CalMatters: California’s Cities Failing To Monitor Homeless Shelters
Now that the Supreme Court has granted cities more power to ban sleeping outside, homeless Californians face a crucial decision: Try to get into a shelter, or risk going to jail.Those able to find a shelter bed will step into a world rife with reports of violence, theft, health hazards — and a lack of accountability. Public records obtained by CalMatters show that most cities and counties have seemingly ignored a recent state law that aimed to reform dangerous conditions in shelters. (Hepler, 7/17)

The Mercury News: Why Is San Jose Getting A $7 Million Tiny Home Grant Meant For San Diego?
San Diego’s loss is San Jose’s gain as Gov. Gavin Newsom has decided to rescind a $10 million grant to the Southern California county for new tiny home shelters, instead giving most of the money to the Bay Area’s largest city.In a letter this week to San Diego County, the state said local officials voided the grant agreement by declining to approve the site selected for the new tiny homes for homeless residents. On Wednesday, San Jose officials said they were set to receive an additional $6.7 million for a planned 100-bed tiny home site on Cherry Avenue near the Guadalupe River. (Varian, 7/18)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Releases New Details About Proposed Warehouse Shelter As City Council Vote Nears 
San Diego officials on Wednesday released the proposed lease that would convert an empty warehouse into one of the nation’s largest homeless shelters, offering the first public look at the fine print of what has become a centerpiece of the mayor’s homelessness plan. (Nelson, 7/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: Surging California Wastewater Readings Signal ‘Very High’ COVID Levels
As severe heat drove Bay Area residents indoors, a ripple effect may have triggered a spike in coronavirus infections and COVID-19 diagnoses across the region. (Vaziri, 7/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Long Covid Risks Have Declined Since Early Pandemic, Study Finds
A summer Covid wave is hitting the country, but there’s one consolation: Your chances of developing long Covid have fallen since the start of the pandemic. That’s the finding from a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. It concluded that about 10% of people infected with the virus’s original strain developed long Covid. By contrast, the risk of developing long Covid dropped to 3.5% with the virus’s Omicron variant among vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, the risk was 7.7.%. (Reddy, 7/17)

The New York Times: Bird Flu Is Spreading. Why Aren’t More People Getting Tested?
Officials do not have the authority to compel workers to get tested, and there is no way for workers to test themselves. In the current outbreak, just four dairy workers and five poultry workers have tested positive for H5N1, the bird flu virus, but experts believe that many more have been infected. The Covid-19 pandemic and the mpox (formerly monkeypox) outbreak in 2022 revealed deep fissures in the U.S. approach to testing for emerging pathogens. (Mandavilli, 7/17)

The New York Times: See Extreme Surface Temperatures In Phoenix, Sacramento And Portland, Ore.
We usually talk about summertime heat in terms of how hot the air is, but there’s another metric that matters: the temperatures of roads, sidewalks, buildings, parking lots and other outdoor surfaces. Hot surfaces can make the places people live and work more dangerous, and can increase the risk of contact burns. (Zhong and Rojanasakul, 7/17)

The 19th: Pregnant Workers Don't Have To Wait For Biden’s Proposed Heat Safety Rule
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced a new rule that, if finalized, would become the first federal regulation specifically designed to protect workers from extreme heat both indoors and outdoors. It would trigger requirements for access to drinking water and rest breaks when the heat index reaches 80 degrees Fahrenheit. At 90 degrees, it would mandate 15-minute breaks every two hours and require employers to monitor for signs of heat illness. (Kutz, 7/17)

LAist: How LA County’s Chronic Noise Pollution Is Hurting Our Health
The wail of emergency sirens. The roar of garbage trucks. The hum of gridlocked freeway traffic. Living in a noisy neighborhood can be annoying. It can also be harmful to your health. Chronic street noise — from sirens, traffic and construction — is more than just a nuisance, it’s a growing health hazard, health experts say. In recent years, research has shown that consistent exposure to noise may be linked to a host of conditions, including cardiovascular disease and stroke. (Botel, 7/18)

