KQED: Patients Are Waiting Days For Care In Some California ERs
Dr. Naomi Marks races between patients inside the emergency department at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa County. She explains a diagnosis to a woman grimacing in pain, complaining of nauseousness and a belly on fire with pain. An MRI suggests pancreatitis. “From the moment we spoke, I’ve been trying to reach a GI doctor at another hospital,” Marks said, explaining that the medical center doesn’t have a gastroenterologist, a practitioner specializing in the digestive system, on staff or on call. (McClurg, 6/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: Doctors Are Prescribing Weekend Getaways At Bay Area Redwood Cabin
Housebound during the pandemic, Silvia Espinoza felt her three kids were developing unhealthy routines. They spent their free time glued to their phones or the TV inside their small home in the Fair Oaks neighborhood of Redwood City. Her older son, a teenager, deals with anxiety. She worried about her younger son becoming diabetic after a weight gain. Speaking to his dietician last fall about holistic interventions, Espinoza inquired, “How can we take steps towards a better lifestyle?” (Thomas, 6/15)

Axios: Hospital Revenues Appear To Be Rising
Hospital revenues appear to be on the upswing as more patients receive care — which is welcome news for the hospital industry and not-so-great for insurers. Hospitals have been warning for months that their financial stability is threatened by inflation, labor costs and other factors in the wake of the pandemic, which could ultimately threaten patient care. (Owens, 6/15)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital Supply Chain Shortages To Worsen: Premier Survey
Nearly half of 233 hospital and health system employees surveyed had to cancel or reschedule procedures at least quarterly in 2022 due to product shortages, according to a poll conducted from late March to  mid-April by Premier, a consulting and group purchasing organization. Health systems have been managing shortages for hundreds of products, ranging from intra-aortic balloon pumps to chemotherapy drugs. (Kacik, 6/15)

Stat: Getting Rid Of Racial Bias In Clinical Calculators Proves Challenging
Racial bias is everywhere in medicine, including the calculators doctors commonly use to predict a patient’s risk of disease and inform their treatment. A growing movement is encouraging medical specialties and hospitals to reconsider the use of race in those tools. But a new study shows that removing bias isn’t as simple as taking race out of the equation. (Palmer, 6/16)

Los Angeles Times: Next COVID Vaccine Should Target XBB Strain, FDA Committee Says 
With an eye toward enhancing protection against the coronavirus, which is still evolving and circulating, federal health advisors said Thursday that the next round of COVID-19 vaccines should be updated to target one of the XBB strains currently dominating the viral landscape. The unanimous recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee follows that of agency staff, who in a memo acknowledged that while older vaccine formulas can still help stave off severe disease, “protection wanes with time and is reduced against subsequent waves of variant viruses.” (Money and Lin II, 6/15)

CIDRAP: Bivalent COVID Vaccine Protects Against Death For At Least 6 Months In Older Adults, Study Suggests 
The bivalent (two-strain) COVID-19 booster provides substantial protection against death among US adults aged 65 years and older, with no significant signs of waning for up to 6 months, concludes a study published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly. (Van Beusekom, 6/15)

Forbes: Covid-19 Patients Zero In Wuhan Identified, Boosting Lab Leak Theory
A report based on multiple anonymous sources inside the US government says that researchers working inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were the first to be infected with the virus that went on to trigger a pandemic and kill millions worldwide. The report in Public cites “multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation” saying that Ben Hu, who led WIV’s gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, was among the “patients zero” who contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus in November of 2019. (Mack, 6/15)

AP: Confidence In Science Fell In 2022 While Political Divides Persisted, Poll Shows 
Confidence in the scientific community declined among U.S. adults in 2022, a major survey shows, driven by a partisan divide in views of both science and medicine that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, 39% of U.S. adults said they had “a great deal of confidence” in the scientific community, down from 48% in 2018 and 2021. That’s according to the General Social Survey, a long-running poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago that has monitored Americans’ opinions on key topics since 1972. (Burakoff, 6/15)

Los Angeles Times: Government-Owned Land Proposed For Housing In L.A. 
After years of dawdling by L.A. on the use of public land for homeless housing, an urban planner hired by the Committee for Greater L.A. has vetted thousands of government-owned parcels and come up with a list of 121 that it says are ready for development. (Smith, 6/15)

The Hill: You Have To Work More Than 100 Hours A Week To Afford A Two-Bedroom Rental On Minimum Wage: Report 
Full-time workers nationwide need to earn more than $23 hourly to afford a modest one-bedroom rental, according to a new report. ... The report also found there are no states where minimum wage workers putting in 40 hours weekly can afford a modest two-bedroom rental. A worker earning minimum wage must work an average of 104 hours per week to earn enough to pay for it. (Barnes, 6/15)

California Healthline: Opioid Settlement Payouts To Localities Made Public For First Time
Thousands of local governments nationwide are receiving settlement money from companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers, like Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, and Walmart. The companies are shelling out more than $50 billion total in settlements from national lawsuits. But finding out the precise amount each city or county is receiving has been nearly impossible because the firm administering the settlement hasn’t made the information public. Until now. (Pattani, 6/16)

KFF Health News: Find Out How Much Opioid Settlement Cash Your Locality Received
You can use documents obtained by KFF Health News to see the exact dollar amounts that local governments in your state have been allocated in 2022 and 2023. (6/16)

ABC News: Patients With HIV In US Saw Rise Of Rare, Deadly Bacterial Illness Last Year: CDC
Patients with HIV in the United States saw an increase in rare, deadly meningococcal infections last year, new preliminary data shows. Nearly 10% of all meningococcal disease cases in 2022 were among people with HIV, according to a report published Thursday afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Kekatos, 6/15)

