Mercury News: Drugging Our Kids: Legislators Call On Governor Brown To Sign Bills To Protect Foster Youth
Foster youth advocates and Bay Area legislators on Monday told a panel of state officials that the alarming conclusions of a recent state audit highlighting California’s weak oversight of psychiatric drugs for foster kids could be solved if Gov. Jerry Brown signs three pieces of key legislation into law this week. ... The audit, released Aug. 23, mirrored many findings of this newspaper’s series “Drugging Our Kids” that disclosed the state’s dependence on psychotropic medications to control troubled children in the state’s foster care system and the failure to track how the drugs are prescribed. Beall said that one solution is his own Senate Bill 1291, which would require better transparency and tracking of mental health services for foster kids in every California county. (Seipel, 9/26)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: Lack Of Data Blamed For Over-Medicating Foster Children In Sonoma County
State Sen. Mike McGuire on Monday called on top state health care and social services officials to respond to what he has called a “scathing” state audit criticizing the overuse of psychotropic medications among children in the foster care system. (Espinoza, 9/26)

Mercury News: California Ballot Measures: Tobacco Tax Tight; Voters Favor Parole Reforms, Poll Finds
California voters favor reforming the state parole system, but are more closely divided about slapping a two-buck-a-pack tax on cigarettes, a new Field Poll shows. And voters also favor extending a tax on the wealthy that they first approved in 2012, the poll shows. The new poll shows what could be a softening of voters’ appetite for a new tobacco tax to fund health care and tobacco prevention efforts, as the deep-pocketed opposition rolls out a heavy ad campaign attacking the measure as a tax grab for special interests. (Peele, 9/26)

San Francisco Business Times: Wearable Heart Monitor Company IRhythm Technologies Plans $86M IPO
IRhythm Technologies Inc., which makes a wearable heart monitor, filed plans Friday to raise $86.25 million in an initial public offering.The eight-year-old company, which has 356 employees and is led by CEO Kevin King, plans to list on NASDAQ exchange with the symbol of "IRTC." It is one of a handful of Bay Area life sciences and medical technology IPOs this year after a boom in IPOs from 2012 through last year. (Schubarth, 9/26)

KPBS Public Media: Calls To 2-1-1 San Diego Reveal Drug Abusers’ Many Needs
San Diegans suffering from drug and alcohol addiction face a number of other needs, particularly housing and mental health care. One of the ways drug users look for help is through 2-1-1 San Diego, a nonprofit that connects callers countywide with social service providers. Last fiscal year, it received calls from almost 3,200 individuals seeking help with substance abuse. (Castaneda, 9/26)

In other public health news —

Orange County Register: 7-Year-Old Girl Loses Some Teeth, Part Of Jaw Bone, After Dental Infection Outbreak 
Mimi Morales, 7, seemed to recover from a July root canal in only a few days, so her family expected no further treatment when they brought her back to Children’s Dental Group in Anaheim last week after learning of an outbreak of serious dental infections there. Instead, on Sunday, her father and grandparents waited anxiously at Children’s Hospital of Orange County as the second-grader from Orange underwent surgery to remove infected jaw bone and three permanent teeth that had yet to grow in. (Perkes, 9/26)

The Desert Sun: Tracking Asthma Threats In The Imperial Valley's Hazy Air
A network of 40 air monitoring devices is being installed in the region between the U.S.-Mexico border and the Salton Sea and is about to begin churning out a wealth of real-time data. “Having this system will really help everyone,” Herrera said. “Not only will it help by documenting all of the contamination outside, but I think it could bring more awareness.” (James, 9/26)

KPCC: SoCal Blood Banks Now Screening For Zika 
On Aug. 26 the FDA issued new guidelines suggesting that California and 10 other states start checking blood for Zika within four weeks. The California branches of the American Red Cross implemented the new test on Sept. 6, according to spokeswoman April Phillips. The Lifestream Blood Bank, which provides the lion's share of blood supplies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and the Houchin Community Blood Bank, which provides blood services in Kern County, both say they started the Zika screening earlier this month. The FDA asked the rest of the country to start testing blood for Zika by Thanksgiving. (Plevin, 9/27)

In other news from around California —

San Diego Union-Tribune: Feds Sue Pharmacist, Alleging Unequal Wages
Federal labor officials filed a lawsuit Monday against a Valley Center pharmacy, saying the employer fired a technician after she complained about being paid less than her male counterpart. The 9-page complaint was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against CJMBS Pharmacies Inc., which operates under the name Community Pharmacy. (McDonald, 9/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Mylan’s EpiPen Pretax Profits 60% Higher Than Number Told To Congress
Mylan NV on Monday clarified the profit it said it made from its lifesaving EpiPen drug, days after House members badgered the company’s CEO to justify the device’s steep price increases. Testifying before a congressional committee last week, CEO Heather Bresch said Mylan’s profit was $100 for a two-pack of the injectors, despite a $608 list price. But in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, Mylan said Monday that the profit figure presented by Ms. Bresch included taxes, which the company didn’t clearly convey to Congress. (Maremont, 9/26)

In other national health care news —

The Wall Street Journal: With Insurers On Board, More Hospitals Offer Transgender Surgery
Surgery is becoming more available for transgender people as a growing number of academic centers and hospitals offer the procedure and insurance companies provide coverage. Stacey Parsons, a 45-year-old from Kent, Ohio, had genital surgery in August at Cleveland Clinic, which last year launched a transgender-surgery-and-medicine program. For years the procedure was unattainable for Ms. Parsons because it costs upward of $20,000 and was rarely covered by insurance. (Reddy, 9/26)

Bloomberg: Your Pet's Vet Bill Offers Insight Into Rising U.S. Healthcare Costs
Healthcare spending on pets has been growing strongly, and it offers some insight into what's happening in the U.S. human health system, Stanford University's Liran Einav and Atul Gupta and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Amy Finkelstein write. (Smialek, 9/27)

The Washington Post: Pain Kept This Young Woman From Eating For 5 Years, And Doctors Didn’t Know Why
The medical team encircled Mackenzie Hild’s bed, their somber expressions reflecting the gravity of the news they were about to impart to the Harvard sophomore and her mother, newly arrived from California. “We’ve done all these tests, and they’re all normal,” Hild recalls one doctor at the renowned Boston hospital telling them. To treat Hild’s life-threatening weight loss, which the 19-year-old claimed was the result of searing abdominal pain triggered by eating, doctors were sending her to an inpatient center specializing in eating disorders. (Boodman, 9/26)