Modern Healthcare: Tenet Healthcare To Sell 4 Hospitals To UCI Health | Modern Healthcare
Tenet Healthcare plans to sell four of its hospitals in Southern California and related outpatient locations to University of California Irvine's health system for $975 million. Under the definitive agreement announced Thursday, Lakewood Regional Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center and Placentia Linda Hospital, along with their adjoining outpatient facilities, would join UCI Health. The facilities would use Dallas-based Tenet subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions as their revenue cycle management service. (Desilva, 2/1)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Illumina Lays Off 111 Workers In San Diego 
Illumina, the leader in DNA-sequencing technology, is laying off 111 people at its San Diego headquarters. (Rocha, 2/1)

Los Angeles Times: LAPD Seeks To Hire More Multilingual Emergency Dispatchers
Amid significant vacancies in the Los Angeles Police Department, city officials are raising concerns over the department’s ability to serve non-English-speaking communities in emergency situations. (Caroline Petrow-Cohen and Angie Orellana Hernandez, 2/1)

Becker's Hospital Review: How A California System Leapt 9 Spots In Gartner's Supply Ranking 
In late 2023, Gartner ranked the top 25 health system supply chains. One California system jumped nine spots, from No. 25 to No. 16, in one year. Timothy Miller, vice president of supply chain shared services at Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health, told Becker's the success is because of his team's steadfast commitment to operational excellence and investing in diverse suppliers. (Twenter, 2/1)

Bay Area News Group: Why TB Cases Are Rising In California After Decades Of Decline 
Once known as consumption, the disease that killed Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederic Chopin and all five of the sisters Bronte, tuberculosis is often viewed as a bygone threat. But there is an uptick in new California illnesses after years of decline, with the number of cases in the Golden State increasing from 1,704 in 2020 to 1,848 in 2022. (2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Do More Women Get Autoimmune Diseases? Stanford Study Finds A Clue
Women have long been far more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases than men, accounting for about 80% of the more than 24 million Americans afflicted with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other debilitating disorders. But the reasons why have remained somewhat of a mystery. A new Stanford study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, offers one potential explanation: a gene on the second X chromosome, which only women have, can “leak” out of its rightful place in the cell and get spotted by the body’s antibodies, which see it as a threat and attack it. This type of interaction in the body — when your antibodies attack your own tissue — is a symptom of autoimmune diseases. (Ho, 2/1)

Associated Press: Lupus And Other Autoimmune Diseases Strike Far More Women Than Men. Now There's A Clue Why
Women are far more likely than men to get autoimmune diseases, when an out-of-whack immune system attacks their own bodies — and new research may finally explain why. (Neergaard, 2/1)

The War Horse: California Program Helps Older, Housing-Insecure Veterans
On a recent morning, four veterans who served in the 1960s and 1970s gathered at tables at the Jon W. Paulson Veterans Community in a common room that smelled of strong coffee. Eric Hill, an Army veteran with thinning gray hair, spent almost eight years living in his van, often staying the night in the San Francisco Veterans Affairs hospital’s parking lot. “When I was younger, you know, get in the car, travel around the country, with or without anybody, and that was fine,” he says. “But when you’re in your 60s, it’s not as easy. And now I’m 75. I feel very fortunate that I have this place.” (Marshall-Chalmers, 2/1)

Military Times: Marine Corps Receives Its First Science And Tech Lab Designation
The Marine Corps now has its own science and technology lab, offering the service a focused way to bring new tech to the force. The Army, Navy and Air Force have had such laboratories for years. Though the Corps hasn’t been without a research arm all that time. The Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity received the designation as a Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratory recently according to a Marine Corps Systems Command release. (South, 2/1)

Newsweek: Mysterious California Landfill Fire Raises Major Health Fears
Deep within the Chiquita Canyon Landfill site near Santa Clarita, to the north of Los Angeles, a fire has been burning, releasing noxious gases and vapors that have left local residents smelling foul odors and led to a multiagency task force to be formed to address the issue. Hazardous chemicals such as benzene—a carcinogen—and dimethyl sulfide, which is considered acutely toxic, have been detected being emitted at the landfill site, along with a host of other compounds, as discarded substances in the landfill mix and react with one another, raising concerns about the impact to locals' health that the emissions could have if not addressed soon. (Phillips, 2/1)

Bay Area News Group: Bay Area Counties Claim Tesla Illegally Dumped Hazardous Waste, Including From Fremont Plant
Eight Bay Area counties claim in a new lawsuit that electric carmaker Tesla illegally dumped hazardous waste produced in its Fremont factory and its auto service centers around the region. (Baron, 2/10

San Diego Union-Tribune: South San Diego County Delegation Travels To Capitol Hill, Makes Case For Funding To Remedy Sewage Crisis
A few doors down from Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, White House staffers learned Tuesday that the popular Silver Strand Half Marathon from Coronado to Imperial Beach had been discontinued because of the sewage crisis. (Murga, 2/1)

CalMatters: Cannabis Grower To Pay $750,000 For Violating Water Rules
A Humboldt County cannabis grower has agreed to pay $750,000, remove unpermitted ponds and restore streams and wetlands after state officials accused him of violating regulations protecting water supplies, wildlife and waterways. Of the total, $500,000 is a record penalty for a water rights violation in California. State officials say the violations by Joshua Sweet and the companies he owns and manages, Shadow Light Ranch, LLC and The Hills, LLC, continued for years and were “egregious,” damaging wetlands and other resources. (Becker, 2/2)

Sacramento Bee: California And Newsom’s Environmental Grade Takes A Hit
Newsom received a B- from the California Environmental Voters in its annual scorecard, his lowest marks since he took office 5 years ago. It’s a slightly lower grade than California as a whole, which came in at a B — last year both earned an A. (Plachta, 2/1)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Congress Remains Hurdle In Border Sewage Funding 
The sustained full-court press to get money needed to fix and expand the international sewage plant on San Diego’s border with Mexico continues to impress. (Michael Smolens, 2/2)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Wildfire Prevention Needed To Prevent Harmful Smoke 
Currently, the United States is facing an escalating environmental crisis, as the risk of wildfires is intensifying and, in turn, causing an increase in pollution. Historically, the United States has tackled wildfires through a combination of prevention, monitoring and management methods. These include ignition management, technological advancements and the Clean Air Act, respectively. (Lucy Diaz, Katelyn Hersey, and Olivia Copeland, 1/31)

CalMatters: California Could Spend Billions To Reduce A Fraction Of Water Use 
In an average year, 200 million acre-feet of water fall on California as rain or snow. The vast majority of it sinks into the ground or evaporates, but about a third of it finds its way into rivers. Half of that will eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean. (Dan Walters, 1/26)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Too Many California Towns Are Waiting For Clean Water
Barely a month after he took office in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom journeyed to a rural school in the Central Valley and stood by chance against a backdrop more prescient than he had planned: a classroom whiteboard that posed the “Essential Question — How do you respond to challenges?” (Miriam Pawel, 1/31)

CalMatters: Sacramento, San Francisco Struggling To Overcome COVID
Much has been said in the media — and rightfully so — about the deterioration of San Francisco’s downtown in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Dan Walters, 2/2)

Los Angeles Times: Yes On Proposition 1 For Mental Health Care 
Proposition 1 on the March 5 ballot won’t help the vast majority of the approximately 180,000 Californians living on the street, nor even most of the estimated one-third with serious psychiatric illnesses, substance use problems or both. It’s important to say that upfront, because the “Treatment not Tents” campaign urging a “yes” vote could leave voters with the impression that the measure offers a far more sweeping solution to homelessness and inadequate behavioral health treatment than it does. (1/30)