump said he would roll back transgender student protections enacted last month by the U.S. Department of Education “on day one,” if he’s reelected. (Levesque, 5/10)