KQED: Bill Requiring Disciplined Physicians To Notify Patients Advances In Sacramento
Doctors who are on probation after being disciplined by state regulators would have to share that information with patients before providing care under a bill making its way through the state Senate. (Fine, 4/12)

The Ventura County Star: California Senate Bill May Address Problems In Medical Examiner’s Office
A Sacramento senator has proposed changing state law to strengthen a physician's role in determining results of autopsies, a move he said would ensure the public's confidence in the process. (Carlson and Wilson, 4/12)

The Sacramento Bee: California Soda Tax Bill Pulled Without A Vote
Elections come and go, legislative leaders rise and fall, but one constant remains in Sacramento: Soda taxes can’t get traction. A bill to impose a two-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages was pulled by its author ahead of its scheduled first committee vote on Tuesday, with Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, concluding he lacked the votes. Assembly Bill 2782 is likely done for the year, the latest setback for a protracted but largely unsuccessful public health campaign. (White, 4/12)

The New York Times: Facebook And Napster Pioneer To Start Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Sean Parker was a pioneer in music sharing when he co-founded Napster and in social media as the early president of Facebook. Now he wants to pioneer in a field that is already jumping with activity: cancer immunotherapy. Mr. Parker is announcing Wednesday that he is donating $250 million to a new effort that will bring together six leading academic centers to develop ways to unleash patients’ own immune systems to fight cancer. (Pollack, 4/13)

Reuters: Sean Parker Sets Up $250 Million Cancer Immunotherapy Collaboration
"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker, the co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, told Reuters in an interview. The institute will focus on the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fight cancer cells. (Beasley, 4/13)

USA Today: Billionaire Announces $250 Million In Cancer Immunotherapy Funding
Parker's enormous cash infusion is the largest ever for cancer immunotherapy — and one of the largest ever for cancer research — and comes three months after President Obama called for a $1 billion federal cancer research program that he dubbed a “moonshot." The estate of the billionaire shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig donated $540 million to six cancer centers in 2014 and Nike co-founder Phil Knight pledged $500 million to cancer researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in 2013. (O'Donnell, 4/13)

The Associated Press: Collaborative Institute Aims To Speed Cancer Drug Creation
“Everybody knows that we need to move forward and change the model” for cancer research, Jeffrey Bluestone, an immunology researcher and the institute’s CEO, told The Associated Press Tuesday. “The goal here is to rapidly move our discoveries to patients.” For decades, fiercely competitive and secretive drugmakers protected their money-making discoveries with patents and lawsuits. Academic researchers likewise often guarded their work closely until it was published because their promotions, awards and sometimes revenue from licensing patents depended on individual achievement. That often slowed progress. (Johnson, 4/13)

The Washington Post: $250 Million, 300 Scientists And 40 Labs: Sean Parker’s Revolutionary Project To ‘Solve’ Cancer
“Cancer immunotherapy is such an incredibly complex field, and for every answer it seems to pose 10 more questions. I’m an entrepreneur so I wish some of these questions had been answered yesterday,” Parker said. He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other’s labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. (Cha, 4/13)

Los Angeles Times: Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Launches Initiative To Advance Cancer Immunotherapies
Specifically, Parker said his institute will place its initial bets on three broad areas of research: developing a new generation of T-cell therapies; investigating new uses for, and effective new combinations of, the kinds of "checkpoint inhibitor" drugs that have already proved effective for skin, lung and kidney cancers; and improving the effectiveness and potential uses for vaccines and cellular therapies in fighting a wider array of cancers. (Healy, 4/12)

The San Francisco Chronicle: Entrepreneur Sean Parker Creates Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker has donated $250 million to launch an effort, based in San Francisco, that combines the forces of six top cancer research centers nationwide to develop treatments in the growing field of cancer immunotherapy, which uses the power of the body’s immune system to fight disease. (Colliver, 4/13)

The San Francisco Business Times: Tech Legend Sean Parker Seeds 'New, Crazy' Cancer Immunotherapy Projects With $250M Gift
A potential $1 billion effort to accelerate ways to turn the body’s own immune system against cancer — tapping top researchers at UCSF and Stanford University — got a $250 million kickstart Wednesday from tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Sean Parker. (Leuty, 4/12)

