Sacramento Bee: After Mass Shooting, Sacramento Advocates Focus On PTSD
Ahisha Lewis felt she had to do something to help her community when a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento took the lives of six people and wounded 12 more earlier this month. She wanted to make a difference in addressing the psychological trauma caused by the violence, so she began free therapy sessions at her nonprofit, A Different Path. (Smith, 4/14)

EdSource: Mental Health Hotline Numbers Would Appear On California College Student ID Cards If Bill Passes
Three years after California required colleges to put suicide prevention phone numbers on all student ID cards, a group of students wants to take the push for student wellness a step further: By adding a 24-hour mental health hotline. Assembly Bill 2122, introduced last month, would require all community colleges and California State University campuses to print a phone number on student identification cards for local mental health services, either through the city, county or the college itself. The hotline would be optional for the University of California because the Legislature doesn’t have authority over UC. (Jones, 4/15)

Modesto Bee: Modesto Approves Mental Health Pros With Cops On Crisis Calls 
The Modesto City Council on Tuesday approved a one-year program that pairs police officers with mental health clinicians on calls involving people undergoing mental health crises. The program is a partnership between the Police Department and Stanislaus County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services. Police Chief Brandon Gillespie said the next step is for the county Board of Supervisors to approve it. (Valine, 4/14)

inewsource: Rising STDs In San Diego Region Worry Local Experts
Despite a dip in the numbers in 2020, San Diego health experts expect rates of sexually transmitted diseases to continue climbing to historically high levels — and marginalized groups, such as people of color and members of LGBTQ communities, are hit the hardest. Bacterial STDs have been on a concerning rise for years. In the past two decades, the rate of chlamydia in San Diego County more than doubled. Gonorrhea tripled. And the rate of syphilis in 2020 was more than 50 times what it was in 2000. (Harper, 4/14)

KQED: 32-Hour Workweek? New Bill Gains Traction In Sacramento 
A shortened workweek for Californians could become the norm with a recently proposed bill aimed at reducing the regular 40-hour week down to 32. The proposed legislation, AB 2932 — co-sponsored by Assemblymembers Cristina Garcia and Evan Low — would apply to around 20% of the state's workforce, with more than 500 employees at the national level. According to the Employment Development Department, the bill would affect around 2,600 companies. (Whitney, 4/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Medical Board To Investigate 2-Year-Old’s Death At John Muir Medical Center
The Medical Board of California has launched an investigation into whether doctors at John Muir Health failed to properly care for a 2-year-old girl with liver cancer who died on an operating table at the organization’s Walnut Creek hospital in 2019. The inquiry comes in response to a Chronicle investigation that found John Muir leaders had dismissed warnings from staff that the community hospital was not equipped to handle such a specialized operation, known as a liver resection, on a child as young as Ailee Jong. (Gafni and Dizikes, 4/15)

Modesto Bee: Kaiser Hires New Leader To Oversee Central Valley Facilities 
Kaiser Permanente has new leadership for its Central Valley service area, including Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties. Aphriekah DuHaney-West is senior vice president and manager of Kaiser’s health care facilities in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. She began in the position Monday and will oversee hospital operations and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for the region including Modesto, Stockton, Manteca, Lathrop and Tracy. (Carlson, 4/14)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento County To Open Tiny Home Shelter For Homeless
Sacramento County is planning to build a 100-unit tiny home community for homeless people in one of its largest efforts yet to increase shelter capacity for unhoused residents. Located on the site of a former grocery store at 8144 Florin Rd. east of Highway 99, the project — announced by county officials Tuesday — will include both single and double-occupancy units, bathrooms and communal gathering spaces. It’s expected to open later this year, possibly in the fall. (Riley, 4/14)

Daily Pilot: O.C. Housing Agencies Struggle With 'Unprecedented' Number Of Housing Vouchers About To Expire 
When Orange County received a record number of federal housing vouchers last year, it was seen as a major step toward solving the local homelessness crisis. Since then, voucher holders have been challenged trying to find available homes in the county’s competitive market, and the expiration date for the vouchers is nearing. (Brazil, 4/14)

