San Francisco Chronicle: California Schools Tap COVID Funding To Help Homeless Families
An injury forced the family of five to live in a leaky 1995 RV with a malfunctioning plumbing system during one of California’s wettest seasons in decades. Ana Franquis’ husband, Oscar, was fired about two years ago after injuring his back while working as a carpenter. (Gallegos, Rosales, Willis, 6/3)

Los Angeles Times: How Congressional Earmarks Are Being Used To Help Address Homelessness
With a broken elevator and a spotty HVAC system, the Gower Street Apartments badly needed some updates when the building’s owner received a surprising call earlier this year. A city housing official suggested that perhaps Congress could fund repairs to the supportive housing development for formerly homeless people. After years of being scorned in Washington, the rebirth of congressional earmarks could help address a common conundrum confronting that building and other affordable housing developments: Lenders and governments make lots of money available to construct new housing but not to refurbish residences that already exist. (Oreskes, 6/5)

Bay Area News Group: Where Did The 200 Homeless People Cleared From Coyote Creek End Up?
In April, the Santa Clara Valley Water District finalized an agreement with the City Council giving San Jose $4.8 million to remove people from the creek and connect them with shelter and services so the district can start the necessary construction on flood walls and other improvements in mid-June. (Varian, 6/4)

Berkeleyside: Berkeley Mental Health Responders Still Trying To Staff Up
The city’s new contracted Specialized Care Unit, a mental health response program now three years in the making, is still looking for staff to populate its teams. At a Zoom forum on Wednesday, city officials and workers from Bonita House, which will run the unit, predicted it would start taking calls “this summer,” the same as officials had predicted in February. (Gecan, 6/2)

Los Angeles Times: Struggling To Calm Your Mind? Buddhist Monks In Hacienda Heights Offer Meditation Tips
When we think of meditation, we often picture someone sitting as still as a statue, said Venerable Hui Cheng, a monk at Fo Guang Shan Hsi Lai Temple. But that’s just one form of meditation. For the monastics at Hsi Lai Temple, meditation isn’t a singular activity. “It is a way of life — and an attitude of life that we carry in everyday existence,” he said. “Everything we do in our lives, as long as we are able to apply the mind correctly, with focus and attention, can be meditation.” (Tseng, 6/2)

Bloomberg: Cities Cite Mental Health, Loneliness And Depression As Top Policy Concerns
An “unprecedented” mental health crisis is overwhelming US cities, which lack adequate resources to address growing challenges, according to a new report released today by the US Conference of Mayors. In recent years, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated mental health issues, particularly involving substance abuse, said a survey of mayors of 117 cities in 39 states. (Yee, 6/3)

The Bakersfield Californian: County Health Officials Detect Mosquito-Borne Diseases In Insects In Kern 
The first mosquito samples have been confirmed for West Nile virus and for St. Louis encephalitis virus in Kern County this year, Kern County Public Health Services said Friday. (6/3)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Cloverdale’s Planned $40 Million Community Health Center Is ‘A Long Time Coming’
With the recent $1.5 million purchase of a 2.8-acre site at S. Cloverdale Boulevard and Citrus Fair Drive, Alexander Valley Healthcare is moving forward with plans to build a three-story, roughly 40,000-square-foot medical facility that will cost an estimated $40 million to build and equip. (Espinoza, 6/4)

NBC News: Women More Likely Than Men To Skip Or Delay Medications Due To Cost, CDC Report Finds
Women are more likely than men to skip, delay or take less medication than was prescribed because of cost, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. The finding came from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, an annual survey in which tens of thousands of people in the U.S. are asked questions about their health-related experiences. (Lovelace Jr., 6/2)

Stat: For Many Who Use Power Wheelchairs, CMS Decision Just Made Seat Elevation Much Less Expensive
For years, patients and medical groups have advocated for Medicare to cover wheelchairs with power-seat elevation, allowing users to, among other things, reach cabinets and countertops more easily and conduct conversations eye to eye. In a major shift in its approach to the devices, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month granted that request, saying it would cover some wheelchairs with a power-seat elevation feature. (Young, 6/5)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Fired Kaiser Employee Who Refused COVID Vaccination Alleges Religious Discrimination
A former employee of Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center contends she was subjected to religious discrimination 18 months ago when she was fired because she refused to obtain the COVID-19 vaccination. (Atagi, 6/4)

