San Francisco Chronicle: Wildfire Smoke Rushing Toward Bay Area Will Impact These Cities
Smoke from a wildfire in Oregon is rushing toward Northern California, and hot weather could chuck some of the particles toward the Bay Area. The Flat Fire exploded in size and intensity between Tuesday and Wednesday, covering 12,000 acres large with 0% containment by Wednesday morning according to the U.S. Forest Service. Its smoke, visible on satellite imagery, is likely to stir up air quality concerns over the next couple of days. (Díaz, 7/20)

NPR: El Niño Will Likely Last Into 2024, And More Heat Is Coming
More hot weather is expected for much of the United States in the coming months, federal forecasters warn, driven by a combination of human-caused climate change and the El Niño climate pattern. El Niño is a cyclic climate phenomenon that brings warm water to the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and leads to higher average global temperatures. El Niño started in June. Today, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño will continue through March 2024. (Hersher, 7/20)

Sacramento Bee: CA Aquifers Took In 11 Million Gallons Of Water This Year
State water authorities estimated that 3.8 million acre-feet of water went into depleted underground reservoirs this year after a record winter of rain and snow. That’s about how much water more than 11 million California households will use annually. (Plachta, 7/20)

NBC News: Record-Breaking Heat Wave Is Causing Second-Degree Burns And Heat Exhaustion
Emergency workers in Arizona and Nevada reported an uptick in cases of contact burns as temperatures spiked into the triple digits, and have remained high for weeks on end. The burns typically occur when people fall or pass out on sun-scorched pavement and other hot surfaces. During intense heat waves, as has been unfolding across the Southwest, even being in contact with these surfaces for short periods of time can do serious damage, said Dr. Kara Geren, an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health in Phoenix. (Chow, McLaughlin and Parra, 7/20)

Politico: Bill Would Fund Effort To Remove PFAS From Firefighting Gear
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is hoping to boost funds to help eradicate "forever chemicals" from firefighting, an effort that has been long backed by the nation's largest firefighters' union. The "Protecting Firefighters and Advancing State-of-the-Art (PFAS) Alternatives Act" would speed up the development of reinvented firefighting gear free of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. (Borst, 7/20)

The New York Times: Biden’s ‘Justice40’ Program Won’t Fix Racial Gap In Air Quality, Study Finds
A new analysis has found that the White House’s signature environmental justice program may not shrink racial disparities in who breathes the most polluted air, in part because of efforts to ensure that it could withstand legal challenges. (Erdenesanaa, 7/20)

Bay City News Service: Negotiations Begin In Proposed Sale Of St. Mary's Medical Center To UCSF
The sale of one of the Bay Area's oldest operating hospitals to University of California, San Francisco is moving forward as the UC Board of Regents began negotiations Wednesday to purchase St. Mary's Medical Center. The hospital, founded in 1857 by the Catholic organization Sisters of Mercy, is currently operated by the Dignity Health hospital system. In addition to St. Mary's, UCSF has signaled its intentions to purchase St. Francis Memorial Hospital, another San Francisco medical center operated by Dignity Health. The total sale, including the two hospitals and their outpatient clinics, would be less than $100 million, according to UC documents. (7/20)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Chula Vista Nursing Home To Close Next Month And Lay Off 185 Employees 
A Chula Vista nursing home will close permanently next month, putting 185 staff members out of work and forcing dozens of patients to be relocated to other facilities. (Mapp, 7/20)

The Hill: Just More Than A Third Of Hospitals Are Complying With Price Transparency Rules: Report
More than two years after federal hospital price transparency rules went into effect, only about a third of hospitals are currently in compliance, according to a report released this week. The nonprofit Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) released its fifth semi-annual report, which found that only 36 percent of 2,000 surveyed hospitals were in complete compliance with the rule. (Choi, 7/20)

Fierce Healthcare: California, Kentucky To Offer Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved proposals from California and Kentucky for community-based mobile crisis intervention teams to provide Medicaid crisis services. California and Kentucky are the latest states to have mobile crisis teams approved, with Oregon being the first state to gain approval in September. (Tong, 7/20)

NPR: Messaging Your Doctor Through A Patient Portal Might Cost You
If you wanted to talk with your doctor before the pandemic, you generally had to schedule an in-person appointment. But the sudden, rapid expansion of telehealth means patients generally can now text or email their health care providers. "When you wanted to get a Zoom visit or an audio visit, you needed to sign up for the patient portal, and I think a lot of people became aware that they could message for the first time" during the pandemic, says A Jay Holmgren, a researcher in health care information technology at the University of California San Francisco. (Noguchi, 7/21)

Fortune: Elon Musk Wants Tesla And Neuralink To Build A Cyborg Body For Amputees 
In the 1970s, when Elon Musk was just a child, actor Lee Majors portrayed The Six Million Dollar Man, an injured test pilot born again with enhanced abilities thanks to the help of bionic implants. The tech messiah now wants to create the “sixty-thousand-dollar man” in real life by having engineers at his Tesla and Neuralink companies work together to design prosthetic limbs for amputees. (Hetzner, 7/20)

AP: Biden Administration Asks Employers To Give More Help To Workers Who Lose Medicaid
The Biden administration on Thursday asked employers to give workers who lose Medicaid coverage more time to sign up for health insurance through their jobs. Medicaid is the state- and federally funded program that covers health care costs for people with low incomes. States have resumed checks for Medicaid eligibility this year after pausing the practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Murphy, 7/20)

