Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Sobering Up: In An Alcohol-Soaked Nation, More Seek Booze-Free Social Spaces
A national trend of boozeless bars is cropping up nationwide to create social spaces without the hangovers, DUIs and alcoholism culture. It’s part of a new push for sober options. (Laura Ungar and Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today, 7/8)
Good morning! On Tuesday, Democratic AGs in part led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will help defend the constitutionality of the health law in oral arguments in front of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. More on that below, but first here are your top California health stories.
Health Groups Blast California Assemblyman’s Vaping Proposal As Watered-Down And Misdirected: Assemblymen Adam Gray (D-Merced) and Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) have introduced a bill that would allow sales in age-restricted vape and tobacco shops and through online merchants that use age-verification technology. The bill would also bar flavored e-cigarette products except those with menthol, mint and tobacco flavors from being sold at other retail stores, including liquor stores and gas stations. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network was quick to deem the legislation a “complete sham.” “Big Tobacco is using intense lobbying and campaign contributions to lure lawmakers to pass a bill that will do little to curb the current youth e-cigarette epidemic raging in this state,” the group said in a statement. The legislation protects e-cigarette firms, including Juul Labs, which has been a major campaign contributor to state lawmakers, the cancer network argued. The legislation also drew opposition as “inadequate” from Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a coalition of health officials. Myers said cities including San Francisco have taken a better approach by prohibiting the sale of electronic cigarettes. Both Gray and Cunningham have a history of collecting campaign contributions from tobacco giant Philip Morris USA. Read more from Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times and Andrew Sheeler of the Sacramento Bee.
Bitter Feud Between USC and University Of California Over Private Rival Poaching Top Scientists Ends With $50M Settlement: In its apology to the University of California, USC said it regretted the way neurology professor Paul Aisen and his lab staff left UC San Diego in 2015, departures that were secretly coordinated with high-level administrators at the Los Angeles university. The self-described “quarterback” of Aisen’s recruitment was then dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine Carmen Puliafito, subsequently revealed to have been using drugs and partying with criminals during the time he was courting the scientist. The settlement comes as USC is attempting to emerge from a series of scandals that culminated with longtime president C.L. Max Nikias departing last year. Scores of so-called “transformative faculty” were lured to USC during Nikias tenure, often with perks that cash-strapped public institutions struggled to match: Huge raises, million-dollar housing loans and brand-new facilities. It is not unusual for professors to move to other institutions, but it is often a collegial process in which the universities work together to transfer grants and research. Read more from Harriet Ryan and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times.
Some Silicon Valley Companies Wade Into Abortion Debate While Others Stay Cautiously Silent: More than a dozen Silicon Valley firms — including Yelp, Square, Slack, Reddit, Postmates and Zendesk —backed a letter that ran as a full-page ad in The New York Times last month, calling the abortion laws “bad for business.” But absent from the conversation thus far, observers noted, are some of the tech executives who’ve led corporate activism on other social issues — like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, a vocal advocate for increasing funding for homelessness programs in San Francisco and a leading national voice a few years ago when he spoke out against so-called bathroom bills in North Carolina and other states that would have discriminated against transgender people. “This is a highly charged issue, and right now our political climate is already so polarized that leaders may be really measured in their response to this one,” said Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “They want to be careful.” Read more from Catherine Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
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More News From Across The State
NPR:
More Rural Patients Using Telehealth — If They Can Afford It