Fox News: Most US Adults Are Declining COVID Boosters As CDC Warns Of Health Risks: 'Relatively Little Protection' 
Adults who aren’t current on their COVID-19 vaccine booster doses may have "relatively little remaining protection" against hospitalization compared to those who haven’t been vaccinated at all, suggests a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study spanned multiple states and examined more than 85,000 hospitalizations of people with "COVID-like illness." (Rudy, 6/4)

CIDRAP: More Than 70% Of US Household COVID Spread Started With A Child, Study Suggests
A study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open suggests that 70.4% of nearly 850,000 US household COVID-19 transmissions originated with a child. ... The authors concluded that children had an important role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and that in-person school also resulted in substantial spread. (Van Beusekom, 6/2)

CIDRAP: 96% Of US Blood Donors Had SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies In 2022, CDC Reports
By third quarter 2022, an estimated 96.4% of US blood donors had antibodies against COVID-19 from a previous infection or vaccination, including 22.6% from infection alone and 26.1% from vaccination alone, with 47.7% having both (hybrid immunity), according to a study published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. (Van Beusekom, 6/2)

The Bakersfield Californian: Cancer Survivors Celebrated At Comprehensive Blood And Cancer Center
It is recommended that most women receive their first mammogram at age 40, and Brenda Corona was no exception. It was last fall. She had no symptoms. And Corona was still young, so she figured there was little reason to worry. (Mayer, 6/2)

The Wall Street Journal: For Some Cancers, Less Treatment Is A Better Bet
Doctors are coalescing around the ironic idea that for some cancer treatment, less can be better. Some patients with cervical and pancreatic cancer can do as well with less invasive surgery, according to research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago over the weekend. Other studies at the annual meeting showed some patients with rectal cancer or Hodgkin lymphoma can safely get less radiation. (Abbott, 6/5)

The New York Times: Rectal Cancer Patients May Not Need Radiation, Study Finds
Rectal cancer researchers have pulled off a daunting feat, demonstrating in a large clinical trial that patients do just as well without radiation therapy as with it. The results, revealed Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, could give more than 10,000 patients every year in the United States the option to forgo a cancer treatment that can have serious side effects. (Kolata, 6/4)

Stat: Targeted Drug Greatly Slows Growth Of A Brain Cancer
An experimental drug dramatically slowed the growth of glioma, a type of brain cancer, if the tumor carried a specific type of genetic alteration, researchers said Sunday, potentially sparing patients exposure to radiation and chemotherapy. (Herper, 6/4)

Stat: ImmunoGen Drug Prolongs Survival In Advanced Ovarian Cancer
An antibody that delivers chemotherapy directly to tumor cells extended the lives of women with a form of advanced ovarian cancer in a large study, researchers reported Sunday. The drug, called Elahere, is made by the biotech company ImmunoGen. It was granted conditional approval in the U.S. last November based on preliminary evidence showing it shrank tumors. (Feuerstein, 6/4)

Stat: ‘Extraordinary’ Data Reported For AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Drug
Giving the AstraZeneca drug Tagrisso to patients with non-small cell lung cancer who have had their tumors removed reduced the risk of death by 51%, researchers said Sunday. Put another way, that would mean that about one in 10 patients who received the drug would live another five years. (Chen and Herper, 6/4)

Politico: How Covid Made It Nearly Impossible To Pass New Vaccine Rules 
The HPV vaccine has been around for almost two decades and could spare thousands of people from developing cervical and oral cancer — so mandating it for schoolchildren once seemed an easy call for Democrats in deep-blue California. But a bill to do just that has been watered down beyond recognition in one of the most liberal states in the U.S., a victim of a homegrown anti-vaccine movement that has become more organized and more successful since the pandemic. (Bluth, 6/4)