Becker's Hospital Review: UCLA Health Acquiring Los Angeles HCA Hospital 
Los Angeles-based UCLA Health's request to acquire Los Angeles-based West Hills Hospital and Medical Center has been authorized by the University of California Board of Regents. UCLA Health's acquisition of the 260-bed hospital, which is part of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare's Far West division, aims to address the academic health system's patient, emergency department and operating room capacity constraints, a spokesperson for UCLA Health said in a statement shared with Becker's. (Ashley, 1/29)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Family-Owned Tuttle’s Pharmacy In Santa Rosa Closing This Week In Sale To Rite Aid
Tuttle’s Pharmacy, an independent business that has served customers in Santa Rosa for nearly eight decades, is shutting its doors this week. (Pineda, 1/29)

Modesto Bee: Urgent Care Hours Could Expand In Western Stanislaus County
Stanislaus County leaders could approve an agreement Tuesday to expand urgent care hours and services at the Del Puerto Health Care District clinic in Patterson. A proposed agreement between the county Health Services Agency and the Del Puerto district would provide up to $300,000 in funds for additional hours of urgent care every day. (Carlson, 1/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: White House Official: Technology For Assessing AI Safety Barely Exists
As an engineer with a Ph.D. in applied physics who once ran the U.S. government’s advanced defense research lab, there aren’t many technical challenges Arati Prabhakar likely can’t solve. But assessing whether artificial intelligence is safe for the public to use — at least for now — might be one of them, said Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a recent interview. A member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet and one of the president’s top tech policy advisers, Prabhakar sat down with the Chronicle at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center during a Silicon Valley tour. (DiFeliciantonio, 1/29)

Bay Area News Group: Health Secretary Becerra Defends CDC's COVID Isolation Guidance That California Shortened
U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra defended federal COVID isolation guidelines Monday that California earlier this month announced it was deviating from to shorten the amount of time people who test positive should stay home — a change that so far hasn’t led to a new spike in cases. (Woolfolk, 1/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Fringe Anti-Science Views Infiltrated Mainstream Politics
Rates of routine childhood vaccination hit a 10-year low in 2023. That, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, puts about 250,000 kindergartners at risk for measles, which often leads to hospitalization and can cause death. In recent weeks, an infant and two young children have been hospitalized amid an ongoing measles outbreak in Philadelphia that spread to a day care center. It’s a dangerous shift driven by a critical mass of people who now reject decades of science backing the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. State by state, they’ve persuaded legislators and courts to more easily allow children to enter kindergarten without vaccines, citing religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs. (Maxmen, 1/29)

Stat: Can The Government Ask Social Media Sites To Take Down Covid Misinformation? SCOTUS Will Weigh In
The Supreme Court will this March will hear arguments centered on the government’s role in communicating — and sometimes censoring — pertinent public health information in the midst of a pandemic. At the core of the lawsuit is whether the federal government’s requests for social media and search giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to moderate Covid-19 misinformation violated users’ First Amendment rights. (Owermohle, 1/29)

CalMatters: Gavin Newsom Raised Millions For His Mental Health Ballot Measure. His Opponents Have $1,000
Gov. Gavin Newsom has amassed more than $14.2 million in a campaign war chest for his hallmark mental health initiative, which will appear on the March 5 primary ballot, a sum that eclipses the resources of the measure’s opponents. He’s drawing from longtime allies in health care, unions and tribes to fund the campaign for Proposition 1, which would issue $6.4 billion in bonds to pay for housing and treatment facilities while also redistributing money raised for mental health services through a tax on high earners. (Hwang and Kimelman, 1/29)

The New York Times: Teen Drug And Alcohol Use Linked To Mental Health Distress 
Teenagers who use cannabis, alcohol and nicotine are more likely to have underlying psychiatric symptoms, and worse symptoms, than their peers who are not regularly using substances, new research has found. The research, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, found that such substances are linked to an array of symptoms and conditions, including anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and suicidal ideation. These findings suggest that asking adolescents about substance use may provide a powerful screening tool when looking for underlying mental health issues, researchers said. (Richtel, 1/29)

Inside Higher Ed: Discrimination Exacerbates Student Mental Health Challenges
College students who face discrimination are more likely than their peers to report high levels of social isolation, suicidal ideation and general distress to their counselors, according to a new report from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State University. Those rates are even higher for students who experience multiple kinds of discrimination—say, both racism and sexism. And while students who have experienced discrimination see their mental health symptoms improve in counseling at a rate similar to other students, they still leave therapy with higher overall rates of distress, isolation and suicidal ideation than their peers, the report found. (Alonso, 1/29)

Stat: Wegovy Leads To Weight Loss. Can It Treat Depression, Too?
Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — already game changers for diabetes and obesity — are being studied to treat an entirely different growing health problem: mental health illnesses, including depression and bipolar disorder. (Chen, 1/30)

Los Angeles Daily News: LA County 2024 Homeless Count Wraps Up After Some Minor Glitches 
Aside from minor glitches, the 2024 Greater Los Angeles County Homeless Count finished last week as planned, with counts this week in census tracts that had not been completed, and work with demographers at USC continuing through March, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) reported. (Scauzillo, 1/29)

CNBC: Elon Musk's Neuralink Implants Brain Tech In Human Patient For The First Time
Elon Musk’s neurotech startup Neuralink implanted its device in a human for the first time on Sunday, and the patient is “recovering well,” the billionaire said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday. The company is developing a brain implant that aims to help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only neural signals. (Capoot, 1/29)