Telehealth turned Jill Hill's life around. The 63-year-old lives on the edge of rural Grass Valley, an old mining town in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California. She was devastated after her husband Dennis passed away in the fall of 2014 after a long series of medical and financial setbacks. "I was grief-stricken and my self-esteem was down," Hill remembers. "I didn't care about myself. I didn't brush my hair. I was isolated. I just kind of locked myself in the bedroom." (Neighmond, 7/7)
Los Angeles Times:
Trees Could Reduce Carbon In The Atmosphere To Levels Not Seen In Nearly 100 Years
By removing carbon dioxide from the air, trees are one of our strongest allies in the fight against climate change. And if we planted a whole lot more of them in just the right places, they could reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to levels not seen in nearly 100 years, researchers say. After examining more than 70,000 high-quality satellite photos of trees from all over the planet, ecologists concluded that the Earth could support 900 million additional hectares of tree cover. Those trees would eliminate about two-thirds of the carbon that's in the atmosphere today as a result of human activities, according to a study in Friday's edition of the journal Science. (DeMarco, 7/5)
Capital Public Radio:
Sacramento's Newest Homeless Shelter Offers Healing Space For LGBT Young Adults
Pixie Pearl is hoping the front porch of Sacramento's newest homeless shelter, freshly painted in rainbow stripes, will help homeless LGBT youth feel welcome. The shelter, opened this month, will house 12 residents at a time. It’s tailored for LGBT homeless individuals ages 18 to 24 who’ve been victims of crime. They can stay for up to 90 days. (Caiola, 7/5)
Sacramento Bee:
400 Oroville Hospital Nurses Ratify Four-Year Labor Contract
Roughly 400 registered nurses represented by the California Nurses Association ratified a new four-year labor contract with Oroville Hospital late Wednesday, negotiating wage increases of 12 percent over the life of their contract. The nurses also secured a number of preventive measures and protections to help them in the event of outbreaks of communicable diseases, during emergencies and disasters, and in combating and dealing with workplace violence, said Joe Henry, the lead negotiator for the Oroville RN’s. (Anderson, 7/5)
Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
Sister Michaela Rock, Who Helped Create Health Clinics For Low-Income Sonoma County Residents, Dies At 80
Sister Michaela Rock had no time for small talk, bureaucracy or excuses. She knew that people with little money, power and access to health care were suffering. As an activist nun with the order that founded Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the hard-charging Sister Michaela carried the ministry of St. Joseph Health out into the streets. Through a decade that began in the early 1990s, the former Catholic school teacher struck out into underserved communities in Sonoma County and played major roles in the creation of accessible health clinics — among them the one that has grown into the nine-campus Santa Rosa Community Health Centers. (Smith, 7/4)
San Diego Union-Times:
Girl Scout's Website Created To Help Students With Mental Illness
Sabrina Darian’s Girl Scout Gold Award project on stress and mental health turned out to be not only an educational experience for the students she worked with, but for herself, she said. Darian, with assistance from a local psychologist, created a website, resources and video “encouraging kids to speak up” about their struggles with mental illnesses and mental health in general. To get the information to students before they entered high school, Darian got some of her former teachers at Bernardo Heights Middle School to show the website to their students, who provided commentary to Darian on what they learned and thought of her endeavor, she said. (Himchak, 7/5)
Fresno Bee:
Wounded Fresno County Deputy ‘Healing Up’
The deputy who was shot during an intense gunfight in Tollhouse on Tuesday is on the road to recovery, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said. ...Botti also shared a photo of Erickson in his hospital bed next to a Catholic prayer card of St. Michael, known as the patron saint of law enforcement. (Panoo, 7/4)
The Washington Post:
5th Circuit Decision On ACA Could Create Political Havoc For GOP
The judges of the marbled appellate courthouse in the heart of New Orleans once upended civil rights law, issuing rulings that propelled desegregation. This summer, they could upend health-care law and with it, the roiling politics of health care in Congress, the White House and the 2020 campaigns. On Tuesday, the Trump administration and 18 Republican-led states will face off against a score of Democratic-led states over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — the sprawling law the Supreme Court has upheld twice but a federal district judge in Texas ruled invalid late last year. (Goldstein, 7/7)
The Hill:
ObamaCare Repeal Lawsuit Faces Major Court Test
