Los Angeles Times: Despite Improvements, California's Campaign For Childhood Immunizations Faces Pushback
Approved after a measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, the law makes California one of only three states that bar parents from citing their personal beliefs to avoid having their children vaccinated. Yet, even with the strict new law, there remain schools and neighborhoods with dangerously low vaccination rates, experts say, largely because a growing number of parents are obtaining doctors’ notes exempting their kids from the required shots. (Karlamangla, 7/13)

Modesto Bee: How Fighting To Break Free Of Opioid Addiction Is A Struggle In Stanislaus County 
A year ago, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties were targeted for $4.2 million in funding for Narcan distribution and a hub-and-spoke system for supporting local physicians in providing medication-assisted treatment for addicts. Thus far, no physicians have chosen to participate in the project in Stanislaus County. (Carlson, 7/12)

In other public health news —

KPCC: Saving Black Babies By Saving A Whole Neighborhood 
The Castlemont neighborhood in East Oakland is known as a Best Babies Zone. The idea of this initiative is that improving life for everyone in the community will ultimately save babies. (Neely, 7/12)

Los Angeles Times: Though He Lived 5,000 Years Ago, Otzi The Iceman Was Not A Strict Adherent To The Paleo Diet
If you were thinking that the ancient Alpine traveler known as Otzi — and often known simply as Iceman — scraped by on a diet of foraged grasses and berries, you’d be very wrong. A comprehensive new study of his stomach contents reveals that Otzi, who perished roughly 5,300 years ago on a mountain in the Eastern Alps of Italy, died with a belly full of fatty meat, some whole seeds from the einkorn wheat plant, and maybe a bit of goat’s milk or cheese — all eaten just a couple of hours before he died. (Healy, 7/12)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Hair Regrowth Treatment Now Being Tested In Women By La Jolla's Histogen
La Jolla’s Histogen has begun clinical testing of a hair regrowth treatment in women. The injected treatment contains stem cell secretions that stimulate hair follicles. An earlier version is already being tested in men. (Fikes, 7/12)

The Bakersfield Californian: Program Aims To Make Finding Healthy Food Options At Restaurants Easier
Those trying to find healthy food options at restaurants now have a new resource that could make the search a little easier. The Kern County Public Health Services Department announced Thursday its new Certified Healthy program, through which participating restaurants that meet a stringent set of criteria will receive a special logo for their grading card and menu, indicating which items are considered healthy. (Luiz, 7/12)

In other news from across the state —

San Diego Union-Tribune: Two County Supervisors Ask Tri-City To Rethink Mental Health Unit Suspension
wo county supervisors are calling for reversal of a decision that would indefinitely suspend the mental health units at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside. In a letter dated Tuesday, July 10, Kristin Gaspar, chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, and Bill Horn, whose district encompasses most of North County, call the Tri-City board’s suspension decision “a failure to the community.” (Sisson, 7/12)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Santa Rosa Business Park Becomes Refuge For Homeless People Camping In RVs, Trailers
Northpoint Corporate Center, a 250-acre business park in southwest Santa Rosa, is home to 20 of the city’s largest businesses, including Amy’s Kitchen, JDS Uniphase and a new Kaiser Permanente medical office building. But the business park has started attracting a new type of tenant. Homeless people are parking RVs, trailers and cars along the streets of the business park, seeking a quiet, safe place to sleep in their vehicles at night. Many were pushed out of other longstanding encampments in Roseland and along the Joe Rodota Trail earlier this year after the City of Santa Rosa implemented a new homeless policy that prioritized clearing out camps. (Herbst, 7/11)

Capital Public Radio: Cannabis Tax Goes To San Joaquin County Ballot After Supervisors Approve Pot Sales, Cultivation 
San Joaquin County voters will go to the polls in November to decide how to spend tax money generated by commercial cannabis. The Board of Supervisors approved ordinances to regulate commercial and private marijuana cultivation, all of which must be grown indoors under the rules. (Ibarra, 7/12)

The New York Times: U.S. Says It Has Reunited Half Of All Migrants Under 5, With Rest ‘Ineligible’
The Trump administration said on Thursday that it had reunified all the migrant children under the age of 5 it determined were eligible to be returned to their parents, part of a court order to reunite the children who were separated from their families at the border. Officials said that 57 of the 103 children had been reunited with their families as of Thursday morning. An additional 46 children remain in government custody because they have been found ineligible to be returned to their families for various reasons. (Nixon and Jordan, 7/12)

