San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Biotech Company Laying Off 90% Of Staff As CEO Leaves
Biotech company Cargo Therapeutics is laying off 90% of its workforce after plans to suspend its drug development, according to a corporate filing. The San Carlos-based company expects $24 million to $29 million in costs related to the cuts, including severance pay and benefits. CEO Gina Chapman is also departing from the firm. Cargo had 170 employees as of September 2024 but laid off around half in January. Cargo had been developing cancer cell therapies but discontinued work after disappointing results. (Li, 3/19)

Becker's Hospital Review: GE Healthcare, Nvidia Partner On AI-Enhanced Imaging
GE Healthcare and [Santa Clara-based] Nvidia have launched a collaboration to develop AI-powered autonomous X-ray and ultrasound technologies, with an aim to address growing radiology staff shortages and improve imaging efficiency. The partnership will leverage Nvidia’s AI computing platforms to enhance imaging automation. (Murphy, 3/19)

Los Angeles Times: Assisted Living Bans Didn’t Keep Operators Out Of Other Kinds Of Care-Giving Businesses
A Times investigation found that people banned by California from operating assisted living homes were able to remain involved with other types of care facilities, a result of the state’s fragmented system for regulating facilities that care for elderly, disabled or ailing people. Californians have no simple way to check whether a provider at a health facility or home health agency was previously banned from assisted living homes. (Alpert Reyes and Poston, 3/20)

Los Angeles Times: Banned From Assisted Living? It’s Hard For Consumers To Tell
It’s not easy for Californians seeking care for themselves or their loved ones to find out if someone involved with another kind of care facility has been banned from running an assisted living home by the California Department of Social Services. The names of barred individuals aren’t posted anywhere that is readily available to the public, according to Social Services. A state bill that would have required the list of banned individuals to be prominently posted on a state website died in Sacramento nearly a decade ago. (Alpert Reyes and Poston, 3/20)

Los Angeles Times: How One UCLA ICU Helps Patients And Staff Live With Dying
Extraordinary things happen in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The sick rise from bed with new hearts and lungs. Machines valiantly take over for faltering kidneys, heart valves, bronchial tubes. All patients enter with grave health concerns, and the vast majority leave recovered, or at least on the road to healing. (Purtill, 3/20)

NBC News: Trump Set To Sign Executive Order Shuttering The Education Department
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Thursday to close the Education Department, fulfilling a yearslong pledge to dismantle the federal agency, the White House confirmed. Trump will hold an event at the White House to sign the order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.” (Haake, Egwuonwu and Kingkade, 3/19)

Vox: What Dismantling The Education Department Means For Kids With Disabilities
Amid the upheaval, one thing is clear: Any plan to shut down the Education Department — and, indeed, the cuts and layoffs that have already happened — will disproportionately hurt students with disabilities. That includes kids who receive special education, but also those in general education classrooms who get supports or accommodations to learn, from speech therapy to sign language interpreters to counseling. Any kid who has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan through their school could be affected by what’s going on at the Education Department. That’s a huge group of kids. As of 2022–2023, 7.5 million students — 15 percent of all those enrolled in public school — received special education or related services (like speech therapy) under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The most common reasons were specific learning disabilities like dyslexia. (North, 3/13)

San Diego Union-Times: San Diego Joins Lawsuit Challenging Firings Of Federal Employees
San Diego is home to tens of thousands of federal employees, many of whom provide essential services across multiple agencies, including defense, healthcare and public safety. (Garrick, 3/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Drug Overdoses, Including Fentanyl, On The Decline
The U.S. is making progress against one of its most devastating public health threats: drug overdoses. Over the 12 months ending in October 2024, the country saw a 25% decline in overdose deaths compared with the same period the year prior, according to the latest preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 82,000 overdose deaths were reported. (Wernau, Abbott and Ulick, 3/20)

NPR: Trump Administration Extends Opioid Emergency As Fentanyl Deaths Drop
The Trump administration is extending through mid-June an emergency declaration linked to the opioid overdose crisis that was set to expire on Friday. In a statement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acknowledged drug deaths in the U.S. "are starting to decline" but said the Trump administration will continue treating the opioid crisis as "the national security emergency that it is." (Mann, 3/19)