CapRadio: ‘Incarceration Is Incompatible With Healthcare’: Some Sacramento Residents Ask For Alternatives To A Jail Annex
Members of the Sacramento public spoke out Tuesday night against a proposed annex to the county jail, the latest pushback in a years-long debate over the building. A consulting group, CGL Companies, was contracted by county leadership in April — for about $586,000 — to conduct a peer review of the latest iteration of the plan. They presented their methodology to the Community Review Commission, an 11-person board tasked with overseeing the Sheriff’s department. (Wolffe, 7/17)

CIDRAP: SHEA Calls For More CDC Funds After Data Show 20% Hike In Resistant Hospital Infections
A fact sheet published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday highlights a 20% rise in hospital-onset infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens and a fivefold increase in Candida auris infections during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with 2019. A Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) statement following the release of the fact sheet calls for continued investment in CDC programs that fight antimicrobial resistance (AMR). (Van Beusekom, 7/17)

The Conversation: The Dangers Of Digging In Sand When Building Castles On The Beach
Digging in sand might seem innocent, but if the hole is deep enough and collapses on a person, it is extremely difficult to escape. Research suggests more people die from sand burial suffocation than shark attacks. (Leatherman, 7/17)

The Hill: Double Stuff Stoneo, Trips Ahoy! And More: FDA, FTC Issue Warnings For Copycat THC Snacks
The Biden administration is cracking down on companies that make edible THC products that too closely mimic well-known snack brands, warning of the risk such products could pose to young children. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued letters to five companies Wednesday “for illegally selling copycat food products containing delta-8 THC and introducing them into the marketplace,” according to a press release. (Fortinsky, 7/17)

CNN: Sealed Bottles Of Tattoo And Permanent Makeup Ink Test Positive For Millions Of Bacteria, FDA Says
Sealed bottles of tattoo and permanent makeup ink, including some marked as sterile, contained millions of potentially dangerous bacteria, according to new research by the US Food and Drug Administration. (LaMotte, 7/18)

Fortune Well: Foods That Prevent Skin Cancer
“Some studies show that some antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C, E and carotenoids and selenium, can help prevent some skin cancers,” says Dr. Tanya Nino, a double board-certified dermatologist and the melanoma program director at the Center for Cancer Prevention and Treatment at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank, California. “These vitamins are antioxidants that work by neutralizing free radicals in cells. Free radicals are unstable molecules that can damage the DNA in our cells.” (Maher, 7/18)

The Washington Post: For Healthy Aging, Light Exercise Or Sleep Beats Being Sedentary
If you want to increase your odds of living a long and healthy life, watch less television and become more physically active, because even a small amount of physical activity can improve overall health, according to an observational study published last month in JAMA Network Open. While there have been many studies showing that moderate to vigorous physical activity is associated with healthy aging, researchers wanted to know if light physical activity compared with sedentary behaviors also improves healthy aging, and if not, how can people’s time be reallocated. (Chesler, 7/17)

CalMatters: Mentally Ill Patient Handed $760,000 Bill From CA State Hospital
The first bill arrived in Sultan Khan’s mailbox two years after his release from Napa State Hospital. Khan had received psychiatric treatment there for three years after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to a criminal charge stemming from an assault. He stared in disbelief at the paper in front of him. The Department of State Hospitals wanted him to pay back the cost of that stay: $769,490. Wondering if he was being scammed, Khan phoned the department. (Weiner, 7/18)

The New York Times: Moving In Childhood Contributes To Depression, Study Finds
Researchers who conducted a large study of adults in Denmark, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community. In fact, the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly greater than the risk of living in a poor neighborhood, said Clive Sabel, a professor at the University of Plymouth and the paper’s lead author. (Barry, 7/17)

