The Mercury News: Five Years After Facing Closure, Valley Health Center Opens In Morgan Hill
Santa Clara County Valley Healthcare is reopening a newly revamped health care center in the historically underserved South County after the site faced closure and years of reduced capacity. Valley Healthcare Center Morgan Hill, formally known as De Paul Health Center, will begin operating on Monday and is set to expand primary care and urgent care services for the region. (Melecio-Zambrano, 3/15)

San Diego Union-Tribune: State Health Officials Asked To Examine Scripps Chula Vista Maternity Ward Closure 
Citing safety concerns, a South Bay doctor has asked the state Department of Public Health to investigate a recent decision to close the labor and delivery department at Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista. (Sisson, 3/18)

VC Star: Comprehensive Cancer Center Proposed For Thousand Oaks Gets Initial OK
A state-of-the-art cancer center proposed for Thousand Oaks has received initial approval from planning commissioners. The new outpatient center would consolidate cancer services in one location and save patients from having to drive to Los Angeles, supporters told the city's Planning Commission during the March 11 meeting. (Mason, 3/17)

Modern Healthcare: Match Day 2024: Record Number Of Residency Positions Filled
Medical students filled a record number of residency positions this year as some states and individual health systems funded an increased number of graduate medical education slots amid federal caps. Hospitals and medical centers offered 41,503 residency positions in 2024, a 3% increase from last year, according to Match Day results released Friday by the National Resident Matching Program. (Devereaux, 3/15)

CBS Sacramento: Health Officials Confirm Probable Measles Exposure In Merced County
Health officials have confirmed a probable measles exposure in Merced County and are working with exposed individuals and health care providers in the area. Last week, officials said hundreds of people may have been exposed at a Sacramento hospital after an El Dorado County child was confirmed to have contracted it. That child appeared to have contacted it after a trip out of the country. Earlier this week, an unvaccinated Central Valley child was confirmed to have a case of measles. (Downs, 3/15)

CBS News: U.S. Measles Milestone: 60 Cases So Far In 2024 — More Than All Of 2023 
The U.S. has now tallied at least 60 confirmed or suspected measles cases investigated so far this year by authorities in 17 states — more than the 58 cases reported nationwide in all of 2023. It comes as health officials are grappling with multiple major outbreaks of the highly contagious virus around the world. (Tin, 3/15)

Orange County Register: Addiction Treatment And Sober Homes, With Their Spasms Of Chaos, Prompt New California Bills
Of course people with substance use issues need quality care and places to live. But are residential neighborhoods the ideal place for them? Would you run a cardiac clinic out of the house next door — especially an explicitly non-medical one, where no doctor was allowed on staff? That’s how private addiction treatment works in California. (Sforza, 3/18)

The Mercury News: Free Test Kits Find Deadly Fentanyl
Fentanyl can hide. But cheap paper tests, increasingly available at the Bay Area’s social hotspots and universities, are finding it. In a desperate race to reduce poisonings caused by pills or powders that are unknowingly tainted by fentanyl, advocates are distributing free tests that can quickly detect even tiny traces of the deadly synthetic opioid. “It’s important for people to check their drugs,” said Dean Shold, who co-founded the Oakland-based test distribution nonprofit FentCheck with Alison Heller amid a surge of fentanyl-related deaths in the Bay Area. Cocaine, MDMA and other recreational drugs, as well as counterfeit Adderall, Xanax, Ativan, Percocet and Valium pills, can be tainted. (Krieger, 3/17)

Fresno Bee: How Many Are Unhoused In Fresno County? Here's What Advocates Say, And The Official Tally
A Fresno Irrigation District canal near Dakota Avenue between Palm and Fruit avenues has seen a growing number of people setting up tents and makeshift shelters as a place to live, according to a March 10 report. (Miller, 3/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-Era Case On Free Speech To Test Supreme Court
When Hank Aaron died in 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested in a tweet that the baseball legend’s death was caused by a Covid vaccine. The next day, a White House employee asked Twitter, now known as X, to take down Kennedy’s post. “Wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” the White House’s Covid-19 digital director wrote to two Twitter employees. The social-media platform did so. Meta Platforms went further, later suspending Kennedy, a nephew of John F. Kennedy and now a long-shot presidential candidate, from Instagram and Facebook. ... The Supreme Court this week will consider whether the administration’s zeal crossed a constitutional line. (Wolfe and Gershman, 3/17)

AP: How Bad Are Flu, COVID-19 And RSV? These Charts Show How Respiratory Viruses Are Spreading In The US 
Spring is nearly here, but the 2023-24 respiratory virus season isn’t over yet. Viral activity from flu, COVID-19 and RSV has fallen from the peak, but levels remain elevated. (Forster, 3/15)

Axios: Funding Crunch Threatens A Key Virus-Fighting Tool: Tracking America's Poop
More of America's sewage systems are tracking viral risks beyond the coronavirus, but unpredictable funding threatens the future of what's become an important surveillance tool for cash-strapped public health departments. Wastewater testing — supercharged by the creation of a national surveillance system in 2020 — has been one of the more reliable metrics for tracking COVID-19 spread since other data, like daily case counts and testing, became much more scarce last year. (Moreno, 3/16)

