The Associated Press: Health Care, Immigration Dominate California Governor Race
No topic has dominated California's governor race like President Donald Trump. The Republicans want to be like him; the Democrats want to oppose him. But whoever wins will face a long list of challenges from housing and homelessness to health care. Here's a look at some of the debates that have emerged during the race, which includes Democrats Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa, John Chiang and Delaine Eastin and Republicans John Cox and Travis Allen. (Cooper, 6/2)

Meanwhile —

Politico: San Francisco To Vote On Flavored Tobacco Ban
A major tobacco company is pouring millions of dollars into a ballot initiative that would repeal the country’s strongest effort yet to ban the sale of flavored tobaccos, which are attracting a whole new generation of users including children and teens. A $12 million campaign primarily funded by R.J. Reynolds is urging San Francisco voters next Tuesday to reject the city’s ban on selling flavored vaping products, hookah tobacco and menthol cigarettes. The flavored tobacco comes in brightly colored packages and tastes like bubblegum, mango or chicken-and-waffles, which public health advocates say are designed to entice young people. (Colliver, 6/2)

Los Angeles Times: A Creepy Feeling, A Sideways Glance – Patients Of Accused Former USC Gynecologist Share Their Stories 
In the wake of a Times report detailing three decades of complaints against Tyndall, more than 400 people have contacted a USC hotline. The accusations against Tyndall date to the early 1990s and include reports that he photographed patients’ genitals, touched women inappropriately during pelvic exams and made suggestive and sometimes crude remarks about their bodies. (Ryan, Hamilton, Parvini and Pringle, 6/2)

KPCC: VA Facilities Too Far Away? A New Pilot Program Allows Veterans To Use Private Urgent Care Instead 
Last week Congress passed a bill to streamline the VA's community care programs, including Veterans Choice, which lets veterans use private medical care if the VA is too far away or wait times are too long. A new pilot program that could provide a glimpse into how private clinics may supplement VA care officially rolled out in the Antelope Valley on Thursday. (Denkmann, 6/1)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Need A Little Extra Money? You'll Soon Be Able To Sell And Rent Your DNA 
Feel like earning a little extra money and maybe improving your health at the same time? Consumers will soon be able to sell or rent their DNA to scientists who are trying to fight diseases as different as dementia, lupus and leukemia. Bio-brokers want to collect everything from someone’s 23andMe and Ancestry.com gene data to fully sequenced genomes. (Robbins, 6/3)

In other public health news —

San Francisco Chronicle: As Opioid Crisis Grows, Medical Schools Bolster Addiction Training 
During the three years that Dr. Hannah Snyder worked at San Francisco General Hospital — part of her residency training to become a primary care doctor — she noticed a troubling pattern. ... The experience prompted Snyder, once she completed training in 2017, to begin a yearlong fellowship in addiction medicine. UCSF’s School of Medicine started the program last year, partially in response to the growing need to treat opioid addiction in California and beyond. (Ho, 6/2)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: As Mental Health Subsides In Older Generation, What To Do About Their Guns? 
Alzheimer’s San Diego, a nonprofit that provides support and education to patients and their families, started asking about guns in the home several years ago as part of its respite care program, which sends volunteers into households to provide give caregivers a break. They learned that as many as 30 percent of homes they were going into had guns. (Davis, 6/3)

Capital Public Radio: Golden State Killer Records Released By Judge Offers Details On Arrest And DNA Evidence 
A judge in the East Area Rapist case released details from the search and arrest warrants for suspect Joseph James DeAngelo on Friday, including details describing how authorities apprehended him and information linking him to crimes in the Visalia Ransacker cases from the 1970s. An affidavit filed in April of this year in Sacramento says that DeAngelo was identified as the prime suspect in the East Area Rapist/Golden State KIller cases after matching DNA from DeAngelo to that from a rape and homicide in the 1980s. (Moffitt, 6/1)

