CalMatters: Why Trump Medicaid Changes May Threaten CA Housing Services
In 2022, California made sweeping changes to its Medi-Cal program that reimagined what health care could look like for some of the state’s poorest and sickest residents by covering services from housing to healthy food. But the future of that program, known as CalAIM, could be at risk under the Trump administration. In recent weeks, federal officials have signaled that support for creative uses of Medi-Cal funding is waning, particularly uses that California has invested in such as rent assistance and medically tailored meals. Medi-Cal is California’s name for Medicaid. (Hwang, 4/24)

CBS News: House Republicans Face Dilemma Over Medicaid Cuts As They Vow To Protect Benefits
House Republicans are facing the difficult task of slashing $1.5 trillion — with hundreds of billions likely in Medicaid spending — to help offset the cost of President Trump's tax cuts. House leadership has denied that Medicaid — a joint federal-state health insurance program that provides care for more than 70 million low-income adults, children and people with disabilities — will be gutted. But it's unclear how Republicans plan to reach the level of spending cuts laid out in the budget resolution that Congress adopted earlier this month without drastically trimming the program. (Yilek, 4/24)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Illumina Announces Another Round Of Layoffs In San Diego 
Just two months after announcing it would be laying off dozens of its San Diego employees, gene sequencing giant Illumina said it plans let go of 172 more workers. (Weisberg, 4/23)

Becker's Hospital Review: California Health System Acquires Orthopedic Practice
Monterey (Calif.) Spine and Joint is joining Monterey-based Montage Health starting April 28, Monterey County Now reported. The practice will also work under the name, Montage Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, the report said. The decision to join the health system came amid challenges with declining insurance reimbursement and rising costs. (Behm, 4/24)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Tri-City Nurses Say Staffing Shortages Are Hurting Care 
For the second year in a row, nurses at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside demonstrated over what they say is a critical inability to retain nurses, a multi-year trend they say has eroded the public hospital district’s ability to effectively care for its patients. (Sisson, 4/24)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Doctor Suspected Of Stealing Powerful Drugs From Oakland, S.F.
An anesthesiologist suspected of stealing drugs from UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals was transferred from the organization’s Oakland campus to the sister campus in San Francisco, where less than two hours after she was scheduled to assist with a 2-year-old’s surgery, she was found unconscious in an operating room, according to police reports. When the anesthesiologist was discovered on March 5, an IV needle jutted out of her arm amid a constellation of track marks, UCSF police officers said in a report. They said both the IV drip and a syringe found in her possession contained propofol, a powerful anesthetic commonly used to keep people sedated during surgeries. (Cassidy, 4/25)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Plan Would Spread Homeless Shelters To All Corners Of The City
For years, Tenderloin and SoMa residents have complained that their neighborhoods have become a containment zone for San Francisco’s most vexing problems, arguing that they’re are unfairly saddled with the majority of the city’s homeless shelters and mental health facilities. To address those complaints, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood plans to introduce legislation that would require the city to approve at least one homeless shelter or behavioral health site in every district over the next eighteen months. The supervisor’s proposal also prohibits any new sites within 1,000 feet of an existing one, essentially creating a moratorium in certain parts of the Tenderloin and SoMa that are already oversaturated with these services. (Angst, 4/24)

AP: San Francisco Inches Closer To Adopting Drug Policy With Abstinence As Its Primary Goal
Reeling from drug overdose deaths and scenes of people smoking fentanyl on sidewalks, San Francisco moved closer Thursday to adopting a “recovery first” drug policy that sets abstinence from illicit drugs as its primary goal, a proposal that has prompted heated debate in the city that pioneered harm reduction. Opponents of Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s proposal say its emphasis on stopping drug use alienates those who are not ready to quit, while proponents say the city has been far too permissive and making drug use safer does not help break the cycle of addiction. (Har, 4/25)

Argus-Courier: How The Blue Zones Project Has Reshaped Healthy Living In Petaluma
Throughout her life, Petaluma resident Jennifer Eastwood has faced a number of health challenges. But all of that turned around after she was introduced to Blue Zones Project Petaluma, a local chapter of a much larger initiative to improve the health of communities around the nation and the world. (Richardson, 4/23)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Blood Pressure-Lowering Medication Shows Promise In New Trial Results
Dr. Michael Wilkinson, the local principal investigator for the San Diego arm of the phase two study and a cardiologist at UC San Diego Health, said that the drug, which blocks the action of the hormone aldosterone, is particularly promising because of its ability to lower systolic blood pressure while also causing minimal complications. (Sisson, 4/24)

Becker's Hospital Review: How A California Health System Overcomes 'App Fatigue'
Newport Beach, Calif.-based Hoag Health System is launching new digital products to meet rising consumer expectations and overcome “app fatigue,” an executive told Becker’s. The two-hospital system is coming out with a digital health platform to help patients with gastrointestinal issues, as well as 24/7 on-demand virtual care. (Bruce, 4/24)

Los Angeles Times: U.S. Will Lose Population Immunity To Measles In A Generation, Stanford Scientists Say
In December, Stanford School of Medicine colleagues Dr. Nathan Lo and Mathew Kiang got to talking. Childhood immunization rates were slowly but steadily falling nationwide, from 95% in the years before the pandemic to less than 93% in the 2023-24 school year. If even that relatively small decline in vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP); polio; and varicella held, they wondered, what would U.S. infectious-disease prevalence look like in 10 years, or 20? What would happen if vaccination rates went up by a little bit, or fell by a whole lot? (Purtill, 4/25)

