San Francisco Chronicle: Stanford Children’s Hospital To Lay Off Dozens, Restructure
Stanford Children’s Hospital is eliminating 87 positions as part of a restructuring plan aimed at addressing rising costs and “economic uncertainty in 2025.” (Vaziri, 10/14)

The Orange County Register: Planned Parenthood Closes Melody Health, Lays Off 81 Staff 
Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties is laying off 81 people as it shutters Melody Health, its primary care practice. (Maio, 10/13)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: UC Regents Approve Palomar Health Collaboration. ‘This Is A Lifetime Opportunity.’
The University of California Board of Regents approved a collaborative agreement between Palomar Health and UC San Diego Health on Tuesday, clearing the way for final approval by the North County health system’s board of directors next week. (Sisson, 10/14)

Bay Area News Group: Sutter Health Preps Patient Visits At Big New South Bay Medical Campus
Sutter Health is ready to launch patient care in one of several buildings that will be part of two vast Santa Clara medical hubs the health services organization is planning in the South Bay. (Avalos, 10/14)

Becker's Hospital Review: Los Angeles Hospital Taps Oracle AI Platform
Global technology giant Oracle said Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has improved core business system performance by up to 98% after migrating to the software developer’s autonomous AI database and cloud infrastructure. As part of the hospital’s long-term modernization plan, Oracle said CHLA is transitioning finance, human resources, supply chain and customer experience functions to Oracle cloud applications. (Jeffries, 10/14)

ABC10.com: California Caps Insulin Prices To $35 Copays
California is capping the price of insulin to help the millions of Californians diagnosed with diabetes. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law that will limit copays for a 30-day supply of insulin to $35. (Ellison, 10/14)

AP: New California Law Requires Restaurants To Disclose Food Allergens On Their Menus
California will become the first state in the nation requiring restaurants to list major food allergens on their menus starting in 2026 under a new law. The law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday applies to businesses with at least 20 locations. They will have to disclose ingredients including milk, eggs, shellfish and tree nuts when they know or “reasonably should know” that they are in their products. (10/14)

CalMatters: Newsom Signs New Seat Belt Requirements For Small Children
A new California law aims to keep more short children in booster seats for longer, imposing fines if they can’t properly wear their seat belt. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a watered-down version of Assembly Bill 435 that originally proposed to ban smaller teenagers from sitting in the front seat and to require short-statured youth to use booster seats into their middle school years. (Sabalow, 10/14)

Los Angeles Times: NRA Sues California Over Alleged Glock Ban Aimed At Illegal Machine Gun 'Switches' 
Gun rights organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a new California law that bans certain types of Glock-style semiautomatic firearms. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week, prohibits the sale of semiautomatic pistols with a “cruciform trigger bar” — a feature that allows gun owners to attach a device, commonly called a switch, that boosts the weapon’s firepower and converts it into a machine gun capable of spraying dozens of bullets in a fraction of a second. (King, 10/14)

EdSource: More Young People In California Struggling With Anxiety, Stress And Social Media, Study Finds 
A new survey paints a difficult but optimistic picture of California’s youth. About 94% of young people in the state said they experience regular mental health challenges — up from 87% in 2023, with one-third reporting their mental health as “fair” or “poor,” according to a new report by Blue Shield of California and Children Now. The survey polled 750 young people age 14 to 25 between April and June of this year across California. (Sanganeria, 10/15)

Capital & Main: People In ICE Custody Face Invasive Strip Searches After Visits With Loved Ones
Some people decide not to participate in in-person visitation because they don't want to take off all their clothes in front of a guard. (Morrissey, 10/14)

KQED: How California Is Preparing For A Health Insurance Crisis
The government shutdown has entered its third week, as Senate Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen it until Republicans agree to undo deep cuts to federal health care spending and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. If these subsidies expire, health insurance costs could double and hundreds of thousands of Californians could be priced out of coverage, according to estimates by KFF, the nonpartisan health research organization. (Shafer and Lagos, 10/14)

