Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Mysterious Vaping Lung Injuries May Have Flown Under Regulatory Radar
Doctors who saw patients with a mysterious lung illness in the past suspected vaping as the cause but didn’t know where to report such cases. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to report it, it’s that there’s no pathway,” said one California pulmonologist. (Sydney Lupkin and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, )
Good morning! A California school has cut lunch times so dramatically that children aren’t having time to actually eat a meal. Read more about that below, but first, here are your top California health stories for the day.
California Leads Sweeping Suit Over Trump Administration's Rules That Would Allow Immigrant Children To Be Held Indefinitely: California opened another front in its legal battle with the Trump administration over immigration policies on Monday as officials announced a federal lawsuit challenging a new rule that allows indefinite detention of migrant children and their families. The 19-state lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and is co-led by Massachusetts, was unveiled by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who criticized the president for ignoring a court settlement agreement that limited detention of children to 20 days. The Trump administration’s new rule would circumvent a 1997 agreement called the Flores settlement that generally prohibits the government from detaining migrant children more than 20 days and requires that they receive food, water, emergency medical care and other necessities. Becerra pointed to substandard conditions in existing migrant detention facilities and argued the latest rule will worsen the situation. Read more from Patrick McGreevy and Taryn Luna of the Los Angeles Times; Sophia Bollag of the Sacramento Bee; Angela Hart of Politico; and Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post.
San Francisco Is Learning The Wrong Lessons From Violent Attack By Man In Midst Of Mental Health Crisis, Advocates Warn: A woman entering a condo building in San Francisco was attacked this month by a man who had no local address when arrested and who lawyers say was in the midst of a mental health crisis. The video of the incident has sparked fears throughout the city officials’ ability to keep residents safe. But criminal justice advocates say that in the rush to make sense of the attack, the wrong lessons are being learned. Despite the furor surrounding the case, they’re cautioning against conflating homelessness, mental illness and criminality. Instead, they’re urging city leaders and health officials to redouble their attention to, and investments in, behavioral health services. The city, they say, is in dire need of more services that sit between the two extremes of incarcerating people and allowing them to drift and suffer untreated on the streets. Read more from Dominic Fracassa of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
The Washington Post:
Lunchtime Is So Short In Some Public Schools, Students Are Going Hungry
The scene was the same every day at Deb Shell’s house in Berkeley, Calif. She would send her three children to elementary school with packed lunches, and they would come home with their lunch bags almost completely full. Shell started talking to other parents and learned that the Berkeley Unified School District had cut lunchtime at some schools to add additional instructional minutes to the classroom. Many kids were going through the day hungry. When Shell and other parents went to observe lunch, they saw that the problem was even worse for students who had to stand in line for their meals. The students are supposed to have 20 minutes to eat, but they often have only 15, Shell said. (Ettinger, 8/26)
Sacramento Bee:
Cities With More Gun Purchases Also See More Harm, UC Davis Study Finds
A new UC Davis study has found that cities that experience increases in gun purchases also experience more gun-related injuries. The study, published Sunday in the journal Injury Epidemiology by researchers with the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, looks at 499 California cities following a period in 2012 that saw a spike in gun purchases. (Chen, 8/26)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento To Vote On Homeless Shelters In These Two Spots
The Sacramento City Council will Tuesday vote on whether to open a large homeless shelter along the W-X corridor, and also an amended proposal to open a women and children’s’ shelter in Meadowview. Mayor Darrell Steinberg earlier this month proposed a 100-bed, tent-like shelter be erected on city property on Meadowview Road near the Pannell Community Center. Councilman Larry Carr, who represents the area, vehemently opposed the idea. (Clift, 8/26)
CalMatters:
Podcast: How Housing Vouchers Work (Or Don't) In California
Section 8 voucher holders have a rough go of it in California.The vast majority of families eligible for the federal program — which provides a subsidy to lower-income households to make up the rent they can’t afford — don’t receive a voucher because there simply aren’t enough to go around. (Levin, 8/26)
Capital Public Radio:
Latinos Increasingly 'Afraid' After El Paso, Immigration Raids — And Wary Of Seeking Help
