Becker's Hospital Review: Keck Medicine Of USC To Lay Off 89 Employees
Effective Oct. 4, the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California and its health system, Keck Medicine of USC, will lay off 89 employees, according to WARN notices filed Aug. 4. Keck Medicine of USC will lay off 78 workers, the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center will lay off 10 and the system’s healthcare center will lay off one employee, according to the notices. (Twenter, 8/8)

Becker's Hospital Review: Cottage Health Partners With Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Cottage Children’s Medical Center, based at Santa Barbara (Calif.) Cottage Hospital, has joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Care Network.Through the collaboration, Cottage Children’s and CHLA will coordinate specialty care, train nurses and residency fellows, and share clinical best practices. (Kuchno, 8/8)

Becker's Hospital Review: UC Davis To Advance New Imaging Technique With $2.5M Grant
Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Health’s department of radiology has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance dual-energy imaging. The innovation of interest, PET-enabled dual-energy CT, combines PET and CT technologies, allowing providers to “see not just where something is happening in the body, but also what it’s made of.” (Gregerson, 8/8)

Modesto Bee: Kaiser Permanente Opens Sports Medicine Center In Modesto
Kaiser Permanente is opening a sports medicine center in north Modesto, but it’s not just for star athletes or someone recovering from a mountain-biking crash. “It’s for anyone active, who wants to stay active,” said Dr. Eric Larson, chief of sports medicine for Kaiser’s Central Valley region. Kaiser said the 20,000-square-foot center on Pirrone Court in Salida, called the Sports Medicine Center at Modesto, is the largest of its kind in the Central Valley. The fully equipped facility, with art depicting athletes in peak performance, will open for patients Aug. 24. (Carlson, 8/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: Kaiser Permanente Posts $1 Billion Operating Income In Q2
Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente recorded an operating income of $1 billion (3.2% operating margin) in the second quarter of 2025, up from $908 million (3.1% margin) during the same period last year, according to its Aug. 8 financial report. ... Kaiser reported operating revenue of $32.1 billion for the three months ended June 30, up from $29.1 billion during the same period last year. (Cass, 8/11)

ProPublica: Doctors And Nurses Reject VA Jobs Under Trump 
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care. Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year. (Armstrong, Umansky and Coleman, 8/8)

Newsweek: Nationwide Soap Recall Issued Over Contamination Linked To Sepsis
DermaRite Industries has voluntarily recalled specific lots of its products nationwide due to contamination with Burkholderia cepacia, a bacterium that can cause serious infections in immunocompromised individuals. The products include DermaKleen, Dermasarra, Kleenfoam, and Perigiene items. The products are commonly used in health care settings for handwashing and skin care. (Marsden, 8/10)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Rite Aid Closes All Sonoma County Pharmacies 
According to its website, the pharmacy giant is slated to close 295 pharmacies in California. In the North Bay, all pharmacies have already closed but some stores remain open to sell off inventory. (Nguyen, 8/8)

Times of San Diego: Clinical Trial Shows Promise For Drug Targeting Colorectal Cancer
San Diego-based biotechnology company Cardiff Oncology has reported positive data from a drug targeting metastatic colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, resulting in 50,000 deaths annually in the United States alone. When metastatic, or spread beyond the colon, the five-year survival rate is approximately 15%. (Singhai, 8/9)

Orange County Register: Anxiety Attacks, Tears, Questions: The Impact Of Immigration Sweeps On Children
In their silence and their stomachaches, or the sudden burst of tears, the children living through hardline federal immigration enforcement are saying one thing: they are not OK. In the days after her father was detained while on a landscaping job in La Mirada on June 18, 11-year-old Isella could hardly stop crying. Her mother, Maria Murillo, then noticed Isella’s eyes started twitching, followed by uncontrollable shaking in her head and hands. (Rivera, 8/10)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Fear, Pandemic-Era Behavior Grip North Bay Immigrants Amid California ICE Raids 
Many described a sort of crushing terror that has pushed them into isolation, leaving many afraid of going to work, school, the movies or even to the park. Some have adopted pandemic-era patterns, avoiding strangers and public places, buying groceries and other provisions in bulk, and spending as little time as possible outside their homes. Some say the isolation and anxiety is worse than what they experienced during the pandemic. (Espinoza and Issenberg, 8/8)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Cuts Are Hitting San Diego Homeless Services Even Without Trump
Peterman is executive director of Townspeople, a San Diego nonprofit that helps residents escape homelessness. A little more than half of its funding comes from the federal government. Yet last month she learned that decisions made in Sacramento, not Washington D.C., will likely force Townspeople to slim down a program that connects homeless individuals with roommates. (Nelson, 8/9)

Los Angeles Times: To Tackle Homelessness, Los Angeles Moves To Centralize Its Response
The request came in June. A staff member for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath emailed the county’s newly established Emergency Centralized Response Center, asking for a cleanup of a reoccurring homeless encampment along a rail line in the San Fernando Valley. (Khouri, 8/11)

Los Angeles Times: Fire At AT&T Facility Knocks Out 911 System In SoCal City
Redondo Beach’s 911 system was kicked offline for a short period Sunday after a fire at an AT&T communications center, according to officials. ... Officials said a trash fire, which spread to the AT&T facility in Gardena and burned for five hours early Sunday morning, appeared to be the source. (Uranga, 8/10)

