The New York Times: This E.R. Treats Opioid Addiction On Demand. That’s Very Rare.
Every year, thousands of people addicted to opioids show up at hospital emergency rooms in withdrawal so agonizing it leaves them moaning and writhing on the floor. Usually, they’re given medicines that help with vomiting or diarrhea and sent on their way, maybe with a few numbers to call about treatment. ... Highland [Hospital E.R. in Oakland], a clattering big-city hospital where security wands constantly beep as new patients get scanned for weapons, is among a small group of institutions that have started initiating opioid addiction treatment in the E.R. (Goodnough, 8/18)

The New York Times: In San Francisco, Opioid Addiction Treatment Offered On The Streets
The addiction treatment program at Highland Hospital’s emergency room is only one way that cities and health care providers are connecting with people in unusual settings. Another is in San Francisco, where city health workers are taking to the streets to find homeless people with opioid use disorder and offering them buprenorphine prescriptions on the spot. (Goodnough, 8/18)

The Associated Press: Synthetic Pot Seen As A Public Health Danger
A decade after first appearing in the United States, synthetic marijuana is seen as a growing health danger. Some marijuana smokers turned to it because it is relatively cheap and not detected in routine drug testing. Dozens of people in New Haven, Connecticut, went to the hospital this week after overdosing on a batch of synthetic pot. (Stobbe, 8/17)

The Associated Press: Chronic Pain Patients Says They're 'Treated Like Criminals'
Doctors are looking at opioid prescriptions through a microscopic lens because since 2013, more people in Virginia have died from drug overdoses than vehicle accidents or guns, according to the Virginia Department of Health. ... As a result, the health care industry has reduced the number of opioid prescriptions, hoping to curtail “drug seekers” who may start with pain pills, which become a gateway drug to more illicit substances. But the cutback also is affecting those with legitimate pain problems. (Dyson, 8/19)

California Healthline: Babies Dependent On Opioids Need Touch, Not Tech
It’s estimated that around 2 percent of infants are now born drug-dependent. In areas gripped by the opioid crisis, the rate is even higher. The low-tech, high-touch treatment approach that Lili received in the first weeks of her life is one that health experts encourage hospitals everywhere to adopt as they grapple with increasing numbers of infants born with drug dependencies. (Smith, 8/20)

KPCC: Knock, Knock: Pot Delivery. Should Cannabis Be Deliverable In Cities That Have Banned It?
We get into the weeds with cannabis delivery in cities where storefront sales are banned in California. We also discuss the CA bail reform bill; examine the SEC's consideration to end quarterly reports; and more. (Mantle, 8/17)

Los Angeles Times: With An Epidemic Of Mental Illness On The Streets, Counties Struggle To Spend Huge Cash Reserves
When California voters passed a tax on high-income residents in 2004, backers said it would make good on the state’s “failed promise” to help counties pay for the treatment of the mentally ill. After nearly 15 years, Proposition 63 — the Mental Health Services Act — has steered billions of dollars to the counties across the state. But huge sums remain unspent at a time when mental illness has become an epidemic among the homeless population. (Curwen, 8/19)

KQED: Overcoming A Shameful Past, VA Plans Haven For Homeless Vets In West Los Angeles 
A vast green space in one of the poshest neighborhoods in Los Angeles is slated to become a haven for homeless veterans. That's a big change for the campus of the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center. For years, parts of the property were illegally rented to a variety of commercial enterprises having nothing to do with helping veterans. (Jaffe, 8/20)

Fresno Bee: Fresno’s Homeless Task Force Cleans 2 Tons Of Trash A Day 
Fresno Police Department’s homeless task force spends a big chunk of its time cleaning up homeless camps with the city’s sanitation crew — amounting to more than two metric tons of trash a day. But some city leaders don’t believe law enforcement should have to tackle the issue of homelessness. (Calix, 8/17)

Sacramento Bee: California Measles Cases Already Top Last Year’s Total; What Health Providers Can Do
With a little more than four months to go in 2018, California residents already have contracted more cases of the measles this year than they did in all of 2017, according to the California Department of Public Health. There have been 18 cases in California as of Aug. 10, one of them a child in Sacramento County whom officials say came down with the illness after visiting a foreign country. (Anderson, 8/19)

Sacramento Bee: Hazmat Teams Clean Up After Redding California Fire
[State environmental scientist Janine] Brinkman this week is taking in similar scenes as the state Department of Toxic Substances Control begins the early stages of the cleanup from the devastating fire that wiped out more than 1,000 homes in Redding last month. The work, removing obvious hazardous waste like melted car batteries and jugs of chlorine, marks the first step in rebuilding after massive natural disasters. (Ashton, 8/17)

