The Los Angeles Daily News: California Confirms First Case Of Sexually Acquired Zika Virus
The first case of Zika virus acquired in California through sexual contact was confirmed by health officials on Friday. State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith said the case involved an infected partner who returned from a country where Zika virus was circulating. (Abram, 3/25)

The San Jose Mercury News: San Diego County Reports California's First Confirmed Zika Case Acquired By Sexual Transmission
A San Diego County woman has been diagnosed with the first confirmed case of Zika virus acquired in California, public health officials said Friday. The woman came down with the virus in February after having sex with a Zika-infected man who had just returned from a trip to Colombia, officials said. (Seipel, 3/25)

KPCC: California Confirms First Case Of Sexually Transmitted Zika Virus; Here's What You Need To Know
State health officials confirmed California's first case of sexually-transmitted Zika virus Friday. A San Diego County woman was infected through sexual contact with her partner, who recently returned from abroad, health officials said. (3/25)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Has CA's First Sex-Transmitted Zika Case
A local man who became infected with Zika virus during a recent trip to Colombia is the first in the state to transmit the virus to a partner through sexual contact, the county Health and Human Services Agency and the California Department of Public Health said Friday. The woman, who did not travel to Colombia, was not pregnant at the time. County health officials said the couple has since fully recovered from the infection, which surfaced in February. (Sisson, 3/25)

The Los Angeles Times: State Isn't Using Blood-Test Data That Could Help Focus Exide Cleanup Efforts
The state of California has blood test results showing high levels of lead in children living near the closed Exide battery plant in Vernon but is not using the information to direct its massive cleanup of lead-contaminated homes and yards. (Barboza and Poston, 3/26)

In other health news from around the state —

The Ventura County Star: Four Years In, Not One More Raising Awareness In Simi Valley Heroin Battle
Four years into its run, Simi Valley anti-heroin group Not One More has yet to achieve the goal implicit in its name. There have been heroin deaths in the city since the group's founding. But they have trended downward, from seven in 2011 to zero in 2014 and 2015, police say. Pat Montoya, president of the grass-roots organization that marked its fourth anniversary last month, says the nonprofit group deserves some of the credit. (Harris, 3/27)

The Press Democrat: Sonoma County Poised To Hike Price Of Cigarettes
Will minors be deterred from buying cigarettes if they cost $7 a pack? Sonoma County health officials are betting yes. Under a sweeping county proposal set to go before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, the price floor for cigarettes would rise to $7 per pack at nearly 140 stores outside of city limits. (Har, 3/27)

The Sun: Community Supports Hospitalized Shooting Victim With Blood Donations
Members of the community came out to support Kristin Bauer, the 28-year-old woman taken hostage Thursday and shot by her estranged boyfriend in Redlands. Bauer remained in critical condition Friday, according to Loma Linda University Medical Center. (Valenzuela and Hernanadez, 3/25)

The Marin Independent Journal: Marin Drug Treatment Center Sued By Dead Client's Father
The father of a man who died at a Center Point drug treatment center in San Rafael three years ago has sued Center Point, alleging the facility's failure to follow state regulations led to his son's death. (Halstead, 3/28)

The San Jose Mercury News: In Honor Of Stabler, Former Raiders Will Donate Brains For CTE Research
A trio of Raiders who did battle during football's wild days of brutal hits and colorful characters came forward Friday to sound the alarm on the game that brought them fame. George Atkinson, George Buehler and Art Thoms -- members of the renegade group led by the likes of Ken Stabler, Jack Tatum and John Matuszak -- told this news organization they have pledged their brains to the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation. That group's mission it to elevate the understanding of the causes of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the disease being linked to repeated blows to the head. (Almond, 3/25)

Modern Healthcare: Acción! Telenovelas Send A Public Health Message
You're the only one for me!” a young tow truck driver named Hector exclaims passionately as he inconspicuously pushes away a condom handed to him by his girlfriend, Christina. She gazes into his eyes … then turns away, hesitant about the risk of unsafe sex. Cue intense musical interlude and dramatic fade to black, and you have a scene from a soap opera called “Sin Vergüenza” (“Without Shame”). (3/26)

See past coverage of other outreach efforts via telenovelas: Telenovelas, Spanish Website Seek To Inform Hispanics About Kidney Donations.