Bay Area News Group: Berkeley Awarded $16.2 Million To Renovate Golden Bear Inn On San Pablo Avenue Into Homeless Housing
Berkeley will soon purchase and renovate the Golden Bear Inn to welcome more than three dozen unhoused residents, thanks to a $16.2 million state grant awarded Wednesday. As part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s multibillion-dollar Homekey program to create thousands of housing units across California, the 44-room inn at 1620 San Pablo Ave. — formerly known as the Golden Bear Motel — will be transformed into 43 supportive housing studios and one studio unit for a property manager. (Lauer, 4/14)

CBS News: FDA Authorizes Breath Test That Can Detect COVID-19 In Three Minutes
The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization to a new COVID-19 test that can detect infections with only a sample of a patient's breath, using a device that can yield results in less than three minutes. ... The test, designed for use in hospitals, doctors offices or mobile testing sites, requires a piece of equipment around the size of a piece of carry-on luggage. The FDA says the company will be able to produce around 100 instruments per week. Each test can evaluate around 160 samples every day. In a study of 2,409 people with and without symptoms, the FDA says the device was able to spot 91.2% of cases — and yielded false positives in only 0.7% of results. The company announced kicking off clinical trials back in 2020, though the FDA says a follow-up study also found the tests had similar accuracy at detecting the Omicron variant. (Tin, 4/14)

The New York Times: F.D.A. Authorizes First Coronavirus Breath Test
The Breathalyzer test uses a technique called gas chromatography gas mass-spectrometry, which separates and identifies chemical mixtures to detect five compounds associated with the coronavirus in exhaled breath. If a test comes back positive on the Breathalyzer, it should be confirmed with a molecular test, such as a P.C.R. lab test. (Paz, 4/15)

CIDRAP: Most COVID-Infected Healthcare Workers Were Exposed At Work Early In Pandemic
In its first evaluation of COVID-19 exposures among US healthcare professionals (HCPs) over the first year of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that most HCPs were likely infected at work rather than in the community. The study, published yesterday in the American Journal of Infection Control, used national surveillance data on 83,775 HCPs with information on where they were likely infected with COVID-19 from Mar 1, 2020, to Mar 31, 2021. (4/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: Mask Mandate: How Risky Will Airline Travel And Public Transportation Be After Extended Rules End May 3?
You’ll have to mask up for air travel and other public transportation for at least a few more weeks after federal officials on Wednesday extended the face-covering mandate - a move that Bay Area experts call prudent, for now. But they add that people will likely soon have to take their safety into their own hands when the COVID-19 requirement, one of the most visibly contentious throughout the pandemic, is retired. (Vainshtein, 4/14)

ABC News: Pfizer May Have COVID-19 Booster That Addresses Omicron, Other Variants By Fall 
By this fall, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner BioNTech could potentially have a COVID-19 booster that specifically addresses the omicron variant as well as its subvariants and other known strains of the virus, CEO Albert Bourla said during a panel Wednesday. "It is a possibility that we have it by then; it's not certainty," Bourla said. "We are collecting data right now, and as far as I know, Moderna, as well as us, we are working on omicron or different enhanced vaccines." (Mitropoulos, 4/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: If Feinstein Is Mentally Unfit, Democrats Need To Tell Her Openly. And She Should Resign
Is Dianne Feinstein fit to continue serving as a U.S. senator? A report Thursday from Chronicle reporters Tal Kopan and Joe Garofoli suggests not. The story counts four U.S. senators, a Democratic member of Congress and three of Sen. Feinstein’s former staffers as among those who describe her memory as having deteriorated to the point of rendering her unfit for office. (4/14)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Must Invest In Youth Programs To Prevent Violence 
When did we start qualifying our horror at shootings according to the number of casualties? While we are still learning the details of the mass shooting that took place in downtown Sacramento on April 3, losing people to such violence is unacceptable in any number. In this case, six innocent individuals needlessly lost their lives. Our emergency personnel did what they could to respond to the violence. They have a critical role to play in our city, and we value that role in ensuring public safety. (Jay Schenirer, 4/12)

The Mercury News: Is A Second Booster For COVID-19 The Right Choice For You?
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently authorized a second booster shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for those age 50 and older. The recommendation follows a study out of Israel recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The Israel study reports a modest relative risk reduction in COVID-19 infections for those receiving a second booster compared to those who have gotten one booster, on the order of 1.5 times lower, with this benefit waning over the length of the study period, or around two months. (Sheldon Jacobson, 4/15)

