Los Angeles Times: Scientists Uncover High Amounts Of Pure DDT Off L.A. Coast 
First it was the eerie images of barrels leaking on the seafloor not far from Catalina Island. Then the shocking realization that the nation’s largest manufacturer of DDT had once used the ocean as a huge dumping ground — and that as many as half a million barrels of its acid waste had been poured straight into the water. Now, scientists have discovered that much of the DDT — which had been dumped largely in the 1940s and ’50s — never broke down. The chemical remains in its most potent form in startlingly high concentrations, spread across a wide swath of seafloor larger than the city of San Francisco. (Xia, 2/23)

UPI: Air Pollution From California Wildfires Worsened Skin Conditions
"The health impact of air pollution from wildfires has not been well studied, but the evidence from our recent studies suggests that short-term exposure to wildfire air pollution can affect the skin and cause flares of certain skin disorders," said Dr. Maria Wei, a professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco. "We found that the air pollution from California wildfires were associated with an increase in patient visits to dermatologists for both eczema and psoriasis," Wei added in an AAD news release. "These results are consistent with studies indicating that air pollution from wildfires can be more toxic than air pollution caused by traditional industrial and traffic sources." (Murez, 3/20)

Center For Public Integrity: Lead Keeps Poisoning Children. It Doesn't Have To.
The news came as a shock: Lead, lurking somewhere in Nalleli Garrido’s home, was poisoning her 1-year-old son. His pediatrician instructed her to clean all the toys of her toddler, Ruben, keep the home dust-free and prevent him from playing in the bare soil outside her rented bungalow in Santa Ana’s Logan neighborhood. She did all she could. But the dust kept sneaking in. No one offered an alternative. The only solution she and her husband could find was to get out. In 2019, after two years of constant worry, they moved north to the city of Buena Park, buying a home with a grassy yard — not an exposed patch of soil like her Santa Ana front yard, where the toxic metal could be found in concentrations as high as 148 parts of lead per million parts of soil. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment considers 80 parts per million and above dangerous for children.  (Cabrera, 3/22)

Sacramento Bee: CA Needs More Black, Latino Doctors. This Program Could Help
California has struggled for years to recruit aspiring physicians of color into its health care workforce, despite the state’s highly diverse population. Research shows that patients whose physicians look like them report higher levels of well-being and satisfaction with care. As a result, experts warn that failing to cultivate a diverse workforce would further exacerbate health disparities in already underserved communities. (Miller, 3/24)

The Desert Sun: Eisenhower Health Opens Simulation Lab For Advanced Training, Education
The Rancho Mirage hospital held a ribbon cutting ceremony Monday to celebrate the new John Stauffer Center for Innovation in Learning. The $3.5 million high-tech simulation laboratory — a philanthropic gift from the John Stauffer Charitable Trust and the Thomas and Elizabeth Grainger family — will allow for advanced training and education opportunities for graduate students, physicians, nurses, respiratory technicians and other health care professionals. (Sasic, 2/23)

The Desert Sun: Grail's Early Cancer Detection Test At Center Of Pro Golf Tourney
“Our mission at Grail is to detect cancer early when it can be cured,” Ragusa said. “Galleri, which the Classic is named after, is Grail’s multi-cancer early detection test, which has the ability to screen for more than 50 different cancers with a simple blood draw.” (Brohannan, 3/23)

California Healthline: Sen. Sanders Shows Fire, But Seeks Modest Goals, In His Debut Drug Hearing As Health Chair
The Vermont independent and former presidential candidate was all fire and brimstone at his first hearing on drug prices as head of the Senate HELP Committee. He also pursued a more modest goal of covid vaccine price reductions. It isn’t clear whether Sanders will succeed in even that, but he has put affordability front and center. (Allen, 3/23)

San Diego Union-Tribune: 3 Years Into COVID-19, Schools Still Lack Counselors, Nurses 
As schools struggle to help students recover from the tumult of the pandemic three years after it began, dozens of San Diego Unified schools are still making do with a counselor or nurse on campus a few days a week, a San Diego Union-Tribune analysis of staffing data shows. (Taketa, 3/24)

