Bay Area News Group: Santa Clara County Running Illegal Network Of Child Group Homes
Since 2020, five homes investigated by the Bay Area News Group have been the scenes of 632 reports of missing children, 20 psychological breakdowns that resulted in 72-hour mental holds, 13 assault and battery incidents, one alleged rape and one fentanyl overdose. Santa Clara County’s unsanctioned solution to a crisis in caring for its most troubled children is failing to create a safe, stable environment, state Sen. Dave Cortese, a former county supervisor, told the Bay Area News Group. (Nickerson and Sulek, 5/26)

Los Angeles Blade: Governor Newsom Launches Resources Website: Ready.Ca.Gov 
With seasonal challenges on the horizon as temperatures increase and Californians head outside, Governor Gavin Newsom visited the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) ... to announce ready.ca.gov – a new, one-stop shop for Californians to prepare for emergencies and extreme weather. The new website is part of Listos California, which is a state effort that connects communities with resources before, during and after emergencies. (5/25)

Los Angeles Times: Cleanup Of Southern California 'Brownfields' Gets $3-Million Boost
Five Southern California communities have been awarded federal grants totaling $3 million to help transform polluted “brownfield” sites into land that’s safe for development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced. (Beason, 5/25)

San Diego Union-Tribune: City Plants Trees To Settle Firefighter Asbestos Exposure 
Last month, when San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria appeared at a Logan Heights park to celebrate Arbor Day and announce a new urban forestry initiative, he spoke effusively about the many benefits of trees. “They improve mental health. They provide shade and cooling. They help mitigate harmful carbon emissions,” the mayor said. “These are all really good things, in addition to being cool. Trees are awesome.” (McDonald, 5/25)

Bay Area News Group: Bay Area Cities Suspend Natural Gas Bans On New Buildings
Bay Area cities and counties are holding off on enforcing natural gas bans in new buildings following a recent federal ruling, a controversial move environmental groups worry will delay achieving key climate goals. (Lam, 5/27)

The Desert Sun: Desert Healthcare District Board To Consider Desert Regional Lease Proposal Tuesday
The Desert Healthcare District’s board of directors will consider a revised lease proposal for Desert Regional Medical Center during its meeting Tuesday, potentially setting a long-term course for the Palm Springs facility after several months of public outreach and discussions with its operator, Tenet Healthcare. (Coulter, 5/27)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Why Won't San Diego Share Detailed Data About Who's Enrolled In Homelessness Programs 
Last year, in mid-October, a U.S. military veteran joined a program for homeless residents in Southern California. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked for help. The man, who is disabled, had once participated in several initiatives without finding permanent housing. (Nelson and Winkley, 5/25)

Sacramento Bee: California Big City Mayors Call For Continued State Homelessness Funds. Here’s Why 
Several California big city mayors urged Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers this week to continue state funding to combat homelessness, money that they said has been a lifesaver for thousands of people on the streets of the Golden State. For five years the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program (HHAP) has funneled about $4 million to counties, cities and continuum of care organizations in the state to make a dent into its burgeoning homeless population. (Jolly, 5/24)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Will Prevention As A Strategy Address Sonoma County Homelessness? 
By some estimates, for every person who is homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area who gets housed through the network of government and nonprofit service providers that make up what is often termed the homeless response system, three or four more people become homeless. (Hay, 5/27)

Los Angeles Times: COVID Rise In California: How To Protect Yourself From FLiRT
There are growing signs of an uptick in COVID-19 in California thanks to the new FLiRT subvariants. It’s far too early to know if FLiRT will be a major change in the COVID picture, and so far the impacts have been small. But health officials are taking note and are urging Californians — especially those at risk — to be prepared. (Lin II, 5/28)

AP: World Health Assembly Hopes To Reinforce Pandemic Preparedness After Bold Treaty Project Stalls
Member countries kicked off the World Health Organization’s annual assembly on Monday with hopes of improving global readiness for deadly outbreaks like COVID-19, after an ambitious “pandemic treaty” ran aground last week. Health officials are racing to get the world to agree to new ways to prepare for and fight an inevitable future pandemic. COVID-19 is fading into history as elections and crises like climate change and war compete for the public’s attention. (Keaten, 5/27)