In other news from across the state —

KQED: 'This Was A Wild Dream': Cannabis Cup Comes To Sonoma County 
Hundreds gathered Saturday at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa to do something that's pretty rare in this country: legally buy and consume marijuana products at the same place. Organizers say the two-day Cannabis Cup, put on by the marijuana media company High Times, is just the second event in the country to allow visitors to buy and consume marijuana all in one place. (Hutson, 6/2)

The New York Times: Trump Plan To Lower Drug Prices Could Increase Costs For Some Patients
When President Trump unveiled his plan to lower prescription drug prices in a Rose Garden speech last month, he said he would inject more competition into the market by bolstering negotiating powers under Medicare. But experts analyzing the plan warn of a possible side effect: The proposal could significantly increase out-of-pocket costs for some of the sickest people on Medicare. At the heart of the president’s plan is a proposal to switch some expensive drugs from one part of Medicare to another part — moving them from Part B, the medical benefit created in the original 1965 Medicare law, to Part D, the outpatient drug benefit added by Congress in 2003. (Pear, 6/2)

In other pharmaceutical news —

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Chief Expects Agency To Play Role In Overseeing Requests For Unproven Drugs
U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he expects the agency will still decide in some cases whether terminally ill patients can receive unproven drugs, despite a new law intended to weaken the FDA’s power over such cases. The new “Right to Try” law, signed by President Donald Trump last week, allows terminally ill patients to try experimental drugs outside of standard clinical trials, without needing FDA approval and as long as drug companies are willing to provide them. (Loftus, 6/3)

Reuters: Novartis Readies Anti-Sexism Message For Migraine Drug
With women hardest hit by migraine headaches, Swiss drugmaker Novartis is gearing up its marketing message to counteract sexism that it worries might become a barrier to adoption of its new medicine Aimovig. The injectable monoclonal antibody that Novartis has developed with Amgen won approval in the United States this month and on Friday bagged a recommendation from a key European panel, clearing the way for likely approval on the continent. (Miller and Varghese, 6/1)

The New York Times: Good News For Women With Breast Cancer: Many Don’t Need Chemo
Many women with early-stage breast cancer who would receive chemotherapy under current standards do not actually need it, according to a major international study that is expected to quickly change medical treatment. “We can spare thousands and thousands of women from getting toxic treatment that really wouldn’t benefit them,” said Dr. Ingrid A. Mayer, from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, an author of the study. “This is very powerful. It really changes the standard of care.” (Grady, 6/3)

The Associated Press: Many Breast Cancer Patients Can Skip Chemo, Big Study Finds
The study is the largest ever done of breast cancer treatment, and the results are expected to spare up to 70,000 patients a year in the United States and many more elsewhere the ordeal and expense of these drugs. "The impact is tremendous," said the study leader, Dr. Joseph Sparano of Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Most women in this situation don't need treatment beyond surgery and hormone therapy, he said. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, some foundations and proceeds from the U.S. breast cancer postage stamp. Results were discussed Sunday at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago and published by the New England Journal of Medicine. Some study leaders consult for breast cancer drugmakers or for the company that makes the gene test. (6/3)

The Washington Post: Most Women With A Common Type Of Early-Stage Breast Cancer Can Skip Chemo, A New Report Finds
The cancer in question is driven by hormones, has not spread to the lymph nodes and does not contain a protein called HER2. Generally, after surgery, such patients receive endocrine therapy, such as tamoxifen, which is designed to block the cancer-spurring effects of hormones. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society, called the trial a good example of “precision medicine” and said it would save many women from unneeded chemotherapy. (McGinley, 6/3)

NPR: Breast Cancer Genomic Test Can Rule Out Need For Chemo
In the U.S., the most recent data shows around 135,000 new cases yearly of the specific breast cancer studied, says Dr. Joseph Sparano, an oncologist at Montefiore Medical Center, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the lead author of the study. Twenty-five percent of those patients won't qualify for chemotherapy because of age or medical problems. Out of the 100,000 or so patients who could take the gene test to help make a decision about chemotherapy, he says at least two-thirds fall into the middle range that can benefit from the study findings. (Watson, 6/3)