The Hill: US Appeals Court Walks Back COVID-19 Vaccine Requirement For Federal Employees
A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision to block the government from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine requirement on federal employees — reversing a previous ruling from a smaller panel of its own judges. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a rare en banc rehearing that a preliminary nationwide injunction on the vaccine mandate should remain in place while the case proceeds. (Shapero, 3/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland Weighs Phase-Out Of Its Eviction Moratorium After Three Years
Oakland will consider winding down over the next year an eviction moratorium enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic — a decision that comes two days after landlords stormed a City Council meeting demanding an end to the rule. Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas and Council Member Dan Kalb will introduce legislation Thursday that “phases out” the city’s eviction moratorium, which protected tenants from eviction during the crisis. Bas and Kalb have been working on the legislation for weeks, officials said. (Ravani, 3/23)

CapRadio: California Tribes And Mental Health Professionals Look To Improve Crisis Hotline Experience For Native Americans
Some tribal leaders in California say they believe there are cultural barriers that are standing in the way of people reaching out to 988 when they’re in crisis, and came together with mental health professionals during a summit in Sacramento to explore solutions. (Wolffe, 3/23)

Good Morning America: Suicide Can Be Contagious For Teens, Research Shows. Here’s How Parents Can Help
Rates of mental health emergencies are increasing among teenagers around the world, according to a new study from the University of Calgary. It found an increase in pediatric emergency room visits for suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, and self-harm during the first year of the pandemic. It’s a particular concern because for teenagers, suicide can be contagious. (Bakshi and Linendoll, 3/23)

NBC News: Drug Overdose Deaths Among Latinos Almost Tripled In Past Decade
While the face of the opioid crisis has predominantly been considered white and rural, overdose deaths among Latinos have skyrocketed in recent years, with experts attributing the growing numbers to the rise of fentanyl, especially mixed with other drugs. Overdose deaths among Latinos have nearly tripled since 2011, according to a report published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology. (Jiménez J. and Telemundo, 3/23)

Fierce Healthcare: Veterans Health Administration Teams With About Fresh To Scale Up 'Food Is Medicine' Demonstration Project
About Fresh, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Food is Medicine Research Initiative, is partnering with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to create a large-scale demonstration project aimed at using healthy food to improve veterans' health. About Fresh, a startup focused on integrating healthy food into the healthcare system, began bringing fresh produce to Boston food deserts in converted school buses. But Josh Trautwein founded About Fresh with no attachment to the means, but rather the ends: food is medicine overall, not necessarily food trucks as a way to get there. (Burky, 3/23)

Roll Call: Camp Lejeune Health Claims Are Mired Despite Law Allowing Suits 
As claims and lawsuits pile up against the government related to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, the number of grievous health outcomes tied to exposure to those toxic chemicals at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina is also rising. A growing percentage of cases are becoming wrongful death suits rather than damage claims for illnesses as more Marines and their family members who were sickened by the tainted water, often many years after the exposure, lose their lives, according to several people involved in the litigation. (Magner, 3/23)

Stat: Data Show Tuberculosis Has Nearly Returned To Pre-Pandemic Levels
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, new diagnoses of tuberculosis dropped like a stone in the United States. Data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest the pandemic effect has pretty much worn off; TB is nearly back to pre-2020 levels. ... The 2022 increase was due to more cases among people newly arrived in the United States as well as a higher incidence of cases among American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders, the report stated. (Branswell, 3/23)

Stat: Directly Observed Therapy For TB, Via Video, Gets CDC Nod 
Directly observed therapy — where a health professional watches someone take a medication — has been the standard of care for tuberculosis treatment in the United States since 2016. Now DOT, as it’s called, has an approved video alternative. (Branswell, 3/23)

The New York Times: Autism Prevalence Rises Again, Study Finds 
The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in American children rose between 2018 and 2020, continuing a long-running trend, according to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. In 2020, an estimated one in 36 8-year-olds had autism, up from one in 44 in 2018. The prevalence was roughly 4 percent in boys and 1 percent in girls. The rise does not necessarily mean that autism has become more common among children, and it could stem from other factors, such as increased awareness and screening. (Anthes, 3/23)