Los Angeles Times: Salinas Produce Supplier Accused Of Causing E. Coli Outbreak
Salinas-based produce supplier Taylor Fresh Foods is facing lawsuits from nine victims of a November E. coli outbreak that was not disclosed to the public. The outbreak — which killed one person and sickened at least 88 more — was linked to romaine lettuce and spanned at least 15 states, including Missouri and Indiana. Federal investigators traced the cases back to a single grower, but the Food and the Drug Administration didn’t disclose the name. (Mendez, 4/24)

Stat: No New Autism Registry, HHS Says Walking Back NIH Director's Claim
The federal health department is not creating a new registry of Americans with autism, a Department of Health and Human Services official said in a written statement Thursday. Instead, the official said, HHS will launch a $50 million research effort to understand the causes of autism spectrum disorder and improve treatments. (Broderick, 4/24)

AP: USDA Withdraws A Plan To Limit Salmonella Levels In Raw Poultry
The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat. The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service cited feedback from more than 7,000 public comments and said they would “evaluate whether it should update” current salmonella regulations. (Aleccia, 4/24)

KVPR: House Oversight Democrat Demands Answers On Gutting Of CDC Public Records Office
The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wants answers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about why its public records staff was gutted on April 1, when thousands of federal health agency workers were fired. Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, sent a letter to CDC's acting director Dr. Susan Monarez on Thursday, expressing "concern" about the 22 staffers who handled and fulfilled public records requests being placed on administrative leave until their jobs are eliminated on June 2. (Lupkin, 4/24)

Bloomberg: FDA Leader Says He Has No Plan To Act On Abortion Pill Access
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said he has no plans to change government policy on the abortion pill mifepristone, a hot-button issue in the US since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. Makary would reconsider the issue if new data emerged that signaled a safety issue with the drug that is now used in more than half of US abortions, he said during an appearance at the Semafor World Economy Summit on Thursday. (Cohrs Zhang and Nix, 4/24)

KVPR: In A Reversal, The Trump Administration Restores Funding For Women's Health Study
The Trump administration is restoring financial support for a landmark study of women's health, an official said Thursday, reversing a defunding decision that shocked medical researchers. "These studies represent critical contributions to our better understanding of women's health," said a statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. (Stein, 4/24)

KVPR: They Say They Want Americans To Have More Babies. What's Beneath The Surface?
"Humanity is dying," billionaire Elon Musk told Fox News anchor Bret Baier recently when asked what keeps him up at night. "The birth rate is very low in almost every country. And so unless that changes, civilization will disappear." Through interviews, social media posts, funding for population research and his own example as the parent of at least 14 children, Musk has become one of the most visible beacons of anxiety about falling birth rates. (Hagen, 4/25)

The Hill: Reproductive Health Group, ACLU Sue Trump Administration Over Title X Funding
One of the country’s largest reproductive health advocacy groups is suing the Trump administration for withholding millions of dollars in federal family planning grants earlier this year. The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, claiming the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “unlawfully withheld” $65.8 million in Title X funds to 16 family planning groups. (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/24)

Politico: Pentagon To Resume Medical Care For Transgender Troops
The Pentagon will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO, an embarrassing setback to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to restrict their participation. The memo says the Defense Department is returning to the Biden-era medical policy for transgender service members due to a court order that struck down Hegseth’s restrictions as unconstitutional. (Detsch, McLeary and Cheney, 4/24)

NBC News: DOJ Will Investigate Doctors Who Provide Trans Care To Minors, Attorney General Says
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo this week seeking to further curtail access to transgender health care for minors. In the memo, Bondi said the Justice Department will use a variety of existing U.S. laws to investigate providers of such care, as well as drug manufacturers and distributors. She directed U.S. attorneys to use laws against female genital mutilation to investigate doctors who “mutilate” children “under the guise of care” and to prosecute these “offenses to the fullest extent possible.” (Yurcaba, 4/24)

Capitol Weekly: Why 340B Matters To Californians And Their Health
When used as intended, the federal 340B program can combat deep systemic inequities and improve health outcomes for marginalized communities; however, it is being exploited by bad actors and Californians aren’t benefiting. (Ifeoma Udoh, 4/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Is About To Make It Easier To Dump Toxic Waste In Your Town
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control is updating the state’s Hazardous Waste Management Plan, a document that’s supposed to chart a safer, smarter future for dealing with our most dangerous industrial byproducts. But buried deep in the current version of the update is a proposal to allow more contaminated soil and toxic materials to be dumped in regular municipal landfills — sites never designed to safely contain hazardous waste. (Janet Johnson, 4/23)

Times of San Diego: Weakening CEQA Will Threaten California's Environment And Health
For over 50 years, the California Environmental Quality Act has acted as our environmental bill of rights, protecting our natural resources and the health and safety of our communities. CEQA requires California public agencies to publish environmental impact reports before approving  projects with serious environmental and public health consequences. This analysis gives community members basic information about proposed projects and their impacts — for example on air pollution, water use, fire risks, access to public services and more. (Pam Heatherington, 4/19)

Los Angeles Times: RFK Jr. Doesn't Know Much About Autism
[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s] Health and Human Services Department is in the grip of a pseudoscience revolution in which misinformation and disinformation are ascendant. The cost to scientific research generally and to households caring for those with chronic conditions such as ASD is incalculable. (Michael Hiltzik, 4/22)