LAist: ‘No Progress’ At Bargaining Table For Striking Kaiser Mental Health Workers; Patient Hotline Launched 
Some 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health workers are on Day 4 of a strike in support of higher wages and other workplace demands. The National Union of Healthcare Workers — which represents the workers in Southern California — said no progress has been made at the bargaining table. (Garrova, 10/24)

San Diego Union-Times: ‘It Saves Unspeakable Perils:’ New Program Aims To Keep 50 Former Foster Kids Out Of Homelessness
Local leaders hope a new effort, called the Foster Futures Program, can similarly assist up to 50 people who recently left the foster care system. The nonprofit Promises2Kids will offer participants direct financial aid for everything from apartment deposits to car repairs, and proponents believe covering those one-off expenses, combined with support services like therapy, can reduce the staggering number of residents who become homeless every month in the county. (Nelson, 10/24)

Orange County Register: Irvine Quietly Announces Plan To Address Homelessness As Council Approves $20M Shelter Purchase
The Irvine City Council approved a nearly $20 million purchase of two properties on Armstrong Avenue that the city plans to convert into a bridge shelter for unhoused and at-risk individuals. It’s the first step in Irvine’s new plan to address homelessness quietly announced at Tuesday’s council meeting. (Horowitz, 10/24)

Associated Press: Salinas Produce Company Linked To Deadly E. Coli Outbreak, Says McDonald's 
A California-based produce company was the source of fresh onions linked to a deadly E. coli food poisoning outbreak at McDonald’s, officials with the restaurant chain said Thursday. Meanwhile, other fast-food restaurants — including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and Burger King — pulled onions from some menus. (Aleccia and Durbin, 10/24)

The Hill: Bird Flu Cases Rise To 31, But CDC Says No Person-To-Person Transmission
The number of people infected with bird flu in the U.S. has risen to at least 31, federal health officials said Thursday, but there is no evidence of human-to-human spread after blood tests confirmed health workers in Missouri caring for a hospitalized patient were not infected. Speaking to reporters during a briefing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials said multiple tests confirmed five symptomatic health workers did not have any evidence of infection. (Weixel, 10/24)

Fresno Bee: Can I Get Bird Flu From Eating Eggs? Drinking Milk? We Asked A California Disease Expert
As poultry farms and dairies across California battle bird flu outbreaks, some are wondering if their food is safe to eat. (Galan, 10/25)

Newsweek: How To Spot Early Signs Of Potentially Fatal Whooping Cough As Cases Rise
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 18,506 cases of whooping cough between January 1 and October 12—five times more than the same time frame in 2023, according to preliminary data. Cases are not evenly spread throughout the U.S. The Minnesota Department of Health announced on October 10 that the state had seen 1,019 cases so far in 2024, including 376 cases in Hennepin County and more than 40 cases in each of its surrounding counties. (Willmoth, 10/24)

CIDRAP: COVID Genomic Surveillance Details Rise, Evolution Of JN.1 In US This Year
New genomic surveillance data published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report show that JN.1 and its descendants have been the most common SARS-CoV-2 variants in 2024, and they're still evolving. The genomic surveillance was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's national SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance program, which previously detected both the Delta and Omicron variants. (Soucheray, 10/24)

Newsweek: US Government Shares New Pandemic Plan
U.S. government officials, together with counterparts in Canada and Mexico, have unveiled their latest plans to strengthen regional health security and pandemic preparedness. ... The collaboration, called the North American Preparedness for Animal and Human Pandemics Initiative, or NAPAHPI, has been described as a "flexible, scalable, cross-sectoral" platform which aims to strengthen regional capacities for disease control, built on lessons learned from COVID-19 and other healthy security events. (Dewan, 10/24)

Roll Call: Medicaid Limits Access To Life-Saving Doses Of Addiction Care
Consensus is growing around the idea that for some patients higher doses of a gold-standard opioid addiction treatment drug may be better than lower doses at keeping patients healthy and in treatment, especially for those who use fentanyl. But whether someone can access higher doses of buprenorphine — which works by curbing cravings and withdrawal from opioids — depends on where they live. (Hellmann, 10/24)

CIDRAP: Adjuvanted Flu, Shingles Vaccines Can Safely Be Given Together, Clinical Trial Shows
The adjuvanted influenza and adjuvanted shingles vaccines can be safely administered at the same time, a randomized, blinded clinical trial concludes. Duke University investigators compared the safety of and reactions to simultaneous intramuscular vaccination with the quadrivalent (four-strain) inactivated adjuvanted flu vaccine (allV4) and the adjuvanted recombinant herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine (RSV) with that of simultaneous administration of the RZV and quadrivalent high-dose inactivated nonadjuvanted flu vaccine (HD-IIV4) vaccines. (Van Beusekom, 10/24)

