San Francisco Chronicle: Genentech And Sanofi To Lay Off Hundreds Of Bay Area Employees
Biotech giants Genentech and Sanofi are set to lay off hundreds of Bay Area workers in the coming months. Genentech disclosed in regulatory filings this week that it will lay off 436 employees at its South San Francisco headquarters at 1 DNA Way. The layoffs are expected to begin June 5. (Vaziri, 4/12)

East Bay Times: Abbott Laboratories To Close Bay Area Site; Almost 200 Jobs To Be Cut
Fairfield Abbott Laboratories has given notice that it will be closing its Fairfield location later this year, meaning the loss of nearly 200 jobs. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification has been filed with the state, indicating that 195 employees will be laid off and the plant will be closed. Founded in 2004, the Illinois-based health and nutrition manufacturing company — known for brands including Similac infant formula, Pedialyte electrolyte drinks and Ensure shakes — also manufactures human and veterinary prescription drugs. (McConnell, 4/15)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Why Is It Taking So Long To Expand San Diego County's Mental Health Capacity? 
All leaders at all levels have agreed since Tri-City Medical Center closed its mental health care unit in 2018 that increasing local psychiatric treatment capacity is a top priority. But, as 2024 approaches its midpoint, it is clear that moving quickly on big mental health projects has been an elusive goal. (Sisson, 4/13)

Modern Healthcare: How Quality Training Standards Differ At Kaiser, Rush University 
Kaiser Permanente of Northern California has tapped into NAHQ’s Workforce Accelerator program — which identifies quality areas where staff are less proficient and offers them educational resources — to ensure the system's quality training is uniform and comprehensive. Dozens of quality directors, clinical leads, supervisors and managers at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California have participated in the program. Each participant receives on-demand video modules based on their educational needs and attends quarterly check-ins to track progress on their quality competency goals, said Robin Betts, vice president of safety, quality and regulatory services for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals in Northern California. (Devereaux, 4/12)

Military.com: A Decade After Scandal, VA Health Care May Be At Another Crossroads
Ten years after a scandal over wait times at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers sparked new programs to increase veterans' access to private health care services, a divided Congress is debating the future of VA medical care and how best to fund the department. The VA has requested $369.3 billion for its fiscal 2025 budget, including nearly $150 billion for health care. Within that amount, the VA has allocated $86 billion for care provided in VA hospitals and clinics and $41 billion for private network care. (Kime,4/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: Invasive, Dengue-Carrying Mosquito Species Detected In The Bay Area
Santa Clara County is home to about 20 native mosquito species, including the common house mosquito, the cool weather mosquito and the Western encephalitis mosquito. These mosquitoes, known to bite during dusk and dawn, transmit diseases like West Nile virus, Western equine encephalitis and St. Louis encephalitis. The aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito, originating from tropical and subtropical regions, bites during the day. (Vaziri, 4/12)

Los Angeles Times: California Dairies Scramble To Guard Herds Against Bird Flu
Although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes the current risk for the general public is low, the development has left dairy farmers reeling. Never before have U.S. dairy cows been infected with H5N1 bird flu viruses. “Nobody saw this coming,” said Michael Payne, a researcher and outreach coordinator at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security at UC Davis. (Rust 4/14)

AP: Are Milk And Eggs Safe To Eat During This Bird Flu Outbreak? 
Scientists say there’s no evidence to suggest that people can contract the virus by consuming food that’s been pasteurized, or heat-treated — or properly cooked. “It’s not a food safety concern,” said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University. ... U.S. producers are barred from selling milk from sick cows and must divert and destroy it. In addition, milk sold across state lines is required to be pasteurized, or heat-treated using a process that kills bacteria and viruses, including influenza. (Aleccia, 4/13)

The Washington Post: WHO: Hepatitis Is Second-Leading Infectious Cause Of Death Worldwide 
More than 6,000 people a day are infected with viral hepatitis — and progress fighting the disease has stalled, a recently released World Health Organization report suggests. The analysis, released at the World Hepatitis Summit in Lisbon this month, looks at the burden of viral hepatitis in 187 countries and assesses the world’s progress toward eliminating the disease. (Blakemore, 4/14)

KQED: Forced Sterilization Survivors Undertake Own Healing After Feeling 'Silenced Again' By State
One morning last spring, Moonlight Pulido called on rituals drawn from her Native American spirituality to confront a painful experience. She stepped outside of her home in Carson, California, and lit a bundle of white sage that she keeps in an abalone shell by the back door. Pulido, who is Apache, fanned the smoke around her with a feather. She was preparing to make quilt squares for a project to honor people who were forcibly sterilized at state prisons in California. (Mihalovich, 4/15)

KQED: Planned Parenthood Northern California Workers Unionize With SEIU Local 1021
Workers for Planned Parenthood Northern California have unionized, after more than 75% of workers there voted to join SEIU Local 1021 Friday. The workers, now known as PP NorCal Workers United, began organizing last December and publicly announced plans to form a union in January. “It’s been really something that has been a long time coming, we’ve been waiting for it with bated breath,” said Debbie Nguyen, a Planned Parenthood Northern California clinician in Oakland. “We’ve been going back and forth with them to work on getting recognized for months now.” (KQED, 4/13)

