NBC News Los Angeles: Kaiser Mental Health Workers Continue To Strike Across SoCal
Kaiser Permanente mental health workers are entering week four of their strike as progress has continued to stall at the bargaining table on both sides. It’s been 22 days since nearly 2,400 NUHW workers began the strike. They are fighting for what their colleagues in Northern California received after their strike in 2022, which included more time outside of appointments and higher pay. (Chang and Papp, 11/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: California Hospital Nurses To Strike: 4 Things To Know
Nurses at Antelope Valley Medical Center in Lancaster, Calif., plan to strike on Nov. 19. ... The nurses are seeking improved recruitment and retention to address staffing issues, including temporary reassignments to units outside their expertise and excessive on-call shifts, according to the union release. (Kuchno, 11/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: 2nd Union Plans Strike At U Of California
AFSCME Local 3299, a union representing University of California service and patient care workers, has scheduled a systemwide strike for Nov. 20 and 21. The union represents about 26,000 healthcare workers and about 11,000 service workers across 10 UC campuses and five medical centers, a union spokesperson told Becker's. This includes phlebotomists, infusionists, operating room specialists, respiratory therapists, patient care assistants, pharmacy technicians, lab technicians, custodians, shuttle drivers and food service workers. (Gooch, 11/11)

Times of San Diego: Pharmacy Workers Approve New 3-Year Contract, Ending Labor Dispute With CVS
CVS pharmacists, clerks, and technicians voted Friday to ratify a new three-year contract with the pharmacy. The 7,000-plus employees, United Food and Commercial Workers Union members reached the agreement after months of negotiations and a three-day unfair labor practice strike in Los Angeles and Orange counties. (Vigil, 11/9)

Fresno Bee: Fresno Unified Fired Him. Now, He's Chairman Of Valley Children's And Under Scrutiny Again
Michael Hanson, chairman of the board that approved the heavily-criticized pay packages for Valley Children’s Hospital executives in recent years, started his public life in Fresno in 2005 as deputy superintendent of the city’s troubled school district. Fresno Unified, California’s third-largest school district, faced a state takeover and was in desperate need of dynamic leadership and change. (Galicia, 11/10)

Los Angeles Times: USC Scientist On Leave Amid Research Misconduct Allegations
A prominent neuroscientist at USC is on leave nearly a year after allegations of research misconduct cast doubt on his published work and derailed trials for an experimental stroke treatment. USC Keck School of Medicine Dean Carolyn Meltzer sent an email to faculty in the department of physiology and neuroscience on Oct. 22, disclosing that professor Berislav V. Zlokovic was on leave “for an indefinite period.” (Purtill, 11/12)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Providence To Close Southwest Santa Rosa Urgent Care Center, Adding To Regional Contraction Of Health Services
Sonoma County health care giant Providence is poised to close early next year its southwest Santa Rosa urgent care center, a move the facility’s staff said would greatly impact large numbers of low-income, elderly, Latino and homeless patients in the region. (Espinoza, 11/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: Astrana Health To Acquire Part Of Prospect Health For $745M: 5 Things To Know
Alhambra, Calif.-based Astrana Health has entered into a $745 million definitive agreement to acquire certain assets and businesses from Los Angeles-based Prospect Health System. ... Astrana will acquire Prospect Health Plan, Prospect Medical Groups, Prospect Medical Systems, RightRx and Tustin, Calif.-based Foothill Regional Medical Center under the agreement, according to a Nov. 8 news release. (Ashley, 11/9)

The Desert Sun: Desert Healthcare District Outlines Next Steps Following Measure AA Passage
The Desert Healthcare District is looking ahead at next steps for Desert Regional Medical Center after Coachella Valley voters overwhelmingly approved Measure AA. (Sasic, 11/11)

Becker's Hospital Review: Kaiser Permanente Posts $608M Operating Loss In Q3
Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente posted a $608 million operating loss (-2.1% operating margin) in the third quarter of 2024, down from an operating income of $156 million (0.6% operating margin) in the same quarter last year, according to its Nov. 8 financial report. Kaiser posted an operating revenue of $29 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, up from $24.9 billion over the same period in 2023. The system reported operating expenses of $29.6 billion in the third quarter, up from $24.7 billion over the same period last year. (Cass, 11/11)