CIDRAP: Broad-Spectrum Antibiotics For Pneumonia Linked To Increased Risk Of Adverse Events
A study of US adults who had community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) but were otherwise healthy found that broad-spectrum antibiotics were associated with increased risks of adverse drug events (ADEs), researchers reported yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (Dall, 10/24)

Los Angeles Times: Key Takeaways From Our Investigation Into The Science Of MERT
In recent years, dozens of clinics in the U.S. and beyond have started offering an experimental treatment called magnetic resonance therapy, or MERT. Developed and trademarked by a Newport Beach-based company called Wave Neuroscience, MERT is a version of transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, which is approved by the FDA to treat major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and cigarette addiction. Clinics offering cash-pay TMS treatments for a variety of off-label conditions have proliferated in recent years. MERT, in particular, has become popular among families with autistic children. (Purtill, 10/24)

Axios: A Peek At The Future Of Health Gadgets
With just an image of your face and the help of artificial intelligence, a new iPhone app can tell you your heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and even whether you are getting enough sleep. The app from FaceHeart Vitals was one in a slew of digital health devices on display at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas this week that offered a glimpse of how digital health companies are thinking about health care's biggest problems. (Reed, 10/25)

The Hill: Most Say Not Enough Being Done To Ensure Affordable Mental Health Care: Survey
Nearly three-fourths of U.S. adults said the government is not doing enough to ensure access to affordable mental health care, a new West Health-Gallup Healthcare survey found. The survey revealed that 73 percent of Americans said that the government was not doing enough to ensure affordable access to mental health care, compared to 12 percent who said that it was doing about the right amount. Seven percent said the government was doing too much, while another 7 percent said they didn’t know. (Ventura, 10/24)

Times of San Diego: County Highlights First Year Of CARE Act Accomplishments 
San Diego County leads the state in results a year after beginning a pilot program for behavioral health care, according to a county press release. (Sarup, 10/24)

San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘They Took Away The Love Of My Life’: Widow Sues Over Diabetic Man’s Death In San Diego Jail 
The widow of a diabetic man who died in San Diego’s Central Jail last year after being denied insulin has sued the county, Sheriff Kelly Martinez and the jail’s medical provider, NaphCare. (Davis, 10/24)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Election Anxiety Is Bad For Your Health. Here's How Some In The North Bay Are Coping
A recent study by the American Psychiatric Association showed that 73% of adults in the United States are feeling “particularly anxious” about the upcoming election. (Murphy, 10/24)

CNN: Harris To Deliver Address On Reproductive Freedom At Texas Rally Featuring Beyoncé 
Vice President Kamala Harris will give a speech on reproductive freedom in Texas on Friday, according to a senior Harris campaign official. In the closing days of the election, Harris is leaning into the issue of abortion rights as part of her broader argument against her Republican rival, placing the blame on former President Donald Trump for abortion bans in several states and amplifying stories of the people impacted by those restrictions. And Texas was chosen as the location for the rally, campaign officials said, because it’s the epicenter of abortion bans. (Alvarez and Iyer, 10/25)

Fresno Bee: The Likely Outcome Of Prop. 35? California Will Have To Cut Care For Medi-Cal Patients
The most expensive measure before voters this November is a health care industry-funded proposal claiming to strengthen Medi-Cal, California’s largest public health care program that serves the state’s poorest residents. But as with many things in health care, Proposition 35 is more complicated than it appears. (Kiran Savage-Sangwan and Mayra E. Alvarez, 10/24)

Los Angeles Times: The High Risks Of Sharing Your DNA With Online Companies
Turmoil at 23andMe, a company offering popular at-home DNA testing, has upset the industry. Following the resignation of every independent member of the company’s board of directors, its chief executive, Anne Wojcicki, expressed openness to selling the company and its database of around 15 million customers, raising concerns about the misuse of genetic data.Although Wojcicki has since said she is focused on taking 23andMe private, the data-sharing risks raised by DNA testing and matching companies are already here. A class-action lawsuit filed in August alleges that the operator of GEDmatch.com, a genealogy site that claims to have a database of more than 1 million members, has been sharing users’ information with Facebook. This revelation should alarm us all. (Nila Bala, 10/21)

Times of San Diego: Don’t Fall For Kevin Faulconer’s Pitch About Solving The Homeless Crisis
I know adults like to wear costumes in October. And there’s nothing wrong with indulging one’s fantasies. But I still cringe whenever I see Kevin Faulconer pretending he’s an expert on solving homelessness. Talk about chutzpah! (Marti Emerald, 10/22)

Los Angeles Times: Losses Increase As We Age. But At 75, I Made A Surprising Gain
One thing about getting older is that increasing loss is the lay of all the land. Loss of nimble limbs, incremental hearing loss, cataracts (of course). Loss of friends, of family, of famous icons we grew up alongside. It’s such a steady, relentless beat. It doesn’t (yet) take away the dance, but it changes the steps, forcing the dancer to adjust the tap and shuffle. (Margaret Ecker, 10/22)