The Hill: Trump Administration Says It Has Completed Reunifying Migrant Kids Under 5
“As of this morning, the initial reunifications were completed. Throughout the reunification process our goal has been the well-being of the children and returning them to a safe environment,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a joint statement. (Weixel, 7/12)

The Associated Press: US: Nearly Half Of Youngest Children Not Rejoining Families
The U.S. officials said 46 of the children were not eligible to be reunited with their parents; a dozen parents had already been deported and were being contacted by the administration. Nine were in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for other offenses. One adult’s location was unknown, they said. Of the deported parents, officials said they had chosen to leave their children behind. One deported father, however, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week that he didn’t realize what he was doing when he signed the paperwork to leave his child behind. It wasn’t clear if he was one of the dozen; no names have been made public. (Long, 7/12)

The Washington Post: Trump Administration Reunites 57 Of 103 Young Migrant Children, Says The Rest Are Ineligible
Court records show that 22 children were not returned because of safety concerns posed by the adults with whom they had been traveling. Eleven of the adults had serious criminal histories, such as kidnapping and murder, said Chris Meekins, chief of staff for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, which is aiding in the reunification effort. One adult was convicted of child cruelty and narcotics charges. For the others, the case outcomes remain unclear: Meekins said one adult has been charged with human smuggling, another faces domestic violence charges, one father has an outstanding drunken driving charge in Florida, and another adult is wanted for murder in Guatemala. Others have similar convictions or charges filed against them, officials said. (Sacchetti, 7/12)

Politico: ACLU Says It Can't Verify Migrant Reunifications
Attorneys seeking to reunify migrant children separated from their parents at the southern border said Thursday that they were not able to verify the Trump administration’s claim that nearly five dozen children had been returned to their parents. (Kullgren, 7/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Says All Eligible Young Migrant Children Have Been Reunited
Authorities will now move to reunite the more than 2,000 older minors who remain apart from their relatives, a process a judge has said must be completed by the end of the month. The government will take steps to screen parents to determine whether they are eligible for reunification, so it isn’t clear how many children will be reconnected with their families. (Gurman and Campo-Flores, 7/12)

Los Angeles Times: 'We Cannot Take Care Of These Inmates': Victorville Prison Strains To Handle Hundreds Of Immigrant Detainees
Immigration detainees who were sent to a federal prison in Victorville last month were kept in their cells for prolonged periods with little access to the outside and were unable to change their clothing for weeks, according to workers at the facility and visitors who have spoken with detainees. Staffers at the prison also say they have not been given the proper resources or direction to handle the influx of detainees, putting both inmates and workers in danger. (Esquivel, 7/13)

The Associated Press: Detaining Immigrant Kids Is Now A Billion-Dollar Industry
Detaining immigrant children has morphed into a surging industry in the U.S. that now reaps $1 billion annually — a tenfold increase over the past decade, an Associated Press analysis finds. Health and Human Services grants for shelters, foster care and other child welfare services for detained unaccompanied and separated children soared from $74.5 million in 2007 to $958 million in 2017. The agency is also reviewing a new round of proposals amid a growing effort by the White House to keep immigrant children in government custody. (7/12)

The Associated Press: States Brace For Abortion Fights After Kavanaugh Nomination
Anticipating renewed fights over abortion, some governors and state lawmakers already are looking for ways to enhance or dismantle the right in their own constitutions and laws. President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has raised both fears and hopes that a conservative court majority could weaken or overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that created a nationwide right to abortion. That could fan an already raging battle in states over what should and should not be legal. (7/12)

The Hill: Dem Senator: Kavanaugh Would 'Turn Back The Clock' On Women's Health Care
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) announced Thursday that she will oppose Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court over concerns that he would undercut the Affordable Care Act and a landmark abortion case. “The President vowed to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and I cannot support a nominee for a lifetime appointment who would turn back the clock on a woman’s constitutional right and freedom to make her own health care choices, including access to birth control," Baldwin said in a statement. (Carney, 7/12)

The Hill: Poll Finds Strong Support For Roe V. Wade
Nearly two-thirds of Americans support Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, according to a new Gallup poll. Sixty-four percent of Americans stand by Roe v. Wade while 28 percent would like to see it overturned, pollsters found. The poll found a wide partisan split, with 81 percent of Democrats supporting the ruling, compared to 41 percent of Republicans. Thirteen percent of Democrats opposed Roe v. Wade, meanwhile, as did 51 percent of Republicans. (Birnbaum, 7/12)

