Victorville Daily Press: 13th Bird Flu Case Detected Among Central California Dairy Workers
The H5N1 bird flu virus continues a slow but steady spread through California's Central Valley, with a total of 13 infections among dairy workers confirmed as of Monday, health officials said. (Day, 10/21)

Los Angeles Times: How Did H5N1 Bird Flu Get Into California Dairy Farms?
Experts say it was bound to happen: The H5N1 bird flu that ravaged dairy herds in 13 states was inevitably going to arrive in California. But exactly how it happened is still being investigated by the state. However, Anja Raudabaugh — the chief executive of Western State Dairies, a trade organization for California dairy farmers — was able to confirm one of the stories that has been circulating. (Rust, 10/22)

Times of San Diego: San Diego County Holds First Free Flu Vaccine Event Of The Season
Ahead of a potentially busy flu season, San Diego County will be offering cost-free vaccines to the public in El Cajon. ... The next scheduled vaccine clinics [is] Wednesday, Oct. 30, Northgate Market at 1058 3rd Ave. Chula Vista, 1 p.m-4 p.m. (Binkowski, 10/21)

The New York Times: Mental Illness Raises the Risk of Severe Covid. The Question Is: Why?
It’s been clear since the early days of the pandemic: People with mental illness are more likely to have severe outcomes from Covid. Compared to the general population, they’re at higher risk of being hospitalized, developing long Covid or dying from an infection. That fact puts mental illness on the same list as better-known Covid risk factors like cardiovascular issues, chronic kidney disease and asthma. (Blum, 10/21)

CIDRAP: Study Shows Wastewater Detections Accurate For Norovirus
Norovirus can be accurately tracked in wastewater samples, which can help identify outbreaks and trends, according to a new study based on California wastewater surveillance published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Norovirus is one of the leading causes of gastroenteritis in the United States, but surveillance is challenging because many cases are unreported, the authors said. As wastewater surveillance has proved useful and accurate for viral detections, including COVID-19, the researchers assessed its usefulness for norovirus. (Soucheray, 10/21)

Voice of OC: Is A Homeless Shelter Coming To Irvine?
Irvine city officials are considering purchasing some property to create what could become the first homeless shelter in the city. ... Irvine City Council members at Tuesday’s 4 p.m. meeting are slated to consider buying two buildings at 17572 and 17622 Armstrong Avenue to be used as a bridge shelter housing facility for the city’s homeless population and those at risk of homelessness. (Hicks, 10/21)

Politico: Will Penny-Pinching Voters Doom LA's Latest Effort To End Homelessness? 
Residents of California’s biggest metropolis say homelessness is the issue that worries them most, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to spend more to address the problem. In the balance is Los Angeles County’s Measure A, which would extend and increase a county-level tax to continue funding the local government’s homeless services as well as affordable housing development, rent relief and resources to prevent evictions. (Schultheis and Mason, 10/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: Prop 36 Would Cut Key Funding For Drug Treatment Programs
A ballot measure before California voters this election aims to expand the use of drug diversion programs ... by increasing punishments for theft and drug crimes and providing a new type of charge prosecutors can use to steer people into treatment. But the measure would also cut into one of the main funding sources for Harbor Light and other programs like it, meaning it could shrink the treatment options available — even as it steers more people into them. (Bollag, 10/22)

Bay Area Reporter: LGBTQ Agenda: Biden Administration Expands Injectable PrEP Coverage
Long-acting injectable PrEP is now to be covered without cost-sharing under Affordable Care Act rules, the Biden administration announced October 21. The news comes just weeks after it was announced that all forms of PrEP will be covered without cost-sharing for Medicare patients under Medicare Part B. (Ferrannini, 10/22)

The Washington Post: Few Trans Youths Report Regretting Gender-Affirming Care, Study Finds
Transgender and nonbinary youths who received gender-affirming medical care, such as puberty blockers and hormones, were largely satisfied with the treatments they received, according to a study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. The data analyzed survey responses from more than 200 people who are part of the TransYouth Project, one of the largest and longest community-based studies on the experiences of transgender youths. The majority of respondents expressed satisfaction with the gender-affirming care they received, with only 4 percent — nine respondents — expressing some form of regret. (Ortega, 10/21)