The Desert Sun: Changes In The Virus, And The Science, Show California Doesn't Need New Vaccine Mandates
The slate of five bills in the California Legislature proposed by the vaccine working group fails to recognize that while COVID-19 vaccines do provide some protection against serious and life-threatening infections, and against spread of the virus, they do not block all transmission. That makes vaccination a personal health choice based upon individual risk. It does not justify mandating vaccination. Mandates for a vaccine that does not block all transmission are discriminatory. They force unvaccinated people to comply in order to attend school or keep their job. This is discrimination by coercion: Vaccinated people can spread viral particles, yet their activities are not restricted. The reasoning behind these mandates is not supported by current science-based data. (Eileen S. Natuzzi and Elisa Carbone, 4/10)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Latest Death Underscores Severity Of County Jail Scandal 
Since 2006, there have been 210 deaths — and counting — at jails run by the Sheriff’s Department. That’s one death a month over 16-plus years. Given that this is one of the largest tragedies/scandals/outrages in modern San Diego County history, it remains hard to stomach, let alone believe, that this was downplayed by the department. But until retiring in February, Sheriff Bill Gore rejected the case strongly made in a six-month investigation in 2019 by The San Diego Union-Tribune that showed San Diego County had the highest jail-mortality rate among large state counties. As jail deaths mounted, he dismissed basic questions about the failure of deputies to closely monitor the inmates who entered jails with expectations they’d be held safely. (4/14)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Vista Mental Health Site Shows County Finally Doing Its Job 
For nearly a quarter-century beginning in the 1990s, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors was controlled by like-minded Republicans whose actions showed they cared more about maintaining the county’s fiscal health than its public health. In recent years, however, term limits and turnover on a board with a new Democratic majority have led to a much greater appreciation of the county’s obligations under the California Constitution to ensure residents’ well-being. This has led to significantly expanded county efforts to help people and families confront homelessness and mental health and substance abuse issues — and to a smart, well-coordinated response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (4/14)

Capitol Weekly: Caregivers Demand A Role In Fixing Nursing Homes
Numbers tell one story of COVID-19’s toll on California nursing homes: Some 9,716 nursing home residents and staff died from the virus, amounting to one in eight COVID deaths statewide. But there’s another story that can’t be told in numbers. It’s the story of what it was like to work in the pandemic’s most dangerous conditions: the stress, the fear, the heartbreak. It’s a chapter in California’s history that nursing home workers like me are determined to never repeat — and why we are demanding transformation of the industry that puts us at the table. (Jesus Figueroa Cacho, 4/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: A CT Scan Could Save You From Lung Cancer. But It Could Also Do More Harm Than Good
More Americans are worried about cancer than COVID-19, according to a recent Gallup poll. The leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. is lung cancer, which kills approximately 130,000 people annually. Most lung cancers are not detected until already advanced; three-quarters of people diagnosed with lung cancer are dead within less than five years. These sobering statistics have motivated well-intentioned screening in hopes that earlier detection can save lives. Unfortunately, this screening often leads to significant harm. (Rita Redberg and Sanket Dhruva)

Voice of San Diego: Tents Changed Everything About Homelessness. Will San Diego Acknowledge It? 
Something happened 10-15 years ago to homelessness. I don’t know exactly what triggered it. But I remember walking through the Occupy San Diego protests – the tent encampments that sprang up at City Hall in 2011 demanding Wall Street accountability for the recession – and realizing many of the campers were not necessarily activists but homeless people who had come to live in what became a supportive village.  After that, the tent – the personal tent, the nylon or polyester Coleman, Marmot or REI camping tent – came to define street homelessness across the country. It drastically changed the visibility and experience of street homelessness. (Scott Lewis, 4/13)

Los Angeles Times: Keep Saying 'Gay,' Despite New Legislation. Kids Need To Hear It 
I first learned of ballroom from the documentary “Paris Is Burning.” I was in my senior year of high school. Already closeted and afraid, and then the first guy I dated outed me to one of my teachers. Thankfully she handled the situation with humanity, but his betrayal did little to help my already-shaky self-esteem. I started skipping school to hide from the world, my grades slipped into an abyss, and I found myself needing to go to summer school to get my diploma. To be honest with you, at that point in my life I really didn’t think I would make it to 30. That’s where I was when “Paris” found me, three decades ago. The documentary — shining a spotlight on queer communities of color and drag balls in New York City — did not make me gay. It made me feel that it was OK that I was. (LZ Granderson, 4/13)