Modern Healthcare: US Uninsured Rate Hits 7.6%, CDC Report Shows
The share of Americans lacking health insurance has remained largely steady in recent years, but questions remain about the future. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Friday shows 7.6% of Americans, or 25.3 million people, lacked health insurance during the time of data collection from April to June. Although the rate represents a 0.4 percentage point increase from the year-ago period, it is consistent with 2023's full-year uninsured rate — a historic annual low. (Berryman, 11/11)

Modern Healthcare: OIG Report Finds Holes In Hospital Price Transparency Compliance
Many hospitals are not publishing their prices in accordance with the price transparency law, a federal watchdog's new report found. More than a third of the 100 hospitals reviewed by the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Inspector General did not post machine-readable pricing data files correctly, or at all, as required by the 2021 federal law, according to the report released Friday. Most of the violations were related to disclosing the rates hospitals negotiated with insurers, metadata errors and outdated information. Five hospitals did not post any machine-readable files. (Kacik, 11/8)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Heads To D.C. To Lobby For California Before Trump Takes Over
With the clock ticking before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, Gov. Gavin Newsom is heading to Washington this week to push for the Biden administration to safeguard some marquee California programs on the environment and disaster funding. The move is the latest in the governor’s highly visible effort to shield California from the second edition of the Trump presidency, which has elicited predictable fury from the Republican standard-bearer. (Hamilton, 11/11)

Politico: RFK Jr. Crowdsources Names For Trump Appointees
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is working to crowdsource names for the more than 4,000 appointees under the second upcoming Trump administration. Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine crusader, launched a website that asks the public to submit names of candidates who might be qualified for positions in environmental, energy, agriculture, labor policies and beyond. (Borst, 11/11)

Reuters: RFK Jr Reviewing Resumes For Top Trump Health Jobs, Sources Say
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the U.S. government's health agencies in Donald Trump's incoming administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Kennedy, of the famed political family, has been asked to recommend appointees for all regulatory health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, said Del Bigtree, who was director of communications for Kennedy's campaign and remains close to the former candidate. (Kelly, 11/9)

Newsweek: RFK Jr. Suggests Replacing Hundreds Of Federal Health Employees
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said over the weekend that he intends to terminate 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and replace them with a new group of workers. Speaking at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Kennedy highlighted his involvement in vetting candidates for President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming administration as part of his effort to overhaul America's health agencies significantly. (Whisnant, 11/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Demands Republicans Allow Some Nominees To Bypass Senate
President-elect Donald Trump demanded that the next Republican leader of the Senate agree to allow him to push through at least some nominees without requiring a vote, a move that would give more power to the White House to get around congressional opposition. The statement by Trump, who prevailed on Election Day by winning all seven of the battleground states, showed him muscling the incoming Senate majority weeks before the Republicans are set to take over the chamber. The GOP senators, who are set to have a 53-47 margin in the next Congress, are voting on a new leader this week. (Hughes and Bravin, 11/10)

Bloomberg: Trump’s Reliance On US House To Fill His Cabinet Strains Likely Majority
President-elect Donald Trump is raiding the House of Representatives as he stocks his cabinet, threatening to cut into what’s likely to be a razor-thin majority for Speaker Mike Johnson in the early days of his new administration. On the House side, Trump has selected Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, to serve as his national security advisor, according to people familiar with the choice. Waltz joins Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman and chair of the Republican caucus, as lawmakers primed to leave Capitol Hill for a job working for the incoming president. The loss of two Republicans will tighten margins considerably for Johnson. (Leonard and Lowenkron, 11/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s New Border Czar Championed Family-Separation Policy In First Term
Donald Trump has chosen a pugnacious anti-illegal immigration hard-liner, Tom Homan, to oversee the president-elect’s proposed mass deportation campaign, picking a key figure from his first term who makes no apologies for some of its most controversial policies, including the separation of migrant parents from their children. Homan, who served as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2017 to 2018, will take on the role of “border czar,” Trump announced late Sunday night. (Hackman, Restuccia and Vipers, 11/11)