The New York Times Fact Check: Democrats Overstate Kavanaugh’s Writings On The Affordable Care Act
Judge Kavanaugh has written two dissenting opinions in the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act while serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In both cases, he refrained from making broad pronouncements about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, said Wendy Parmet, a professor of health law at Northeastern University. (Qiu, 7/12)

The Washington Post: Democrats Say Kavanaugh Could Help End Obamacare, But Court Likely To Deal With Narrower Issues
Senate Democrats and their allies are casting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a grave danger to Americans’ ability to afford health care as a central theme of their high-decibel campaign to block his ascension to the Supreme Court. But after a half-dozen years in which the high court has repeatedly upheld the essence of the Affordable Care Act, Kavanaugh, if confirmed, would be less likely to help decide cases threatening the law’s survival than a mosaic of narrower issues, often arising from the Trump administration’s eagerness to chip away at parts of the law. (Goldstein, 7/12)

Politico: ‘Kiss My You Know What’: Schumer Hamstrung In SCOTUS Fight
Chuck Schumer says he’s going to fight Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court with “everything I’ve got.” To do so, he’ll need to get centrist Democrats to hold the line. The minority leader’s problem? Those Democrats say he can’t tell them what to do. “I’ll be 71 years old in August, you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you know what,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) when asked if Schumer can influence his vote. (Everett and Schor, 7/13)

The Hill: Trump Health Chief Defends Suspending ObamaCare Payments
The Trump administration is bound by a federal court decision to suspend billions of dollars in ObamaCare payments, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma said Thursday. “We really are in a tough spot,” Verma told reporters. “I think that there’s been a lot of discussion about whether the Trump administration is making a decision. We’re not making a decision. The court has told us what to do here … at the end of the day, we have to abide by the court’s ruling.” (Weixel, 7/12)

The Hill: House Panel Advances Bill That Would Temporarily Halt ObamaCare's Employer Mandate
The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved legislation that would chip away at ObamaCare, including a measure that would temporarily repeal the law's employer mandate. The bill sponsored by GOP Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) would suspend penalties for the employer mandate for 2015 through 2019 and delay implementation of the tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health plans for another year, pushing it back to 2022. (Hellmann, 7/12)

In other national health care news —

Stat: How Pfizer’s CEO Kept On Raising Prices — Until Trump's Tweet
As the CEO of Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, Ian Read followed a years-long pricing strategy that reaped billions for his company. It was like clockwork: jack up prices every six months. The moves did not go entirely unnoticed, but Pfizer generally escaped much flak because other pharma companies did the same thing. But Read’s pricing game plan didn’t seem so shrewd when President Trump entered the picture last week. Days earlier, Pfizer was virtually alone in raising prices for dozens of drugs — many by more than 9 percent — and it prompted a raging tweet from Trump. In a brief phone call with the president that Read sought on Tuesday night to defuse the uproar, the CEO backed down and deferred the hikes. (Silverman and Sheridan, 7/13)

The Associated Press: FDA To More Aggressively Tackle Disruptive Drug Shortages
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it wants to more aggressively fight medication shortages that have led to rationing of some drugs and disrupted patient care. The agency announced plans for a task force to find ways to improve the supply of crucial drugs. It’s a new approach for the drug regulator, which has very little control over drug makers’ operations. It generally can’t act until drug makers tell the agency that shortages are imminent or that it will stop making a drug. (7/12)

CNN: Drug Shortages Prompt FDA To Form Task Force
"It's a patient safety issue," said Dr. James Augustine, chairman of the national clinical governance board for US Acute Care Solutions, a physician group that provides staffing for emergency rooms and hospitals across the country. Some patients, he said, are "scared to death for their life." (Nedelman, 7/12)

The New York Times: Secret Service Issues Guide To Help Prevent School Shootings
Mock-shooting drills. Metal detectors. Bulletproof classroom shelters. As deadly school shootings continue to be a fixture in headlines and an everyday fear for districts and students, schools across the country have resorted to “hardening” their campuses. But a federal report released Thursday backs another model that school safety experts have for years supported as a way to save lives: the formation of “threat assessment teams” that employ mental health, law enforcement and education professionals to help identify and support troubled youths. (Yoon-Hendricks, 7/12)

The Washington Post: How Adoption And Support Programs Failed The Hart Siblings And Ushered Them To Their Deaths
One day, she thought, the three kids would come back and find her. They would return to Houston and reunite with the woman who fought to keep their family together. Priscilla Celestine held on to that dream for years, long after the state of Texas took the children — all younger than 6 at the time — and sent them 1,300 miles away to live in a Minnesota town she didn’t know, in a home she didn’t know with a family she didn’t know. The interstate adoption, finalized in 2009, was in Devonte, Jeremiah and Ciera’s best interest, the state determined. They would be safe and cared for.The state was wrong. (Heim and Tate, 7/12)