Politico: Is There Still Any Pop Left In California’s Fight Against Soda? 
A California surfing idyll may determine whether soda is poised to go the way of Big Tobacco, banished to the outskirts of modern consumption habits. Over the past decade, soda companies have invested tens of millions of dollars fighting targeted excise taxes from Mexico to the Philippines, policies developed as part of a global push to make sugary drinks harder to access with the goal of reducing obesity. But a municipal initiative in Santa Cruz could next month reopen the conflict not far from where it first began: at the local ballot in another Northern California college town. (McCarthy, 10/21)

The Oaklandside: A New Trauma Recovery Center In Deep East Oakland Helps Crime Survivors. But It Could Lose Funding
The Berkeley-based nonprofit Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, or BOSS, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony and news conference last week for Oakland’s new trauma recovery center. Located at International Boulevard and 75th Avenue in deep East Oakland, the center offers crime survivors in some of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods an array of services — such as individual and group counseling, therapy, psychiatry, and case management — at no cost and without the need to involve law enforcement. (Romero, 10/21)

Los Angeles Times: Philip Zimbardo Dead: Architect Of The 'Stanford Prison Experiment'
The rationale was clear.“ Most people go about their daily life assuming that they have more control over their behavior than they actually do,” wrote a young psychology professor at Stanford University in 1971. “We are often unaware of the tremendous power which social situations exert upon us to shape, guide, and manipulate our behavior.” To prove these statements, the professor devised an experiment. (Curwen, 10/20)

Modern Healthcare: Hims & Hers Names Dr. Jessica Shepherd As CMO Of Hers
San Francisco-based Hims & Hers Health named Dr. Jessica Shepherd as the first chief medical officer of its Hers brand. Shepherd, an obstetrician and gynecologist, will oversee the telehealth company's clinical efforts in women's sexual health, dermatology, weight loss and mental health. She will focus specifically on Hers, while Hims & Hers Chief Medical Officer Dr. Patrick Carroll continues in his role for the company as a whole, a spokesperson said. (DeSilva, 10/21)

Capitol Weekly: Special Episode: Health Care In CA, Panel 1 – AI In Health Care
This Special Episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast was recorded live at Capitol Weekly’s conference Health Care in California. (10/21)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Physician Pay Proposal Attracts Criticism 
Doctors are fed up with the system the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services uses to promote quality and set reimbursement rates. But they fear the agency's new vision even more. Physician pay is once again front and center for policymakers. CMS is due to issue the final rule for Medicare payments in 2025 this month. When Congress returns after Election Day, lawmakers will strive to mitigate whatever cut the agency implements, as they did for 2024. Under the proposed rule CMS published in July, Medicare physician reimbursements would be 2.9% lower next year. (Early, 10/21)

The Hill: Biden, Sanders To Highlight Savings From Medicare Price Caps
President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will travel to New Hampshire on Tuesday to speak on health care savings achieved through the Biden administration’s policies such as the estimated savings that resulted from the Medicare price caps enacted by the Inflation Reduction Act. According to a senior administration official, Biden and Sanders will go to Concord, N.H. to discuss the details of a new HHS report that shows almost 1.5 million Medicare beneficiaries saved roughly $1 billion thanks to the price caps on prescription drugs during the first half of 2024. (Choi, 10/22)

Modern Healthcare: FAH's Chip Kahn Talks Insurers, 'Aggressive' Unions And 2025
Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said he isn't buying insurers' complaints about higher costs as they have a responsibility to fairly compensate providers. Hospitals are fighting battles on multiple fronts — haggling over payer contracts, negotiating with unions about higher wage expectations and pushing back on what they view as too much regulatory oversight. The presidential election is also mere weeks away, and the results could affect policies governing hospitals' day-to-day operations. (Hudson, 10/21)