The Sacramento Bee: Trump Fires Federal Workers In California As Part Of Shutdown Layoffs
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development informed a federal employee union representing federal workers in California that it would layoff workers involved in programs “not in alignment with the President’s Management Agenda or the Administration’s priorities.” (Melhado, 10/14)

AP: Shutdown Delays Social Security Cost-Of-Living Announcement
The ongoing government shutdown is delaying the announcement of the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for tens of millions of beneficiaries. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the 2024 Social Security COLA announcement will now be Oct. 24. It is timed to the September Consumer Price Index, which also has not yet been released. (Hussein, 10/15)

Politico: Senate GOP Will Try To Advance Full-Year Spending Bills Amid Shutdown 
Senate GOP leaders are looking to pressure Democrats to make progress on full-year spending bills that would fund the Pentagon and a handful of other federal agencies amid the government shutdown. Majority Leader John Thune teed up the House-passed Defense appropriations bill Tuesday for an initial procedural vote, where it will need 60 votes to advance. That vote is set for Thursday. (Hill and Carney, 10/14)

Politico: Four GOP Ideas For An Obamacare Subsidies Compromise
A menu of options is starting to emerge around what a compromise might look like for extending a suite of Affordable Care Act tax credits, which have become a focal point in the current government funding standoff. With the shutdown about to enter its third week, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune continue to insist that any negotiation over the future of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies will need to happen after the government reopens. (Guggenheim, 10/14)

CalMatters: Kevin Kiley’s Newest Challenger Is A Sacramento Doctor
Dr. Richard Pan, a Harvard-trained pediatrician and former state senator who made national headlines for leading California’s effort to eliminate religious and “personal belief” exemptions to school vaccine mandates, announced his candidacy for California’s 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday. (Miller, 10/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Blue States Are Setting Up A Shadow Public-Health Alliance To Counter RFK Jr.
The public-health resistance to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is growing. Governors across 15 states including New York, California and North Carolina are forming a new public-health alliance to detect and respond to disease threats, saying federal-funding cuts and policy changes by the Trump administration are putting their citizens at risk and forcing them to find alternatives. (McKay, 10/15)

PBS NewsHour: How The Latest Round Of Federal Layoffs Could Impact Public Health
Over the weekend, roughly 1,300 employees at the CDC received notices they were fired. As the Trump administration realized it had fired some key staff, reportedly half of them were reinstated the next day. It still leaves the health agency without many crucial professionals. Amna Nawaz discussed the impact with Dr. Nirav Shah. (Nawaz and Merchant, 10/14)

MedPage Today: Want To Call CDC To Report A Possible Disease Outbreak? Fuhgeddaboutit
Thinking of calling CDC to report a potential disease outbreak? Don't bother; no one will answer, a former CDC employee said Tuesday. "If it's an infection that is being seen in the hospital in four different patients, and the infection control nurse calls [the CDC] ... You are working with the physicians, the nurses, the schools, the restaurants, to try and sort through, 'What is going on and what can we do?'" said Karen Remley, MD, MPH, former director of the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. (Frieden, 10/14)

KQED: Encampments Are Polluting Bay Area Creeks. Can Those Who Live There Help Restore Them?
The eight-week program was put on this summer by the Contra Costa Resource Conservation District, the nonprofit Safe Organized Spaces Richmond and a pair of researchers. It’s part of a larger study examining the intersection of homelessness, climate change, and urban streams across the Bay Area’s nine counties. (Rancano, 10/14)

Voice of San Diego: Politifest: Solutions To San Diego’s Street Homelessness Crisis 
Voice of San Diego hosted a session on what to do about street homelessness at Politifest 2025: Solutions Showdown on Oct. 4, 2025. Three speakers presented specific solutions. Here’s what they had to say. (Lineback, 10/14)