USA Today: 'Public Health Crisis': Autism Rates Rise Again, With 1 In 36 Children Diagnosed
Autism rates rose again between 2018 and 2020, the most recent year data is available, up from 1 in 44 children to 1 in 36. Many factors are likely to contribute to these rising rates, including that diagnoses among children of color have been catching up to – and are now passing – white children. (Weintraub, 3/23)

AP: Autism Now More Common Among Black, Hispanic Kids In US
For the first time, autism is being diagnosed more frequently in Black and Hispanic children than in white kids in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Among all U.S. 8-year-olds, 1 in 36 had autism in 2020, the CDC estimated. That’s up from 1 in 44 two years earlier. But the rate rose faster for children of color than for white kids. The new estimates suggest that about 3% of Black, Hispanic and Asian or Pacific Islander children have an autism diagnosis, compared with about 2% of white kids. That’s a contrast to the past, when autism was most commonly diagnosed in white kids — usually in middle- or upper-income families with the means to go to autism specialists. (Stobbe, 3/23)

East Bay Times: Governor's Effort To Lower Insulin Prices Is A Smart Investment
Gavin Newsom is taking aim at the three greedy insulin drugmakers who have made billions in profits at the expense of Californians with Type 1 diabetes who must take the medication every day to survive. (3/23)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County's Mishandling Of Care First Model Is A Cautionary Tale For Gov. Newsom
Care First, as the term is used in Los Angeles County government, refers to a reorientation of the county’s vast array of programs away from jail. It’s a solid notion. Incarceration is the traditional centerpiece of the county’s public safety response, and its failure rate is astounding. (3/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: My Kids Are Neurodiverse. S.F. Is Failing To Fund Their Education
The San Francisco Unified School District is woefully underfunded. Schools are short about 600 teachers, hundreds of special educators and about 200 paraeducators — who, by the way, earn a starting salary of about $18 per hour, barely minimum wage. School psychologists have double the recommended caseload and there are not enough substitutes. (Sam Murphy, 3/24)

Los Angeles Daily News: Senate Bill 44 By Sen. Tom Umberg Will Put More People At Risk Of Overdosing From Fentanyl 
According to Sen. Umberg’s office, SB 44 offers an approach “that first warns and then punishes” people for murder who sell fentanyl if it results in someone’s death. But the bill ignores all the science related to substance use. People who are suffering from substance use disorders buy drugs together, sell to one another, and if someone dies, it is not intentional. It is not murder. (Aimee Dunkle, 3/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: How A New Kind Of Drug Crisis Is Descending On The Bay Area
Two decades ago, Tom Rudderow underwent spinal fusion surgery. At first, it appeared all had gone well. As he healed, however, his pain persisted. His surgeon eventually diagnosed him with arachnoiditis, an incurable disorder that, he was told, would cause him a lifetime of suffering. “I remember this surgeon coming into the room crying,” Rudderow told me over the phone last week, from his home in Oakland. (Nuala Bishari, 3/21)

Orange County Register: Why Closing Prisons Will Open A New Path Toward A Safer California 
With the number of persons incarcerated in our state prisons having fallen from a high of 165,000 people in 2006 to 95,000 people behind bars today, California has a generational opportunity to reconfigure our system of justice to focus on prevention rather than punishment. That’s why Governor Newsom’s move to close multiple California prisons is a smart and necessary evolution in the state’s approach to public safety. (Cristine Deberry and Craig Haney, 3/20)

Los Angeles Times: How To Tackle California's Housing And Climate Crises Together
California’s housing shortage and climate crisis are often treated as if they are unrelated to each other. In fact, they are deeply interconnected. We need to address not only how much housing we build but also where we build it. That’s the idea and the promise behind new legislation backed by a novel coalition of housing and environmental advocates. (Liz O'Donoghue and Melissa Breach, 3/23)