Axios: Medical Debt Fuels Mental Health Treatment Gap
As many as 1 in 4 U.S. adults with depression and anxiety can't pay their medical bills — a situation that could be limiting their ability to get timely psychiatric care, Johns Hopkins researchers found. (Bettelheim, 7/18)

CNN: These Are The States That Rank Highest And Lowest For Women’s Health In New Report 
Women in the United States face a growing number of threats to their health and well-being, a new report says, and there are vast disparities from state to state. (Howard and McPhillips, 7/18)

CNN: Women With Endometriosis Face Fourfold Higher Risk Of Ovarian Cancer, Study Suggests 
The risk of developing ovarian cancer appears to jump about fourfold among women with endometriosis, compared with women who haven’t been diagnosed with the condition, a new study finds. (Howard, 7/17)

NPR: The Pros And Cons Of Mammograms Should Be Explained To Women, Study Says
New research makes the case for educating women in their 40s — who've been caught in the crossfire of a decades-long debate about whether to be screened for breast cancer with mammograms — about the harms as well as the benefits of the exam. After a nationally representative sample of U.S. women between the ages of 39 and 49 learned about the pros and cons of mammography, more than twice as many elected to wait until they turn 50 to get screened, a study released Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine found. (Cohen, 7/17)

The Hill: Elizabeth Warren: Democrats 'Will Suspend The Filibuster' To Codify Roe V. Wade, Abortion Rights
Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that there are currently enough votes in the Senate to suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade and abortion rights if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House. “We will suspend the filibuster. We have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade,” Warren said on ABC’s “The View.” (Bolton, 7/17)

The Washington Post: Vance Urged DOJ To Enforce Comstock Act, Crack Down On Abortion Pills
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), newly tapped as the GOP vice-presidential nominee, last year joined an effort to enforce the Comstock Act, the 151-year-old federal law that has become a lightning rod in the nation’s abortion debate. The Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of abortion-related materials, has not been invoked for that purpose in about a century. The Biden administration maintains that its provisions are outdated today. (Diamond and Kornfield, 7/17)

Reuters: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus To Import Penicillin To Address US Shortage
Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company said on Wednesday that it is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to import and distribute penicillin in the country temporarily. The online pharmacy, which offers low-cost common medications, will immediately import and distribute 1.2 million units of penicillin to mitigate the shortage of Pfizer's (PFE.N) Bicillin L-A.Last year in June, Pfizer had warned that the pediatric version of the drug, used to treat syphilis and other bacterial infections, could run out by the end of the quarter due to a spike in syphilis infections in adults. (7/17)

AP: President Joe Biden Tests Positive For COVID-19 While Campaigning In Las Vegas, Has ‘Mild Symptoms’
President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 while traveling Wednesday in Las Vegas and is experiencing “mild symptoms” including “general malaise” from the infection, the White House said. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will fly to his home in Delaware, where he will “self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time.” The news had first been shared by UnidosUS President and CEO Janet Murguía, who told guests at the group’s convention in Las Vegas that president had sent his regrets and could not appear because he tested positive for the virus. (Madhani, 7/18)

The New York Times: Biden Says He’d Consider Dropping Out If A ‘Medical Condition’ Emerged
President Biden said in an interview released on Wednesday that he would re-evaluate whether to stay in the presidential race if a doctor told him directly that he had a medical condition that made that necessary. Mr. Biden has said repeatedly that none of his doctors have told him he has a serious medical condition. Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, wrote after the president’s physical in February that Mr. Biden is “a healthy, active, robust, 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” (Shear, 7/17)

AP: Trump Has Given No Official Info About His Medical Care For Days Since An Assassination Attempt
Four days after a gunman’s attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, the public is still in the dark over the extent of his injuries, what treatment the Republican presidential nominee received in the hospital, and whether there may be any long-term effects on his health. Trump’s campaign has refused to discuss his condition, release a medical report or records, or make the doctors who treated him available, leaving information to dribble out from Trump, his friends and family. (Riccardi and Colvin, 7/18)