PBS NewsHour: Why A Patient Paid A $285 Copay For A $40 Drug
Insurance copays are higher than the cost of the drug about 25 percent of the time, according to a study published in March by the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. USC researchers analyzed 9.5 million prescriptions filled during the first half of 2013. (Thompson, 8/19)

The New York Times: States Rush To Rein In Prescription Costs, And Drug Companies Fight Back
States around the country are clamping down on pharmaceutical companies, forcing them to disclose and justify price increases, but the drug manufacturers are fighting back, challenging the state laws as a violation of their constitutional rights. Even more states are, for the first time, trying to regulate middlemen who play a crucial role by managing drug benefits for employers and insurers, while taking payments from drug companies in return for giving preferential treatment to their drugs. (Pear, 8/18)

The New York Times: The Secret To Keeping Black Men Healthy? Maybe Black Doctors
Black men have the lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in the United States. Much of the gap is explained by greater rates of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, which afflict poor and poorly educated black men in particular. But why is that? Lack of insurance? Lack of access to health care? Now, a group of researchers in California has demonstrated that another powerful force may be at work: a lack of black physicians. (Kolata, 8/20)

NPR: Should You Get That Scan? Your Doctor Might Not Be Great At Helping You Decide
Your doctor probably nags you to schedule cancer screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. These tests, after all, can be life-saving, and most doctors want to make sure you get them done. But when it comes to explaining the ways that certain screenings can cause you harm, your doctor may not be doing such a good job. (Gordon, 8/18)

WBUR: The Doctors Without MDs: What Makes Osteopathic Medicine Different?
[Doctors of osteopathic medicine] receive conventional medical training, but also learn osteopathic medicine, which focuses on holistic approaches to care that sometimes involve hands-on treatment. The philosophy was developed by a controversial 19th-century doctor who, at the time, was shunned by the medical establishment. Since 1973, though, DOs have been fully recognized as doctors in all 50 states. (Kaplan, 8/17)

And in other health care personnel news —

California Healthline: The Man Who Sold America On Vitamin D — And Profited In The Process
The doctor most responsible for turning the sunshine supplement into a billion-dollar juggernaut has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the vitamin D industry, according to government records and interviews. (Szabo, 8/20)

The Washington Post: Nurses Helped Make Us Understand Domestic Violence As A Serious Health Issue
Even though intimate-partner violence has long been all too common, it hasn’t always been considered a serious health issue. Passionate nurses helped change that. “Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives,” a traveling exhibition produced by the National Library of Medicine, brings their work to life. It’s a compact exhibit with a massive story to tell. (Blakemore, 8/18)

Retraction Watch: Dr. Gilbert Welch, Prominent Researcher, Plagiarized Colleagues' Work
A Dartmouth College investigation has concluded that Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, one of the country’s most prominent health care policy scholars, committed research misconduct in connection with a paper published in a top medical journal. Welch plagiarized material from a Dartmouth colleague and another researcher at a different institution, according to a letter from the college’s interim provost obtained by Retraction Watch. The material was included in a 2016 paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The work found that breast cancer screening was more likely to overdiagnose tumors (leading to unnecessary treatments) than pick up early cases that are destined to become life-threatening. (McCook, 8/20)

The Washington Post: If You Are Young And Have Cancer, Help Can Be Hard To Find. That’s Changing.
Adolescents and young adults with cancer, often called AYAs, have been an in-between, often forgotten population. Groups that advocate for them argue that research, treatment and survival rates have not kept pace with those of young children and older adults. “We are the invisible cancer generation,” Zachary says. Furthermore, this group has age-specific concerns, including body image, sexuality, fertility, relationships, education and career. (Cimons, 8/18)

The Washington Post: Childhood Exposure To Secondhand Smoke Is Linked To Lung Disease Decades Later
Childhood exposure to secondhand smoke is linked to lung disease decades later, according to a study published last week by the American Cancer Society. For 22 years, researchers have been following more than 70,000 adults who have never smoked. At the beginning of the study, the participants were asked whether they lived in a household with a smoker while they were children. Those who did were 31 percent more likely to die of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. This is the first study to find a correlation between the two. (Furby, 8/18)