The New York Times: Trump Chooses Lee Zeldin To Run E.P.A. As He Plans To Gut Climate Rules
President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Monday that he would nominate former Representative Lee Zeldin, Republican of New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a position that is expected to be central to Mr. Trump’s plans to dismantle landmark climate regulations. During Mr. Zeldin’s tenure in the House, he voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times, and clean air legislation at least half a dozen times, according to the League of Conservation Voters scorecard. (Davenport and Friedman, 11/11)

Los Angeles Times: Abortion Foes Press Trump For More Restrictions; Abortion Pill Sales Spike
Anti-abortion activists say there is still work to be done to further restrict access to abortion when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next year. They point to the federal guidance that the administration of President Biden released around emergency abortions, requiring that hospitals provide them for women whose health or life is at risk, and its easing of prescribing restrictions for abortion pills that have allowed women to order the medication online with the click of a button. (Seitz, 11/9)

The New York Times: Was The Trump Election A Setback For Women? Even Women Do Not Agree. 
To many left-leaning Americans, it is resoundingly clear that women who backed Donald J. Trump in the presidential election voted against their own self-interest. Liberal women, in particular, have spent recent days practically stunned, stewing over how other women could have rejected Kamala Harris, who would have been the first woman to lead the nation in its nearly 250-year history. Instead, they chose a candidate who spews misogyny seemingly with glee. For the second time. (Searcey, 11/12)

The Sacramento Bee: Gov. Gavin Newsom Announces $33 Million In Funding For California Veterans’ Mental Health 
The California Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded $33 million in grants to seven counties through the California Veterans Health Initiative. The grants will go to preexisting community organizations that provide mental health support for veterans and their families. Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced 100,000 free mental health appointments for veterans, and a federal grant funding through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that will go toward Native American veterans’ mental health and suicide prevention. (Hatch, 11/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Alameda County To Launch Its Own Mental Health Court
A year after San Francisco and a few other counties launched a court process to nudge people with severe mental illness into treatment, the rest of California is following suit — and hoping for better results. For officials in Alameda County, who are grappling with the same vexing street conditions that became political flash points in San Francisco, the stakes are high. Their version of Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Act court will roll out Dec. 2, hitting the deadline for counties statewide to establish such programs, unless they applied for a one-year extension. (Swan, 11/12)

CalMatters: It Used To Be A Notoriously Violent Prison. Now It’s Home To A First-Of-Its Kind Education Program
In less than 15 minutes, Michael Mariscal validated why a team of officials at Cal Poly Humboldt have spent more than three years trying to set up the first bachelor’s degree program at a maximum-security prison in California. At the end of a class in persuasive speaking, Mariscal was tasked with giving a presentation to highlight his personal growth. His 22 classmates inside B Facility at Pelican Bay State Prison were skeptical: Just two weeks earlier, Mariscal had used his presentation time to give step-by-step directions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But today was different. (D'Orio, 11/12)

Los Angeles Times: U.S. Appeals Court Stops Work On Shelters On The VA's West L.A. Campus
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of appeals has issued an emergency stay stopping work on the installation of more than 100 units of modular housing on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles campus. The stay blocks purchase of the modular units and prohibits a development team assembled by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter from accessing three parking lots on the 388-acre campus to begin the site preparation. (Smith, 11/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Just One Homeless Encampment Created 155K Pounds Of Debris By The San Diego River 
San Diego has finished pulling more than 155,000 pounds of debris out of just one prominent riverbed encampment, illustrating how complex and expensive responding to homelessness can be when it’s allowed to last for years. (Nelson, 11/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F.’s New Weapon Against The Drug Crisis: Billboards Urge Treatment
Looking up at a billboard in San Francisco’s Civic Center neighborhood, Shavonne Allen couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. “I am living proof treatment works,” the billboard at Franklin and Oak streets reads, alongside a photo of Allen and a phone number for the city’s behavioral health access line — a 24/7 call center for information on substance use and mental health services. (Angst, 11/12)