The Washington Post: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Implants Brain Chip In First Human Subject
Placed in the part of the brain that plans movements, the device is designed to interpret a person’s neural activity, so they can control external devices such as a smartphone or computer with their thoughts, Neuralink’s website says. The device is currently in clinical trials, which are open to some individuals who have quadriplegia due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or a spinal cord injury, according to a recruitment pamphlet. Musk said Monday that the first Neuralink product will be called Telepathy and initially used by people who have lost the ability to use their limbs. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” he wrote. “That’s the goal.” (Ables, 1/30)

Bloomberg: Neuralink: What To Know About The First Human Brain Implant At Musk’s Startup
Neuralink builds on decades of technology aimed at implanting electrodes in human brains to interpret signals and treat conditions such as paralysis, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. One early device is known as the Utah array, which was first demonstrated in a human in 2004. Many competitors have entered the field, including Synchron and Precision Neuroscience. (McBride, 1/29)

The Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk's Neuralink Implants First Brain Chip In Human. Big Tech Will Be Watching
It’s a potentially significant breakthrough in the field of brain-computer interface technology and the development will also have implications for the tech sector. Musk’s aim is for people to control smartphones and computers. Big Tech names such as the likes of Apple, Microsoft and others will undoubtedly be monitoring Neuralink’s progress even if they don’t plan to get involved in brain-computer interface technology for now. (Keown, 1/30)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Mendocino County Syphilis Cases Up In 2023, Officials Say
Mendocino County had a 33% increase in syphilis cases last year compared to 2022, its public health department reported Monday. (Atagi, 1/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Drug Crisis: Timeline Of How The City Broke Overdose Death Records
The most destructive year in San Francisco’s drug epidemic has ended with 806 people dead from accidental overdoses. About 8 in 10 of those deaths involved fentanyl, the cheap and potent synthetic opioid. The previous record of 726, set in 2020, followed the COVID-19 outbreak. Overdose deaths in the city had been rising, with an alarming uptick in 2018 as fentanyl became increasingly available. (1/29)

Stat: Supreme Court Slates Abortion Pill Case For March
The Supreme Court will hear arguments about access to the abortion medication mifepristone on March 26. The lawsuit is the first major test of abortion limits to go before the highest court since the same panel overturned federal abortion rights in June 2022. It also could have massive ramifications for the Food and Drug Administration’s authority. (Owermohle, 1/29)

Politico: The Anti-Abortion Plan Ready For Trump On Day One
Anti-abortion groups have not yet persuaded Donald Trump to commit to signing a national ban if he returns to the White House. But, far from being deterred, those groups are designing a far-reaching anti-abortion agenda for the former president to implement as soon as he is in office. In emerging plans that involve everything from the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Service, nearly 100 anti-abortion and conservative groups are mapping out ways the next president can use the sprawling federal bureaucracy to curb abortion access. (Ollstein, 1/29)

Business Insider: Evangelical Christian Voters Say Supporting Trump Is All About Abortion. It's More Complicated Than That
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, many wondered how evangelical Christians could vote for him, a twice-divorced real estate magnate better known for a reality TV show, playboy image, and rumored affairs than for his faith. There was a common refrain: It's all about abortion. For a certain segment of evangelical Christians and Republicans, that's certainly true. But increasingly, for those who identify as evangelical Christians, abortion is not at the top of the priority list, experts said. (Vlamis, 1/29)

NBC News: Decades-Old Human Growth Hormone Treatments Linked To Five Cases Of Early Alzheimer's
Five patients in the United Kingdom have developed Alzheimer’s disease that appears to be the result of contaminated injections they received as children decades ago, according to a new study that could change the way scientists think about the causes of dementia — and cause anxiety in patients who underwent the same therapy. All five patients received injections of human growth hormone from cadavers for several years as a treatment for very short stature, according to the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. Scientists extracted the hormone from the cadavers’ pituitary glands, located at the base of the brain. (Szabo, 1/29)

The Washington Post: New Alzheimer’s Drugs Bring Hope. But Not Equally For All Patients.
Wrapped in a purple blanket, Robert Williford settles into a quiet corner of a bustling neurology clinic, an IV line delivering a colorless liquid into his left arm. The 67-year-old, who has early Alzheimer’s disease, is getting his initial dose of Leqembi. The drug is the first to clearly slow the fatal neurodegenerative ailment that afflicts 6.7 million older Americans, though the benefits may be modest. The retired social worker, one of the first African Americans to receive the treatment, hopes it will ease his forgetfulness so “I drive my wife less crazy.” (McGinley, 1/29)

The Washington Post: Older Americans Spend An Average Of 21 Days Every Year On Health Care
Older adults spend an average of three weeks every year on doctor’s appointments and other health care outside their homes, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Of those 21 “health care contact days,” 17 involve ambulatory services, such as office visits with primary-care doctors or specialists, testing and imaging, procedures, treatments and therapy. The remaining four days included time spent in an emergency room, hospital, skilled nursing facility or hospice. (Searing, 1/29)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Advantage Programs May Miss Isolated, Lonely Enrollees
Health insurers are investing in Medicare Advantage programs and supplemental benefits to tackle social isolation and loneliness in older adults, but they may not be reaching all the enrollees who could benefit. Whether health insurers' spending on programs to mitigate isolation and loneliness is reducing overall healthcare costs is unclear. A 2017 AARP analysis of Medicare data found socially isolated adults were associated with $7 billion in additional spending. (Eastabrook, 1/29)