The New York Times: Countries Fail To Agree On Treaty To Prepare The World For The Next Pandemic 
Countries around the globe have failed to reach consensus on the terms of a treaty that would unify the world in a strategy against the inevitable next pandemic, trumping the nationalist ethos that emerged during Covid-19. The deliberations, which were scheduled to be a central item at the weeklong meeting of the World Health Assembly beginning Monday in Geneva, aimed to correct the inequities in access to vaccines and treatments between wealthier nations and poorer ones that became glaringly apparent during the Covid pandemic. (Mandavilli, 5/24)

CIDRAP: WHO: COVID-19 Pandemic Reversed Decade Of Life Expectancy Gains
The World Health Organization (WHO) published a new report suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic undid a decade of life expectancy at birth and healthy life expectancy gains (HALE), with global expectancy levels now matching those last seen in 2012. "Not only has the pandemic set back healthy longevity worldwide by years, it also reversed the previous trends of shifting disease burden to noncommunicable diseases," the report said. (Soucheray, 5/24)

Reuters: Novavax Awaits FDA Decision On Whether Its Next COVID Shot Can Be Offered In US
Novavax will only be able to offer a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States this autumn if regulators accept the shot it has started manufacturing that targets a variant that was dominant earlier this year, the company said. Novavax's updated vaccine targets a variant called JN.1, which is in line with European recommendations. The European Union's regulator told vaccine makers last month to update their vaccines for that variant because they would likely be effective against its descendant lineages. (Erman, 5/24)

The Washington Post: Long-Covid Patients Of Color Are Tired Of Being Sick And Neglected 
A mild covid infection at the start of the pandemic has thrown Jeanine Hays’s immune system out of whack, she said, as her husband ticked off ailments the way drug commercials list side effects. Chronic hives. Hair loss. Tinnitus. Severe nerve pain. Extreme fluctuations in blood pressure. Allergic reactions to synthetic fabrics and processed foods. (Johnson, 5/28)

KMPH Fox 26 News: Measles Alert: Traveler With Measles Passed Through LAX, Plane Travels To Fresno
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has been notified of one case of measles traveling to LAX airport while infectious on May 19th. The traveler arrived at Gate 156 at Tom Bradley International Terminal at 3:04 p.m. aboard Lufthansa flight LH452, which according to online flight tracking service FlightAware, is the airline’s Munich, Germany to Los Angeles route. (Hawkins, 5/27)

Reuters: Raw Milk Containing Bird Flu Virus Infects Mice In Study
Feeding raw milk contaminated with bird flu to mice infected them with the virus, adding to evidence that consumption of unpasteurized milk is not safe for humans, according to a study published on Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Bird flu has caused serious or fatal infections globally among people in close contact with infected wild birds or poultry, and scientists have long viewed the virus as being capable of causing a global health crisis. (5/24)

Reuters: Bird Flu Detected In Tissue Samples Of US Dairy Cow Sent To Slaughter, USDA Says
Bird flu virus particles were found in tissue samples taken from one dairy cow sent to slaughter at a U.S. meat processing plant, but none were detected in samples from 95 other cattle, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Friday. Meat from the animals was prevented from entering the nation's food supply, USDA said. (Polansek and Mishra, 5/24)

U.S. News & World Report: Scientists Developing MRNA-Based Vaccine Against H5N1 Bird Flu
An experimental mRNA vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu is highly effective in preventing severe illness and death in lab animals, researchers report. The vaccine was created using the same techniques that produced the COVID vaccines. The experimental vaccine elicited a strong immune response in lab mice and ferrets, researchers reported May 23 in the journal Nature Communications. (Thompson, 5/28)

The New York Times: The Conservative Christian Network That Took Down Roe V. Wade
It happened almost by accident, over cocktails. Exactly the kind of accident that Leonard Leo intended to happen at his Federalist Society’s annual conference — a three-day gathering of the conservative tribe and a strategy session for right-wing lawyers, officials and judges that drew both big names and those who had lower profiles but were no less ambitious. Nine days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the halls of the Mayflower Hotel, just blocks from the White House, were adorned with twinkling Christmas lights and abuzz with the possibilities of a future that had changed overnight. Hillary Clinton, the woman the anti-abortion movement feared more than perhaps anyone, had failed to win the presidency. And Leo and the conservative legal movement that he worked for years to create were about to reclaim power. With that power would come the chance to do what seemed unthinkable until this moment: strategize to take down Roe v. Wade. (Dias and Lerer, 5/28)