CBS News: More Egg Product Seizures Than Fentanyl Seizures At The Border So Far This Year
As the bird flu continues to wreak havoc on the U.S. egg supply, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show there have been significantly more egg products seized at U.S. borders than the number of seizures of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl so far in fiscal year 2025. According to the CBP data, there have been 413 drug seizure events involving fentanyl in fiscal year 2025, with December, January and February all having fewer fentanyl seizures than in those months the year before. (Cohen, 3/19)

Los Angeles Times: Biden Prisons Chief Tapped To Fix California Prisons' Mental Health Care
Following through on intentions broadcast a year ago, a federal judge is putting control of California’s troubled inmate mental health programs into the hands of an outsider: President Biden’s former chief of prisons. With inmate suicide rates at an all-time high, U.S. District Senior Judge Kimberly Mueller said her aim is to force changes in California’s prison mental health system, which a federal judge in 1995 deemed to be so poor as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. (St. John, 3/19)

Los Angeles Times: Responding To Trump, Ventura Proposes Protections For LGBTQ+ People, Immigrants
The proposal considered Tuesday night was meant to be a big stand by a small city, an effort to protect from the Trump administration a vast swath of vulnerable people — the LGBTQ+ community, undocumented immigrants and women seeking reproductive healthcare. Instead, it turned the Ventura City Council meeting into a packed, five-hour forum for some of the country’s biggest divides. More than 130 people signed up to give the council a piece of their minds. (Branson-Potts, 3/19)

The War Horse: Kids Caring For Wounded Veteran Family
About 2.3 million American kids are living with a disabled veteran in their home—a number researchers said is likely an undercount. These injured service members and veterans are often called wounded warriors; their caregivers more recently earned the nickname hidden heroes. And their children? The ones who babysit siblings during VA appointments; the ones who comfort their parents, saying everything will be OK; the ones who clean the house or tiptoe around it while someone is sleeping, or medicated, or in a PTSD-triggered rage — they are what the Elizabeth Dole Foundation calls “hidden helpers.” (Brookland, 3/20)

CBS News: Possible Measles Exposure Reported At Tuolumne County School And Emergency Room
Tuolumne County Public Health officials on Tuesday warned about possible measles exposure at a high school and an emergency room. ... In an update Wednesday, health officials confirmed the two suspected cases were confirmed positive for measles. Their vaccination status at this time is not known. Health officials said the two cases are from the same household and stem from traveling internationally. (Fabian, 3/19)

Reveal: Bird Flu, Measles, And Trump’s Ticking Time Bomb
This month marks the five-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed 1.2 million people in the US alone. While life has returned to normal for most Americans, the threats to our health haven’t disappeared. Hundreds of people in the US continue to die of Covid each week, while millions more suffer complications from Long Covid. We’re experiencing the worst flu season in at least 15 years. There are multiple outbreaks of measles, the most serious occurring in an undervaccinated West Texas community. Then there’s the threat of bird flu, which has spread through dairy and poultry farms, sickening dozens of people and killing one so far. (Sanburn, 3/19)

CNN: Anti-Amyloid Therapy May Keep Alzheimer’s Symptoms At Bay In Certain Patients, Study Suggests 
For the first time, scientists say, they have evidence that using a biologic drug to remove sticky beta amyloid plaques from the brains of people destined to develop Alzheimer’s dementia can delay the disease. The researchers have been testing amyloid-removing therapies in a group of people who have rare genetic mutations that make it almost certain they’ll develop Alzheimer’s. (Goodman, 3/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Wood-Like Material’ Prompts Recall Of Popular Frozen Meals
Nestlé USA issued a voluntary recall this week of several frozen meal products under the Lean Cuisine and Stouffer brands. The company cited concerns over the potential presence of a foreign material, precisely a “wood-like material,” in a limited number of items. The company said the recall, which applies to meals produced between August 2024 and March 2025, follows consumer complaints, including one report of a choking incident linked to the products. (Vaziri, 3/19)