And in other news —

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Are We Closing In On HIV?
With the help of vaccines, infectious diseases that have haunted humanity for thousands of years have been turned into historical curiosities. Smallpox, which killed from 300 million to 500 million people in the 20th century, is extinct. Polio is nearly gone, having been put on the path to extinction with the first effective polio vaccine, developed by a team led by the late Dr. Jonas Salk. (Fikes, 3/26)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Report Warns Of Increased Mix Of Meds, Supplements
The number of elderly Americans who are putting themselves at risk for a drug reaction by taking dietary supplements alongside prescription medication nearly doubled during the past decade, a new report found. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a report this week that tracked the drug usage of 2,351 adults aged 62 to 85 between 2005-06 and in 2010-11. (Wheaton, 3/25)

Los Angeles Times: Two More Deaths May Be Linked To Contaminated Medical Scopes
Two patients died and six more were sickened in a new outbreak suspected of being caused by contaminated medical scopes, according to a regulatory report by device manufacturer Olympus Corp. The report shows that hospitals are continuing to use a device that was recalled in January, which experts have found to be extremely difficult to disinfect. The name and location of the hospital was not revealed in the report. (Petersen, 3/25)

The Associated Press: Lawsuit Claims Medical Device Caused Brain Damage
A software designer is suing a California company, claiming its medical device used to treat aneurysms malfunctioned and caused him to suffer brain damage. The Penumbra Coil 400 was used to treat an aneurysm Dennis Montgomery suffered in 2013, according to his lawyer, Peter Mullenix. He said during the surgery at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Wash., the doctor placed 90% of the coil into the aneurysm, but the last 10% got stuck in the intracranial artery. (3/26)

The San Francisco Business Times: Growing Number Of Workers Want Higher Pay, Fewer Health Benefits
Employer-sponsored health care isn’t what it used to be, but it beats the alternative. That’s the takeaway from a survey conducted by the Employee Benefits Research Institute and Greenwald & Associates. (Hoover, 3/25)

Modern Healthcare: California's Tri-City Medical Reverses Operating Loss
As Tri-City Medical Center appoints its third CEO in as many years, its most recent earnings report shows a hospital taking steps toward a financial turnaround but still operating with razor-thin margins. Tri-City, in Oceanside, Calif., parted ways with CEO Tim Moran this month and installed Steve Dietlin, its chief financial officer, in the role. The reasons for Moran's termination are unclear, but come just weeks after a news release praised him for helping to improve the hospital's financial performance and quality rating. (Kutscher, 3/26)

Los Angeles Times: How A Healthcare Revolution Came To One Red State While The Obamacare Battle Raged On
Winnie Abbott desperately wanted a knee replacement when she came to Dr. Jeffrey Angel’s office here in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Before Angel would operate, though, he had some requests for Abbott. She should take a class about the procedure and designate a family member to be her “coach” to help with recovery. And if she had problems after surgery, she needed to call a 24-hour number at Angel’s office rather than just go to the emergency room. This comprehensive approach to patients – focused not just on what happens in the doctor’s office but on how patients recover at home and how much their care costs – hasn’t always been the rule in American healthcare. But across the country, far from the vitriolic debate over Obamacare, it is driving a quiet revolution that is changing how doctors replace knees, communicate with patients, prescribe drugs, even deliver babies. (Levey, 3/25)

The New York Times: Heroin Epidemic Is Yielding To A Deadlier Cousin: Fentanyl
When Eddie Frasca was shooting up heroin, he occasionally sought out its more potent, lethal cousin, fentanyl. “It was like playing Russian roulette, but I didn’t care,” said Mr. Frasca, 30, a carpenter and barber who said he had been clean for four months. When he heard that someone had overdosed or even died from fentanyl, he would hunt down that batch. Fentanyl, which looks like heroin, is a powerful synthetic painkiller that has been laced into heroin but is increasingly being sold by itself — often without the user’s knowledge. (Seelye, 3/25)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: Federal Officials, Advocates Push Pill-Tracking Databases
The nation's top health officials are stepping up calls to require doctors to log in to pill-tracking databases before prescribing painkillers and other high-risk drugs. The move is part of a multi-pronged strategy by the Obama administration to tame an epidemic of abuse and death tied to opioid painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. But physician groups see a requirement to check databases before prescribing popular drugs for pain, anxiety and other ailments as being overly burdensome. (3/28)

The New York Times: Investing For Your Future Health Care
Ken Dychtwald, who is 65 and is the chief executive officer of Age Wave, a consulting and research company focused on aging, decided in his 50s that he and his wife should buy long-term care insurance so they wouldn’t be a burden on each other or their children if they became ill or disabled. Mark V. Pauly, 74, a professor of health care management, business economics and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, considered long-term care insurance and decided against it. Both are experts in the field of aging and both understand, more than most, the potential cost of paying for care in later years. But they took different paths in addressing those needs. (Tugend, 3/25)

The New York Times: Health Savings Accounts: Unloved, But Worthwhile
Health savings accounts offer a rare, triple-tax benefit to those who are able to contribute and who qualify to save for future medical needs — which, among other things, means having a health insurance plan with a deductible of at least $1,300. Money goes into an H.S.A. tax-free, grows tax-free and is withdrawn tax-free, if spent on eligible medical costs. Yet some people find it difficult to commit to building up an H.S.A. to save for health needs. (Carrns, 3/25)

The Associated Press: Leading Private-Sector Health System Woos Veterans In Ads
A leading hospital system in the U.S. is courting military veterans with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, raising concerns from some veterans groups that private sector marketing could weaken the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. The campaign tag lines — "Veterans have a choice in healthcare" and "You honored your oath, and so do we" — emphasize consumer preference and the shared values of medical professionals and the military. (3/25)