Orange County Register: California Schools Chief Tony Thurmond Booted From Chino Valley School Board Meeting 
Chino Valley Unified teachers must tell parents if their child identifies as transgender under a fiercely debated policy approved by the school board late Thursday, July 20. (Darling, 7/20)

The 19th: Gender Dysphoria Is A Protected Disability In Some States. Momentum Could Be Growing
For nearly six months, Kesha Williams was housed with men in a Virginia prison. Williams, a transgender woman, was denied access to her hormone medication, misgendered and harassed by prison deputies, according to a lawsuit she filed against the county sheriff and detention center staff. Her ongoing legal fight has created historic precedent: People with gender dysphoria are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed that precedent, first upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, to stand. Advocates view that as a hopeful sign in the years-long battle to include trans people in federal disability law. (Rummler, 7/20)

Axios: Drug Shortages Squeeze Trans Patients' Access To Hormone Therapy
The worst drug shortage in a decade is disrupting gender-affirming care, as scarce supplies of injectable estrogen prevent some transgender women from obtaining hormone therapy. Shortages of cancer drugs and other life-saving medications have already forced doctors to develop workarounds. A lack of access to estrogen products can affect trans patients in different ways: putting some through early onset menopause, reversing certain physical changes from their transition or causing them to experience anxiety and depression. (Gonzalez, 7/21)

USA Today: What In Your Sports Supplement? Not What's On The Label, Study Finds
Sports supplements may not contain what their bottle says they do ‒ and they might include unapproved drugs instead, according to a new study. The study, published this week, examined 57 products claiming to include botanicals that improve sports performance. Only six of the supplements ‒ just 11% ‒ included roughly what the label promised they would. Meanwhile, seven included drugs expressly prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration. (Weintraub, 7/20)

Edsource: West Contra Costa Unified Among Districts Struggling To Staff Special Education Classes 
With less than four weeks before the start of the next school year, more than 200 special education paraprofessional positions in West Contra Costa Unified School District  – about 33% – are unfilled, despite recruitment efforts. (Tadayon, 7/21)

Los Angeles Times: How A Freshman Brought Down Stanford University's President
Rumors of altered images in some of the research papers published by Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne had circulated since 2015. But the allegations involving the neuroscientist got little attention beyond the niche scientific forum where they first appeared — until Stanford freshman Theo Baker decided to take a closer look. Baker, a journalist for the Stanford Daily, published his first story on problems surrounding Tessier-Lavigne’s research in November. (Purtill, 7/21)

Los Angeles Times: E. Coli Sickens California Tourist Town
Maria McCloud’s 1-year-old granddaughter got sick first — vomiting and diarrhea and a fever. A few days later, McCloud began to feel ill, as did several other children in the home. Probably the stomach flu, the family figured. And then they got a notice from the water district in this Northern California mountain town: E. coli had been found in the water supply. (Garrison, 7/20)

Bay Area News Group: How A Rare Dementia Unleashes Creativity
A recent UC San Francisco-led study of brain scans of Adams and other patients with the deadly “frontotemporal” variety of dementia has revealed the underlying mechanism behind this mysterious shift in creative expression. As the brain region responsible for language is dying, it activates the visual processing area that drives creativity, according to Dr. Bruce Miller, the senior author of the recent study, a collaboration of 27 scientists published in the journal JAMA Neurology. (Krieger, 7/21)

USA Today: What In Your Sports Supplement? Not What's On The Label, Study Finds
Sports supplements may not contain what their bottle says they do ‒ and they might include unapproved drugs instead, according to a new study. The study, published this week, examined 57 products claiming to include botanicals that improve sports performance. Only six of the supplements ‒ just 11% ‒ included roughly what the label promised they would. Meanwhile, seven included drugs expressly prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration. (Weintraub, 7/20)

CNN: Over 1 In 10 Young Adults Regularly Use E-Cigarettes, CDC Report Says
Over 1 in 10 young adults in the United States regularly use e-cigarettes, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, conducted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, provides a snapshot of e-cigarette use in 2021. Based on data from the National Health Interview Survey, the report identified that e-cigarette use generally declined as family income increased. Adults under 44 were more likely to be dual users of both cigarettes and e-cigarettes. (Viswanathan, 7/21)

The Boston Globe: Energy Drink Ambassadors At Colleges Market Caffeine To Teens
Looking for a part-time gig in college? Have a passion for marketing? Are you addicted to caffeine? Red Bull’s “student marketeer” college ambassador program has hundreds of openings, and they want you. For years, Red Bull has recruited college students to spend their free time outside of class going to campus events, handing out caffeine-packed energy drinks on the street, littering cases throughout dorm buildings, and marketing the brand on social media ― all for $16 an hour, according to one student marketeer. (Scales, 7/20)

ABC News: Headers Linked To Memory Issues, Raising Questions About Soccer Safety As The World Cup Kicks Off
With the Women's World Cup kicking off this week, the focus of the sports world turns to soccer -- the most popular sport in the world and one continuing to grow in the United States. However, new research is calling attention to one of the risks of the game, heading the ball, which studies find may be linked to brain problems later in life. The newly released study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, found that professional male soccer players who headed the ball more frequently during their career were more likely to develop memory issues. The study builds on prior studies from Scotland and France that also showed a link between playing soccer and the development of dementia. (Garcia, 7/20)