The lawsuit has proved to be a headache for congressional Republicans seeking to turn the page on their efforts to repeal ObamaCare after the issue helped Democrats win back the House in last year’s midterm elections. “Once the Titanic was already hit with an iceberg, the worst thing they could have done would be steer towards another one,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “If [Republicans] were hoping to get right on this issue, going to court to overturn it seems to be the wrong way about it.” (Sullivan, 7/7)
The Associated Press:
Congress Has Ambitious Agenda Tackling Health Care Costs
Lawmakers are trying to set aside their irreconcilable differences over the Obama-era Affordable Care Act and work to reach bipartisan agreement on a more immediate health care issue, lowering costs for people who already have coverage. Returning from their Fourth of July recess, the Senate and House are pushing to end surprise medical bills, curb high prices for medicines, and limit prescription copays for people with Medicare. Partisan disagreements could derail the effort, but lawmakers fear the voters' verdict in 2020 if politicians have nothing to show for all their hand-wringing about drug prices. (7/7)
The New York Times:
Trump And His Aides Dismiss Reports Of Disease And Hunger In Border Facilities
President Trump and his top immigration officials on Sunday contested reports that migrant children were being held in horrific conditions in federal detention facilities, as the administration argued that the government was enforcing oversight standards even as it struggled to house and care for an influx of migrants. Accounts of disease, hunger and overcrowding have multiplied in recent days, but Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, maintained that the facilities were safe. (Cochrane, 7/7)
The Associated Press:
Migrant Child Drawings Depict Jail-Like Scenes Of Detention
In one drawing, stick figures sleep on the ground under blankets watched by other figures with hats. Another picture has frowning stick figures behind what appears to be a chain-link fence. One shows two toilets in a small room. All of the drawings include imposing jail-like bars covering most of the canvas. They were done by children asked to depict their experience in Border Patrol custody and photographed by an American Academy of Pediatrics volunteer last week. (7/5)
The New York Times:
What Would Giving Health Care To Undocumented Immigrants Mean?
Providing comprehensive health coverage to undocumented immigrants has long been nothing more than a wouldn’t-it-be-nice item on the far left’s wish list. But in the crowded field of candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, nearly everyone supports it. Almost all of the 19 candidates who responded to a recent New York Times survey on health care positions said “yes” to a question about whether undocumented immigrants should be covered under a “Medicare for all” system, a public option or other government health programs. And during the second night of the Democratic debates last week, the idea received a unanimous show of hands in support. (Hoffman, 7/3)
The Associated Press:
Appeals Court Puts Trump Abortion Restrictions On Hold Again
Trump administration rules that impose additional hurdles for low-income women seeking abortions are on hold once again. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday vacated a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel and said a slate of 11 judges will reconsider lawsuits brought by more than 20 states and several civil rights and health organizations challenging the rules. (7/3)
The New York Times:
Trump Suggests Executive Order On Drug Prices, With A Scope That Is Unclear
President Trump said Friday that the White House was writing an executive order to require pharmaceutical companies to offer the United States government among the lowest prices in the world, in comments that were not immediately clear to many experts on the country’s health care system. “We’re working on a favored-nation clause, where we pay whatever the lowest nation’s price is,” Mr. Trump said to reporters Friday, specifying that an “executive order” was in the works. “Why should other nations like Canada — why should other nations pay much less than us? They’ve taken advantage of the system for a long time, pharma.” (Sanger-Katz, 7/5)
The New York Times:
When ‘Black Lives Matter’ Is Invoked In The Abortion Debate
As a pastor, Clinton Stancil counsels his black congregants that abortion is akin to the taking of innocent life. But as a civil rights activist, Mr. Stancil urges them to understand the social forces that prompt black women to have abortions at disproportionately high rates. The national debate over abortion has focused of late on when a heartbeat is discernible in the fetus, on the rights of women to make choices over their bodies and on the vast schism between the opposing views on ending pregnancies. (Eligon, 7/6)