East Bay Times: California Doctors Successfully Reattach A Woman’s Arm Severed In Train Accident 
A month after a train severed her right arm, surf instructor Elieah Boyd was discharged from the UCI Medical Center in Orange, where her arm was reattached in a 10-hour surgery. (Takahashi, 8/11)

Times of San Diego: San Diego Food Bank Prepared Despite Greater Local Demand
According to San Diego Food Bank CEO Casey Castillo, the organization will receive less food through federally-funded programs in the 2026 Fiscal Year, which began July 1.“ Nonprofits are struggling to know what resources are going to be available, and certainly that hurts the planning process,” Castillo said during an interview at the food bank’s warehouse in Miramar, which doubles as their headquarters. “But also, our food recipients are struggling with the unknowns.” (Miller, 8/10)

ABC News: Supreme Court Formally Asked To Overturn Landmark Same-Sex Marriage Ruling 
Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision. Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees. ... More fundamentally, she claims the high court's decision in Obergefell v Hodges -- extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment's due process protections -- was "egregiously wrong." (Dwyer, 8/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Oncologist Reinstated At FDA After Brief Resignation
A divisive UCSF oncologist has reportedly been reinstated at the FDA less than two weeks after he resigned amid criticism from President Donald Trump’s allies. Multiple media outlets on Saturday cited Health and Human Services Department officials confirming the reinstatement of Dr. Vinay Prasad, which was first reported by Endpoints News, a biotech-focused news organization. Spokespeople for HHS, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration, did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Chronicle about the news. (Bollag, 8/9)

Stat: 'Struggling' FDA Employees Ask About Unusual Meetings And Staffing
Top drug regulator George Tidmarsh assured Food and Drug Administration staff this week that he and other leaders are trying to bring operations back to normal. “I know that I’m coming in here at a challenging time,” Tidmarsh said at a town hall meeting on Friday with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research staff. “That is not lost on me.” (Lawrence, 8/8)

CNN: CDC Leaders Call Shooting Targeted And Deliberate As Rattled Staff Say They Felt Like ‘Sitting Ducks’ 
In a large and hastily arranged Zoom call on Saturday, about 800 rattled staffers with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to make sense of the trauma they endured just a day earlier when a gunman opened fire on the agency’s buildings from across the street. They had been winding down for the weekend when more than 40 bullets smashed through their office windows, whizzing just over their cubicle walls and petrifying staffers in at least four buildings. (Faheld, Goodman and Tirrell, 8/11)

AP: Union Wants Statement Against COVID Vaccine Misinformation After CDC Shooting
A Georgia man who had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal has been identified as the shooter who opened fire late Friday on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, killing a police officer. The 30-year-old suspect, who died during the incident, had also tried to get into the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta but was stopped by guards before driving to a pharmacy across the street and opening fire, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Saturday. (Haigh, 8/10)

Politico: Trump's Former Surgeon General Blasts Kennedy For 'Tepid' Response To CDC Shootings 
A former U.S. surgeon general on Sunday said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “failed” in his response to the shootings that took place on Friday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. “How you respond to a crisis defines a leader, and quite frankly Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test in this regard,” Dr. Jerome Adams told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” (Daniels, 8/10)

Los Angeles Times: California Farmworkers Still Die From Heat Illness 20 Years After Law
[Twenty] years after California enacted a landmark heat safety law, farmworkers across the state are still getting sick and sometimes dying from preventable heat illness. Advocates and some lawmakers say a toothless enforcement system is often to blame. (Garrison, 8/9)

Los Angeles Times: 'The Safest Place To Be': When Fleeing Fire Is No Longer An Option
For many, the idea of hunkering down in a fire shelter for hours on end as flames enclose on all sides is hard to stomach. But fires in California explode faster than ever due to a warming climate, flammable brush overtaking native species and more human-caused ignitions during high winds. Fires overtaking, in mere minutes, communities that take hours to evacuate are prompting a growing number of wildfire safety and emergency response experts to argue that fire refuge policies like Pepperdine’s may be the only way to keep everyone in a vicious fire’s path alive. (Haggerty, 8/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Vaccines For Older Adults: What To Get At 50, 65 And Beyond
Vaccine development over the past decade has produced a host of new formulations targeted toward older adults, many of whom remain committed to immunizations amid a national climate of simmering mistrust. Adult immunizations start at about age 50 for otherwise healthy individuals, and the shots protect against not just death, but complications from serious illness that can be life-altering. Some immunizations are highly recommended for everyone; others may be less critical but worth talking over with a clinician about an individual’s needs. (Allday, 8/9)

San Francisco Chronicle: How To Eat And Train Smarter For Healthy Perimenopause And Menopause
When Dr. Kathleen Jordan reviews lab results with her patients, most of whom are in perimenopause or menopause, they’re often surprised to learn they have high cholesterol for the first time in their life — despite not having changed their diet and exercise routine. ... Unbeknownst to many, hormonal changes that occur during perimenopause and menopause don’t just cause hot flashes, the most commonly recognized symptom of menopause. (Ho, 8/11)