The Wall Street Journal: An Ex-Husband Moves Back In—For Cancer Care
Chad Burnheimer and Holly Platt, both in their 40s, had been divorced for eight years when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in April 2017. At that point, Ms. Platt became his caregiver, taking him to the doctor, monitoring his medicine and joining him at support groups for those with brain tumors. He moved into her Pittsburgh home with their three children, ages 11, 14 and 21. ... The profile of the nation’s 40 million unpaid caregivers is evolving. Family members—typically spouses and adult children—still provide the majority of care for the sick and aging, but as families become smaller and more far-flung, others are stepping in, including grandchildren, neighbors, stepchildren, and partners. Now, with high rates of divorce, especially among baby boomers, a relatively new face is emerging in the caregiving landscape: ex-spouses. (Ansberry, 8/19)

Stat: Nine Things To Know About Sangamo And Its First-In-Human Genome Editing Study
The first clinical trial using genome editing to treat real patients is nearing an early but crucially important data reveal. Until now, the only data available involving the removal or repair of disease-causing DNA have come from experiments in test tubes and animals. But late last year, the biotech company Sangamo Therapeutics started a clinical trial using a one-time, genome-editing fix to treat people born with a rare, inherited disease. (Feuerstein, 8/20)

The Wall Street Journal: The Woman Who Has A Plan For Wall Street To Help Cure Blindness
Karen Petrou, an influential adviser to bankers and regulators, has made a career of deciphering complicated financial regulations. Now she’s trying to decode another type of puzzle. The conundrum: Matching medical researchers who need money with investors who have it. A bill outlining her strategy, which would include a government guarantee, was introduced in the House of Representatives last month. (Rexrode, 8/18)

Stat: The Perfect Lab Animal Is Strikingly, Surprisingly Beautiful
The worms turned out to be the perfect lab animal. They were simple creatures that lived in the dirt and ate bacteria but were just complicated enough to provide biological insights applicable to human health. C. elegans was the first organism to have its genome sequenced and, aside from humans, have been sent into space more than any other animal. (Chen, 8/20)

The New York Times: This Drug Is Safe And Effective. Wait. Compared With What?
We spend many billions of dollars each year on the discovery and development of new drugs, but almost none of it addresses two crucial questions: How do these new therapies compare with already known ones? What are the relative benefits and harms in a particular situation, for a person like you? Such questions can best be answered by comparative effectiveness research. (Carroll, 8/20)

Los Angeles Times: 'Killed Me Little By Little.' Family Detention Left Lasting Scars For One Mother And Son
While critics of family separation say splitting parents and children can traumatize children, Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel for the Immigration Justice Campaign, said children also can suffer when kept with their parents. Shepherd represented families like Oliva and Cristhian who were detained in Texas under the Obama administration. She saw children regressing behaviorally, crying a lot, becoming listless, fighting more and lashing out. (Castillo and Bernhard, 8/19)

The Associated Press: Migrant Spouse Of Pregnant Woman Detained On Way To Hospital
A California woman said Saturday that she had to drive herself to the hospital and give birth without her husband after he was detained by immigration agents. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the man was detained because he was wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant in a homicide case in Mexico. (Myers, 8/19)

The Washington Post: New Blood Pressure Guidelines Can Cause Problems For The Elderly.
In recent years, doctors have been urged to treat high blood pressure more aggressively, especially in older people. My mother’s doctors seemed intent on lowering her blood pressure despite what I thought were side effects that were diminishing her quality of life. (Neumann, 8/19)

NPR: Vacation Days Piling Up? Even A Short Get-Away Can Boost Well-Being
About half of full-time workers recently surveyed by the U.S. Travel Association didn't take all the paid vacation days they earned last year. ... If you're among this group, you could be missing out on some of the benefits of leisure time. It may seem obvious that vacation makes us feel good, but its health benefits are, in fact, measurable. For instance one study finds engaging in more frequent enjoyable leisure activities, including vacation, is linked to improvements in mood, sleep and blood pressure, and can help buffer "the negative psychological impact of stress." (Aubrey, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Birth Control App Highlights Emerging Health Tech Market
The condom, the pill and now, the smartphone? Natural Cycles, a mobile fertility app, this month became the first ever digital contraceptive device to win FDA marketing approval. Women take their temperatures and track their menstrual cycle on the app, which uses an algorithm to determine when they’re fertile and should abstain from unprotected sex or use protection. In effect, it’s a form of the rhythm or calendar method. (Chan, 8/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Gut Feeling: To Stay Healthy, Keep Your Body’s Microbes In Line
You probably know the human body hosts a variety of microbes, but you might be surprised by the volume. If the collection of bacteria, fungi and other organisms could be shed all at once, it would weigh 2 to 4 pounds and fill one or two quarts. En masse, scientists call it the microbiome and have come to believe it is as important to good health as a sound brain, heart, kidneys, liver and lungs. (McGinty, 8/17)