Los Angeles Times: What Brett Kavanaugh Could Mean For The Future Of Abortion, Marriage Equality And Much More
After a buildup worthy of a master of reality TV, President Trump has nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement. This continues a run of almost 50 consecutive years when the court has had a majority of Republican appointees. Many commentators will rush to cast this nomination solely in terms of what it means for the rights to abortion and to marriage equality for same-sex couples. Although those issues are important, Kavanaugh likely will have the deciding vote on many other issues that have a profound impact on people’s daily lives. He should be assessed on what he would bring to the court on all these issues. (David A. Super, 7/9)

Sacramento Bee: Trump Abortion War Gags Doctors, Stacks Supreme Court
Not content to merely stack the judiciary according to social conservatives’ Mad Men-era playbook, President Donald Trump last month announced a new rule that would make it significantly harder to avoid unwanted pregnancies for poor Californians. It is, to be blunt, a gag rule that would yank federal subsidies for contraceptives and other care from providers who even discuss abortion with patients. (7/9)

Sacramento Bee: Californians Want To Reduce Abortions, No Matter What Happens At Supreme Court
Despite the fear-mongering of the abortion industry and its supporters, abortion will remain legal in California regardless of changes on the U.S. Supreme Court. Twenty percent of all U.S. abortions occur in California, ending more than 500 human lives each day at more than 140 locations, dominated by Planned Parenthood. In 1967 California legalized abortion, even paid for with our state tax dollars. (Wynnette Sills, 7/11)

The Mercury News: Separating Children From Parents Harms Development
If a child experiences an adverse event the young brain can recover and is remarkably resilient in large part due to the social-emotional buffering provided by a strong, loving parent relationship. But when you fracture that relationship by separating a parent and their child, the resiliency of the young brain erodes and if pro-longed, permanently changes the brain architecture. (Jaime Peterson, 7/10)

Los Angeles Times: The U.S. Bullied The World To Stop A Pro-Breastfeeding Resolution? That's The American Way
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week denounced the Trump administration for imposing tariffs that may result in retaliation and an economy-wide trade war. But they haven’t said much about its recent use of trade threats on behalf of multinational corporations. According to a New York Times report, the administration tried to deep-six a resolution at the World Health Assembly to encourage breastfeeding. It warned smaller nations such as Ecuador that it would face trade sanctions and withdrawal of military aid if it introduced the pro-breastfeeding resolution. Countries succumbed one by one to U.S. intimidation until Russia intervened to stop the bullying, and the resolution finally passed. Even then, U.S. negotiators pulled language that would have urged the World Health Organization to support countries seeking to improve infant nutrition. (David Dayen, 7/9)

Sacramento Bee: Hate Crimes Are Up, Even In California. Don’t Let Trump Drag Us Back To Prop. 187 Days
Californians see ourselves as tolerant and inclusive. Still, how about that woman with the brick who yelled “go back to your country” as she brutally beat a 92-year-old Latino grandfather in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July? Or the white supremacist who showed up in violent footage from Charlottesville, Va. – and on a list of contractors with government security clearances at the Redondo Beach facility of Northrup Grumman? (7/12)

Sacramento Bee: Legislature Must Not Slight Seniors In Mental Health Money 
An important measure to expand access to mental health care services in California is going through the Legislature, but it would make it more difficult for counties to serve older adults. Senate Bill 1004, which was approved by the Assembly Health Committee on June 19, would amend Proposition 63, passed by voters in 2004 to provide funding for county mental health services with a 1 percent tax on annual incomes of more than $1 million. (Cheryl Brown, 7/6)

Orange County Register: ‘Mental Disorder’ Now A Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card
Currently, defendants undergoing diversion — which can occur pre-trial or after a guilty plea — still have their charges publicly displayed. Now, due to this law, the public is not protected as a whole new class of mentally ill criminals will enjoy a life where no one will learn about their sordid past. (Todd Spitzer, 7/7)

Los Angeles Times: Food Stamps Can Make The Difference For Struggling O.C. Families, Many Of Them Working
Unfortunately for too many Orange County children and their families, food insecurity is standing in the way of a better life. That is why Orange County United Way urges the House and Orange County’s congressional delegation to place their focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. (Susan Parks, 7/5)