Becker's Hospital Review: Repeat Fasting Dangerous For Orthopedic Surgeries, Study Finds
Patients who undergo several orthopedic surgeries in hospitals face a high risk of malnutrition, which can delay recovery and cause death, according to a study of more than 28 million patients. Before surgery, most patients are advised to fast for at least eight hours and only consume clear liquids up to two hours before the operation. For those who require multiple surgeries during a hospital stay, especially within a few days, prolonged or repeated fasting can exacerbate the risk of malnutrition. (Twenter, 10/21)

Stat: Race Adjustments Removed From Four Clinical Algorithms
A coalition of 12 Philadelphia-area health systems announced Monday that its members have abandoned the use of race adjustments in four clinical tools commonly used to guide care, a move that health leaders say will improve treatment and prevent delays in diagnosis for Black, Hispanic, and Asian patients. (McFarling and Palmer, 10/21)

Los Angeles Times: U.S. Infant Mortality Rose After Dobbs Ruling On Abortions
Infant deaths have increased in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed states to make abortion illegal, researchers reported Monday. The change became detectable three months after the June 2022 ruling with an elevated rate of infant mortality involving babies born with serious congenital anomalies, the researchers found. (Kaplan, 10/21)

Slate: Why Record Numbers of People Who Aren’t Pregnant Are Ordering Abortion Medication
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, a growing number of people in the United States are buying abortion pills and keeping them on hand just in case they need them in the future. This process, referred to as advance provision of medication abortion, is part of an assortment of strategies providers are using to expand access to medication abortion pills. It’s also part of a legal gray area that abortion rights supporters are considering as an opportunity to expand abortion access. (Johnson, 10/21)

USA Today: Birth Control Doesn’t Cause Abortions – But That Misconception Is Blocking Access
Birth control remains legal everywhere, but in some states its become harder to access due to abortion misconceptions. (Weise, 10/22)

Bloomberg: Cigna-Humana Merger Plan May Hinge On Election, Analysts Say
Prospects for a potential merger between health insurers Cigna Group and Humana Inc. hinge on the upcoming US presidential election, analysts said. While the Biden administration has moved to block some large health-care deals, talks would be “only tangibly moving forward if Trump wins” in November, Stephens analyst Scott Fidel wrote in a research note. (Tozzi, 10/21)

The Guardian: Can Harris’s Proposed ‘At-Home Medicare’ End The Dreaded ‘Spend Down’ Of Senior Assets?
A new proposal for “at home Medicare” by the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, could help ease the burden of the cost of elder care for many families, experts say. However, Republicans have already criticized the proposal as too expensive, a reminder of the political difficulties of enacting healthcare expansions in the US. (Glenza, 10/21)

Roll Call: For Harris, Mental Health Access A Key Policy Priority
Vice President Kamala Harris has signaled that, if elected president, she’ll work to increase mental health care access — but she acknowledges that addressing what has become an increasingly complex issue could be a heavy lift. The issue, she said in a podcast last month, “is probably one of the biggest public policy failures in our country.” (Heller, 10/21)

Politico: They’re In Health Care And They’re For Harris
Some 500 women health care leaders are rallying support for Vice President Kamala Harris in the final weeks before the election. “We have seen what happened in the first administration under Trump, so we have very clear evidence of — the direction away from science, away from access to care — and we’re deeply concerned,” said Missy Krasner, who led health care projects at Google and Amazon and served as a special adviser to the national coordinator for health information technology in the George W. Bush administration. (Ollstein and Messerly, 10/21)

The New York Times: The Many Links Between Project 2025 And Trump’s World 
Former president Donald J. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy initiative to reshape the federal government. Mr. Trump has said that he has not read its proposals and does not know who is behind it. But Project 2025 has numerous ties to Mr. Trump and his campaign, a New York Times analysis has found. The people behind Project 2025 are no strangers to the former president. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, and a co-founder, Edwin J. Feulner, have each personally met with Mr. Trump. And the analysis of the Project 2025 playbook and its 307 authors and contributors revealed that well over half of them had been in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams. (Shao and Wu, 10/22)