NBC News: Permanent Birth Control Procedures Increasing After Abortion Laws, New Research Finds
The number of young adults who chose tubal ligation and vasectomies as birth control jumped abruptly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and has continued to rise, new research shows. The paper, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, is the first to focus specifically on the contraception choices of women and men ages 18 to 30 after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion. (Mantel, 4/12)

NPR: 6 In 10 Catholics Favor Abortion Rights, Pew Report Finds 
Catholics in the U.S., one of the country's largest single Christian groups, hold far more diverse views on abortion rights than the official teaching of their church. While the Catholic Church itself holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 U.S. adult Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a newly released profile of Catholicism by Pew Research. (DeRose, 4/12)

Orange County Register: California Cities Would Share Power To Probe Addiction Treatment Complaints Under New Bill
The city of Beverly Hills sued one rehab, saying it ran an illegal facility that was “a haven for drug abuse and criminal conduct.” One resident described it as “a place to crash and smoke fentanyl,” where the owner provided black tar heroin and methamphetamines to residents at “significantly reduced prices.” (Sforza, 4/15)

Politico: Paris Hilton To Testify In Support Of California Bill Fighting ‘Troubled Teen’ Industry
Hotel heiress and Hollywood socialite Paris Hilton will visit her home state Capitol on Monday to back a bill meant to help combat the kind of abuse at youth centers she herself endured as a teen. Senate Bill 1043, authored by Central Valley Republican Shannon Grove, aims to shed light on short-term residential therapeutic programs, which are used to house and treat young people who have been abused, neglected or are struggling with other types of trauma. (Korte, 4/12)

USA Today: No Link Between COVID Vaccine, Cardiac Arrest In Young People, New CDC Study Finds
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released new data addressing the link, or lack thereof, between the COVID-19 vaccine and sudden cardiac death in otherwise healthy young adults. The assessment, conducted between June 2021 and December 2022, investigated the death certificates and vaccination records of 1,292 Oregon decedents aged between 16 and 30 who had died of "cardiac or undetermined" causes. (Walrath-Holdridge, 4/12)

CIDRAP: Study Finds No Evidence COVID-19 Causes Childhood Asthma
A study today in Pediatrics says there is no evidence that COVID-19 infections lead to asthma in children. The study, conducted by researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), included 27,423 patients ages 1 to 16 years who received polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for SARS-COV-2 from March 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021. Patients were followed up for 18 months. (Soucheray, 4/12)

CIDRAP: Feds Launch Indoor Air Quality Research Program 
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) this week announced the launch of the Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health (BREATHE) program, which is a platform with a goal of improving indoor air quality across the country. The agency said the BREATHE program focuses on enabling the next generation of "smart buildings" that have integrated systems that continually assess, measure, and report indoor air quality and make real-time interventions such as extra ventilation or disinfection to reduce airborne threats to human health. (Schnirring, 4/12)

Bay Area News Group: San Jose Event Benefits Medically Fragile Children
In 2021, the Rogers family anxiously awaited the birth of their first child. For most new parents, this is an exciting period, but for the Rogers, anxiety started to creep in. They knew their daughter would be born with a heart defect, but they were unsure of just how serious it would be. (Gelhaus, 4/14)

Los Angeles Times: How 'Miracle' Weight-Loss Drugs Made Health Disparities Worse
The American Heart Assn. calls them “game changers.” Oprah Winfrey says they’re “a gift.” Science magazine anointed them the “2023 Breakthrough of the Year.” Americans are most familiar with their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound. They are the medications that have revolutionized weight loss and raised the possibility of reversing the country’s obesity crisis. Obesity — like so many diseases — disproportionately affects people in racial and ethnic groups that have been marginalized by the U.S. healthcare system. (Kaplan, 4/15)

Los Angeles Times: 'I'm Gonna O.J. You': How The Simpson Case Changed Perceptions — And The Law — On Domestic Violence
It wasn’t long after the televised spectacle of O.J. Simpson fleeing a phalanx of police cars in a slow-moving white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, that batterers across Los Angeles adopted a bone-chilling new threat. I’m gonna O.J. you. “We all heard it working with our clients,” said Gail Pincus, executive director of the Domestic Abuse Center in Los Angeles. “I heard it directly from the abusers. It was a form of intimidation, of silencing and getting compliance from their victims.” (Sharp, 4/13)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Lawsuit Challenges Law Banning Most Non-California Residents From Carrying Guns 
A firearms advocacy group and three people who live in Pennsylvania, Idaho and New Mexico filed a lawsuit Thursday in San Diego federal court challenging a state law that mostly bans non-California residents from carrying guns in the state. (Riggins, 4/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Hip-Hop And Health Mix At S.F. Festival
Dej Summerville sat down at the free Umoja Health booth and as beats from Stunnaman02’s rap set pulsated through the walls she received a COVID booster, blood pressure test and diabetes screening blood prick. “I have been neglecting my health the last three years, just putting it on the back burner,” said Summerville, a Cal State East Bay student. “This is forcing me to hold myself accountable.” (Gafni, 4/13)