Bay Area News Group: New Data Shows How California's Hotline To Report Acts Of Hate Performed In First Month
The California vs Hate network, a new hotline and online portal for residents to anonymously report acts of hate, logged 180 incidents within its first month, state officials said. The most reported bias motivations during May were race and ethnicity, followed by religion and sexual orientation, according to preliminary data the California’s Civil Rights Department released Thursday. (Lauer, 6/15)

San Diego Union-Tribune: County Backs Bill To Give Foster Youth Survivor Benefits
San Diego County has officially endorsed state legislation that would ensure foster children whose parents have died receive survivor benefits when they come of age — rather than allowing counties to take those benefits. (Brennan, 6/16)

The Bakersfield Californian: Public Health: Use Caution As Potentially Harmful Algae Detected In Isabella Lake 
Officials said Tuesday they recently obtained water samples from 16 locations in Lake Isabella through their regular monitoring. Kern County officials said they regularly test public reservoirs such as Isabella Lake. (6/13)

FiveThirtyEight: The Dobbs Divide
New estimates provided exclusively to FiveThirtyEight by #WeCount — a national research project led by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that supports research on abortion and contraception — indicate that there were 24,290 fewer legal abortions between July 2022 and March 2023, compared to a pre-Dobbs baseline. These people might have remained pregnant or obtained an abortion outside the legal system, which would not be captured in #WeCount’s data. (Thomson-DeVeaux, 6/15)

The 19th: More Americans — Especially Women — Are Supporting Abortion Rights After Dobbs
Almost a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 40 percent of women said they believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, according to new polling from Gallup. The findings of the poll show how Roe’s fall shifted public opinion on abortion, leaving more Americans in favor of access to the procedure and critical of banning it. In 2019, Gallup found that 25 percent of Americans believed abortion should be available under any circumstances. Now, 34 percent of Americans, about 1 in 3, believe abortion should be legal at any point. That increase appears driven almost entirely by women. (Luthra, 6/15)

CNBC: House Democrats Press Walmart, Costco, Kroger To Sell Abortion Pill Mifepristone
House Democrats on Thursday called on Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Safeway and Health Mart to publicly commit to sell the prescription abortion pill mifepristone at their retail pharmacies. Pending lawsuits have jeopardized mifepristone’s approval in the U.S. For now, it is the most common method to terminate a pregnancy in the country. (Kimball, 6/15)

NPR: Sen. Tammy Baldwin Introduces Bill To Fund Abortion Care Training
Medical schools in states that have banned abortion can't teach abortion care. Sen. Tammy Baldwin wants to make funds available for students in those states to travel for the training. (Huang, 6/15)

The Hill: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Says He Would Support 15-Week Federal Abortion Ban 
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the newest Republican to enter the 2024 presidential race, said he would support a 15-week federal abortion ban with rare exceptions, but stopped short of backing a six-week abortion ban. “Look, I think that the country is not there yet,” Suarez said in an interview with The Associated Press, when asked about a six-week federal abortion ban. (Fortinsky, 6/15)

Los Angeles Daily News: Opioid Payout Will Worsen Drug Crisis 
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Friday a $17.3-billion settlement with two pharmacy chains, Walgreens and CVS, and two pharmaceutical companies, Allergan and Teva, regarding their role in the state’s opioid crisis. The huge payout, however, was mainly about prosecutors seeking the deepest pockets. The agreement might worsen the situation. (6/14)

Los Angeles Daily News: How Can Gavin Newsom Reform California Prisons But Still Allow Solitary Confinement? 
California has come a long way on solitary confinement. I know this because I spent more than a decade in isolation, and have been organizing with other solitary survivors to limit the practice in our state. (Kevin McCarthy, 6/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: How California Is Failing SF's Mental Health And Homeless Crises
In his inability to access mental health treatment, Hobbs was no outlier — California has an extreme shortage of mental health beds. And it has failed to adequately care for its hardest-to-serve population: people with mental illness who also have a criminal record — including those with a history of violence. (6/16)

Bay Area Reporter: SFAF Should Rethink Overdose Messaging
We fully support the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's expressed interest in helping to run an overdose prevention center, now dubbed wellness hubs, in the South of Market neighborhood, one that has been hard hit by substance use and desperately needs programs where people can safely use drugs while also being apprised of available services to treat their addictions. But we think SFAF stumbled last week when, at a rally for HIV funding in the city budget, some people held signs urging the funding of overdose prevention sites that included the image of a police car with the word "Death" underneath it. It was on a mock scale of justice that, on the other side, featured an image of a syringe and Naloxone, an overdose prevention drug, with the word "Life." As gay San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose District 6 includes SOMA, wrote in a letter to SFAF, the messaging endangers law enforcement officers and drug users alike. (6/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: Magic Mushrooms Are Having A Moment. How Will The Feds Handle It?
Psychedelics such as psilocybin, MDMA and LSD are attracting interest as a treatment for mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. In response to this emerging medical research — and public demand  — some states and cities are changing their laws and policies on the supply and use of these mind-altering substances. (Beau Kilmer and Rajeev Ramchand, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Air Quality Disasters Are Here To Stay. What Do We Do Next? 
As California residents, we are all too familiar with the orange skies that plagued the East Coast last week from Canadian wildfires and just hit the Midwest. And we have faced the plague of poor outdoor air quality many times while doing extensive public health work in cities, such as India’s capital New Delhi, that are among the most polluted in the world. The pandemic drew global attention to the impact of air quality on health, with a focus on pathogens that spread indoors. (Abraar Karan, Devabhaktuni Srikrishna and Ranu Dhillon, 6/16)