All year, Rios has fielded calls from people panicking about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. She worries children in trauma are going under the radar, and she knows of at least one deportation-related suicide in the area. This is why the center is teaming up with other community groups to promote its health care and legal services. (Caiola, 8/27)
The Associated Press:
Administration Ends Protection For Migrant Medical Care
In Boston alone, the decision could affect about 20 families with children fighting cancer, HIV, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy and other serious conditions, said Anthony Marino, head of immigration legal services at the Irish International Immigrant Center, which represents the families. Advocates say similar letters from Citizenship and Immigration Services have been issued to immigrants in California, North Carolina and elsewhere. “Can anyone imagine the government ordering you to disconnect your child from life-saving care — to pull them from a hospital bed — knowing that it will cost them their lives?” Marino said. “This is a new low,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey said. “Donald Trump is literally deporting kids with cancer.” (Marcelo, 8/26)
Los Angeles Times:
Pastry Chefs Raise Thousands For Planned Parenthood And Others
On a recent sun-shot afternoon outside the Manufactory in downtown Los Angeles, a crowd collected around tables loaded with ornate cakes, decorated with fresh flowers, piped frosting and buttercream slogans that read “mind your own uterus” and “no more hangers.” It was a community action meeting masquerading as a high-end bake sale; Michelle Obama meets Antoine Carême. Around the country, pastry chefs are banding together and throwing old-fashioned bake sales to raise funds for causes they care about. It’s hardly a new model: Folks have been trading cookies for cash and causes — in classrooms, churches and on sidewalks — for decades. (Scattergood, 8/26)
The New York Times:
Johnson & Johnson Ordered To Pay $572 Million In Landmark Opioid Trial
A judge in Oklahoma on Monday ruled that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally played down the dangers and oversold the benefits of opioids, and ordered it to pay the state $572 million in the first trial of a drug manufacturer for the destruction wrought by prescription painkillers. The amount fell far short of the $17 billion judgment that Oklahoma had sought to pay for addiction treatment, drug courts and other services it said it would need over the next 20 years to repair the damage done by the opioid epidemic. (Hoffman, 8/26)
The Associated Press:
What Lies Ahead Following Oklahoma Opioid Judgment
What's next? The first federal trial, involving claims from Ohio's Cuyahoga and Summit counties, is scheduled for Oct. 21. The Cleveland-based judge in that case, Dan Polster, intends to use that as a bellwether, providing decisions that could apply to other cases. Polster is overseeing most of the opioid cases and is pushing the parties to settle. (Mulvihill, 8/27)
The Hill:
Teachers Union Calls On Congress To Pass Gun Legislation
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is calling on Congress to enact a series of proposals the group said would reduce gun violence. AFT President Randi Weingarten promoted a ban on assault weapons, improved background checks and so-called red flag gun legislation in a letter to Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who lead the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. (Frazin, 8/26)
Stat:
Suicide Is A Leading Cause Of Death In The U.S. Here’s How Warren, Sanders, And Other Candidates Want To Help Change That
To bring down the rising suicide rate in the U.S., Cory Booker wants to appoint a federal coordinator tasked solely with suicide prevention. Amy Klobuchar wants to fund more local programs designed to prevent suicides among farmers and in tribal communities. Pete Buttigieg wants to add more mental health providers to the Department of Veterans Affairs and limit access to guns and other lethal means for people at high risk of suicide. The ideas came in response to a survey sent to 2020 presidential candidates by a new nonpartisan group called Mental Health For US. (Thielking, 8/27)
The Wall Street Journal:
The Drive For More Living Liver Donors
He is a 28-year-old police officer in North Carolina. She is a 39-year-old child-care provider in West Virginia who stopped working because of a debilitating liver disease. The two never met until the March day they were both discharged from a Pittsburgh hospital. Sarah Chambers had just received a liver transplant; the donor was from Zachary Lechette, who volunteered to give a portion of his liver to her, a complete stranger. (Reddy, 8/26)
The New York Times:
Heat Deaths Jump In Southwest United States, Puzzling Officials
Heat-related deaths have increased sharply since 2014 in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns that the hottest parts of the country are struggling to protect their most vulnerable residents from global warming. In Arizona, the annual number of deaths attributed to heat exposure more than tripled, from 76 deaths in 2014 to 235 in 2017, according to figures obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heat-related deaths in Nevada rose almost fivefold during the same period, from 29 to 139. (Flavelle and Popovich, 8/26)