Stat: Many Opioid Recovery Groups Offer Rejection Instead Of Refuge 
The last time Mark Palinski went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, he was asked to leave and never come back. He stills remembers the argument: All he had done was advocate for the use of the “gold standard” treatment opioid addiction, a common medication called buprenorphine. To Palinski, buprenorphine is a godsend. It helped him finally beat opioid addiction decades after he was prescribed Vicodin for a schoolyard kickball accident, leaving him hooked on painkillers at age 11. (Facher, 11/12)

Los Angeles Times: Study Deems California Prop. 65 Warning Labels Effective
Ever since the passage of Proposition 65, policymakers and business groups have argued over whether the law is effective in preventing people from ingesting and inhaling toxic chemicals, or just providing a payday to plaintiffs attorneys. Now, a new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives has concluded that Proposition 65 has curbed exposure to toxic substances in California — and nationally. (Briscoe, 11/11)

Bay Area News Group: How Democrats Are Making A Billion-Dollar Push To Decarbonize California's Ports Amid Trump's Return
The Port of Oakland received the largest federal grant in Bay Area port history last month as part of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act to accelerate the country’s clean energy transition, but the future of that effort may be uncertain with the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office. (Hunter, 11/12)

KVPR: As Feds Recommend Ramping Up Bird Flu Testing, Are Human Cases Being Undercounted?
Federal health officials have changed their guidance on testing for highly pathogenic avian influenza. The virus, known informally as bird flu, ravaged poultry flocks for years before being found this spring in cattle and, most recently, humans. In California, the virus has been confirmed in 21 dairy workers — the largest caseload of any of the six states where human cases have been reported — as well as 259 dairies. (Klein, 11/11)

Fresno Bee: A Year Into A Crackdown On Illegal Pot, What's Happening At Fresno's Smoke Shops?
In an update during a Fresno City Council meeting last month, the city attorney’s office presented data from its Cannabis Administrative Prosecutor Program, which inspected 67 smoke shops throughout the city. (Teehee, 11/10)

NPR: Trump Plans To Revoke Many Biden Policies. Where Does That Leave Marijuana?
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to come to the White House with a laundry list of policies he wants to change or reverse. The Biden administration has moved to ease longtime restrictions on cannabis — so, what might Trump's arrival mean for the push to legalize marijuana? There are signs that cannabis could be a rare issue on which Trump carries a Biden policy forward. (Chappell, 11/11)

The Wall Street Journal: A Surprising Source Of Dementia Relief: Cannabis 
More older adults are using marijuana for sleep, anxiety and pain. A small but growing number are taking it to manage their dementia symptoms. Doctors who prescribe cannabis to dementia patients say it can alleviate anxiety, agitation and pain, and improve sleep, appetite and mood. While there isn’t much definitive research on the use of cannabis for dementia, several small studies have backed its usefulness in soothing agitation. (Reddy, 11/11)

Los Angeles Times: Online Vape Retailers Ignore Rules Protecting Minors, New Study Finds
To try to keep young people from becoming addicted to tobacco, Congress took two steps in 2020 to keep minors from posing as adults to buy vaping products online: It barred e-cigarette sites from delivering through the U.S. Postal Service, and it required whatever delivery service they did use to check the recipient’s ID. The state of California added its own twist that year, banning most flavored tobacco products. That prohibition did not explicitly cover online sales, but the city of San Diego is one of a number of local governments that adopted laws to eliminate any potential loophole. (Healey, 11/12)

The New York Times: Excessive Drinking Persisted In The Years After Covid Arrived
Americans started drinking more as the Covid-19 pandemic got underway. They were stressed, isolated, uncertain — the world as they had known it had changed overnight. Two years into the disaster, the trend had not abated, researchers reported on Monday. The percentage of Americans who consumed alcohol, which had already risen from 2018 to 2020, inched up further in 2021 and 2022. And more people reported heavy or binge drinking. (Rabin, 11/11)