The New York Times: The Unlikely Women Fighting For Abortion Rights 
For a long time, many women who had abortions because of catastrophic fetal diagnoses told their stories only privately. Grieving pregnancies they dearly wanted and fearing the stigma of abortion, they sought the closely guarded comfort of online communities identified by the way many doctors had described the procedure — TFMR, or “termination for medical reasons.” In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, their pain has been compounded into anger by new abortion bans across the country. While these women account for a fraction of abortions in the United States, they have emerged as the most powerful voices in the nation’s post-Roe debate, speaking out against bans with their stories of being forced across state lines and left to feel like criminals in seeking care. (Zernike, 5/27)

NBC News: The Rise Of ‘Abortion Abolitionists’ Targeting Women, Doctors And Donald Trump
Operation Save America members promote legislation that would pave the way for women to be prosecuted and potentially locked up for ending a pregnancy. (Atkins, 5/26)

Stat: Sickle Cell Pregnancy Risks Amplified In A State With Abortion Ban 
Here are some things A. was told when she arrived at the hospital one night in June 2023. That she couldn’t have the pain medicine she usually got for a sickle cell crisis because she was six weeks pregnant, but she could have Tylenol. That if she just took her blood thinner everything would be fine. That she needed to leave, and if she still felt bad by the time she’d wheelchaired out into the parking lot, she could turn around and check herself back into the emergency room. She asked to speak to someone higher up. She was angry, but mostly she was in pain: crying pain, pain that made it hard to move and hard to speak, pain that other people couldn’t understand, that sometimes made her wish to be in a coma, anything to make it go away. Her blood pressure was spiking. She knew from experience that, left untreated, this kind of crisis could lead to a seizure. (Boodman, 5/28)

AP: Melinda French Gates To Donate $1B Over Next 2 Years In Support Of Women's Rights
Melinda French Gates says she will be donating $1 billion over the next two years to individuals and organizations working on behalf of women and families globally, including on reproductive rights in the United States. French Gates earlier this month announced she would step down from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and vowed to focus on women and families. (Chapman, 5/28)

Healthline: 'Forever' Chemicals and Other Endocrine-Disruptors May Increase Child Obesity Risk
Prenatal exposure to various endocrine-disrupting chemicals — including metals, plastics, and pesticides — have been linked to a cluster of health problems in childhood, including obesity, according to a large multi-national European study. The first-of-its-kind study, published in JAMA Network Open May 23, looked at the effects of 45 different endocrine- disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on children who were exposed to them in utero. EDCs can be naturally occurring or human-made chemicals that interfere with hormones in the body, and are associated with a wide array of health issues, including obesity. (Mammoser, 5/24)

Axios: U.S. Faces Obesity Care Shortage As Demand For Weight-Loss Drugs Soars
The relatively small number of health care providers trained in obesity care can hardly keep up with Americans' demand for new weight-loss drugs. Tens of thousands of U.S. patients each week are starting on treatments like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy, but obesity medicine specialists worry there are still too few providers with enough specialized training to help patients who likely have to remain on the drugs long term. (Goldman, 5/28)

Healthline: Meals For GLP-1 Users: Nestlé Launches New Frozen Food Line
GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy have exploded in popularity with more and more people turning to these medications to help manage weight loss and diabetes. To target this new group of consumers, Nestlé has created a new frozen-food brand, Vital Pursuit that will launch in the fall of 2024.The food line will contain essential nutrients, with products such as sandwich melts, pizzas and frozen bowls with whole grains or pasta. (Vogel, 5/27)

Los Angeles Times: Bill Walton, UCLA Legend, NBA Star And Pac-12 Advocate, Dies At Age 71
Bill Walton, who helped UCLA win national titles during John Wooden's career and later won two NBA titles, has died after a cancer battle. (Bolch, 5/27)