Military.com: Pentagon Complied With COVID-19 Waiver Rules According To Watchdog But Services Moved Slowly 
A Pentagon watchdog review of the military's COVID-19 vaccine exemption process found that each of the branches largely complied with policies and, in some cases, even went beyond what was required to consider service members' requests for religious accommodation. While rejecting a number of accusations that the services hadn't properly reviewed waiver requests, the Pentagon's inspector general did fault the Army and Air Force for taking too long to process the requests and wrote in a report released Thursday that discharges were inconsistent, leaving some service members with full benefits while others were left with partial benefits. (Toropin, 3/15)

The New York Times: Health Misinformation Is Evolving. Here’s How to Spot It
Keep an eye out for instances where claims online jump to conclusions without evidence, or appeal to your emotions, advised Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. When you see a piece of medical content online, ask yourself: Does any aspect of the message seem designed to hook you? Does the message seem engineered to make you upset or concerned? Does the source correct itself when it makes a mistake? (Blum, 3/16)

Axios: Long COVID’s Testing, Treatment Could Be Close
Researchers are getting closer to understanding the underlying causes of long COVID and potential ways to definitively test for it. That would be a massive step toward unlocking a complex condition that's debilitated millions of Americans, mystified scientists and frustrated patient advocates who feel their struggles have been ignored. (Reed, 3/16)

Axios: Pandemic Pact Crunch Time: Final Treaty Talks Start To Prevent Future Deaths
An international draft treaty aimed at bolstering readiness for the next pandemic enters a final round of scheduled negotiations Monday, with key disagreements remaining about how much knowledge and product drugmakers must share with the world. (Snyder, 3/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Pickleball Injuries Are Rising Fast. Here’s What’s Behind It
Ron Friedman remembers the exact moment he hurt his right knee. “It was in the middle of a pickleball rally, and I aggressively moved toward the ball and made a sort of twisting movement and I felt it right then,” Friedman said of the match in February at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park. “It happened in an instant.” (Ho, 3/17)

Reveal: America Goes Psychedelic, Again
Psychedelic drugs have been illegal for 50 years, but they’re trickling back into the mainstream because they show promise in helping treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges. We begin the hour with reporter Jonathan A. Davis visiting Psychedelic Science 2023, the largest-ever conference on psychedelic drugs. (Davis and Schiller, 3/16)

AP: Marriages In The US Are Back To Pre-Pandemic Levels, CDC Says
U.S. marriages have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels with nearly 2.1 million in 2022. That’s a 4% increase from the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data Friday, but has not released marriage data for last year. In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray, with communities ordering people to stay at home and banning large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19. (Stobbe, 3/15)

The Hill: Biden To Sign Executive Order To Expand Research On Women’s Health 
President Biden on Monday will sign an executive order aimed at expanding research and improving government initiatives on women’s health, a move that will coincide with a White House Women’s History Month reception. The president’s executive order will “ensure women’s health is integrated and prioritized across the federal research portfolio and budget,” the White House said, with a focus on the administration’s Initiative on Women’s Health Research.  (Samuels, 3/18)

Reuters: No One Should Go To Jail For 'Smoking Weed,' VP Harris Says At White House
.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday said "nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed," as she met to discuss the topic with rapper Fat Joe and others pardoned for marijuana convictions. Harris added that "far too many people have been sent to jail for simple marijuana possession. "President Joe Biden, seeking a second four-year term in November's election, has sought to appeal to young voters, some of whom are dissatisfied with his sluggish policy reforms.. (Kelly, 3/15)

Reuters: Blinken Calls For Closer Global Cooperation On Tackling Synthetic Drugs 
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called for greater international cooperation to fight the booming trafficking of illicit synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in his country. He was speaking at an annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which reviews global drug regulation and each year adds new so-called precursor chemicals - ingredients used to make illicit drugs - to international lists known as schedules to place strict controls on their trade. (Pamuk and Murphy, 3/15)

USA Today: Health Care Absent In 2024. If Voters Care, Why Don't Biden And Trump?
A recent poll shows that about three-quarters of Americans worry about the cost and availability of health care. But other than talking about reducing the cost of some medications ‒ a favorite topic of President Joe Biden's ‒ and how much of Medicare spending can be considered "wasteful," the leading presidential candidates have been largely silent about health on the campaign trail. (Weintraub, 3/17)

The Hill: Congress Scrambles To Avert Shutdown After Weekend Delay 
Congress is scrambling to avert a partial government shutdown by Friday’s funding deadline, a threat that became more pronounced after leaders failed to unveil a deal over the weekend. Top lawmakers were aiming to release their plan to avoid a shutdown on Sunday but a last-minute snafu delayed the process — forcing Congress to begin the week without a plan to keep Washington’s lights on in tow. Congress must approve the six remaining appropriations bills that fund the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education and State, in addition to the Internal Revenue Services, general government and foreign operations. (Schnell, 3/18)

Modern Healthcare: Change Update: Congress Edges Toward Cybersecurity Legislation
More than three weeks since a cyberattack that continues to disrupt U.S. healthcare operations, Congress is still groping for a response. But paths forward have begun to emerge as awareness of the damage slowly spreads on Capitol Hill. Many lawmakers still have no answers ... But a growing number of them are devising plans that range from holding hearings and putting pressure on federal agencies to enacting legislation. (McAuliff, 3/15)