The San Francisco Business Journal: Meet The Big Names Behind Sean Parker's Cancer Immunotherapy Moonshot
The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy has rolled out a who's-who list of researchers across the United States as directors of its six academic-based centers, board of directors, advisors or steering committee members. (Leuty, 4/12)

Los Angeles Times: County Soil Testing Finds Widespread Contamination Near Former Exide Plant
Los Angeles County public health officials who tested the soil outside 500 homes in the area surrounding the now-closed Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon found all but eight have levels of lead that will require cleanup. The findings came in a report released Tuesday by the county's Department of Public Health to the Board of Supervisors. The county test results mirror the findings of separate tests by the state, which have found that 99% of homes where soil was tested were in need of cleanup. (Sewell, 4/12)

The Sacramento Bee: Get The Lead Out: Despite Fears Of Lead Poisoning, It’s Still Here, But Rare
Warnings about lead exposure, especially among young children, have been around for decades. While lead has been banned from household paints, canned foods and gasoline, it remains an undetected danger in unsuspecting places. (Buck, 4/13)

The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Councilman Wants Homes Near Gun Range Tested For Lead
Sacramento Councilman Jay Schenirer asked the city manager Monday to order tests of residential yards for lead contamination near a closed city gun range in Mangan Park where test records show the toxic substance leaked outside at high levels. Schenirer also requested that the city pursue soil tests around Mangan Park on 34th Avenue, where the gun range has stood for decades. The park, which is in Schenirer’s district, includes a playground, swimming pool and athletic fields used by families and soccer leagues. (Lillis, 4/12)

The Ventura County Star: Chronic Pain Patients Worry Opioid Crackdown Will Hurt
Public health leaders and regulators worry about opioid addiction, death and abuse. Michael Fiddes worries about pain. "It feels like a cross between a steady pressure and occasionally someone sticking an ice pick in your back," said the 74-year-old Ventura man of the back pain related to his Parkinson's disease. Fiddes uses a patch to take fentanyl, one of many addictive painkillers in the government's crosshairs. (Kisken, 4/12)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Workers Would Get 6 Paid Sick Days Under New Proposal
Workers in Los Angeles could get at least six paid sick days annually under a proposal backed by a committee of city lawmakers Tuesday -- twice as much as the California state minimum. Labor and community activists heralded the move as a victory for workers and families, allowing many Angelenos to take more time off if they fall ill or have to take care of an ailing child or loved one. (Reyes, 4/12)

The San Francisco Business Times: Paid Sick Leave Rule Could Make Small Federal Contractors Ill
The Department of Labor’s proposed regulation requiring federal contractors to provide paid sick leave to their employees could make it harder for small businesses to win government contracts. (Hoover, 4/13)

Los Angeles Times: More Babies, Fewer Multiple Births, Are Resulting From Assisted Reproduction
2014 saw the birth of more babies than ever who got their start in the petri dish of a fertility clinic in the United States. In its yearly review, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reported a total of 65,175 live births resulting from a variety of procedures -- up from 63,286 in 2013. Amidst growing concern about the numbers of twins and triplets born to women who undergo infertility treatments, the assisted reproduction industry also detailed its progress in driving down the rate of multiple births, and for the first time reported pre-term births among its patients. Some 78% of babies born to women who underwent such procedures as in vitro fertilization were singletons, up from 75.5% in 2013. (Healy, 4/12)

The Press Democrat: Sonoma County’s Poor Live Longer Than Most Other Counties In America
Poor people who live in Santa Rosa are expected to live much longer than their economic counterparts throughout the rest of the United States, a new study published Monday shows. (Warren, 4/12)

In other news from around California —

The Sacramento Business Journal: Kaiser Plans Huge Sports Medicine Facility At New Arena
Kaiser Permanente will open a public sports medicine center this fall in the practice facility of Golden 1 Center. The 18,000-square-foot center will serve the Sacramento Kings, Kaiser plan members and anyone else in the community, according to a press release. (van der Meer, 4/12)

The Press Democrat: ‘Public Health 3.0’ Represents Future Of Fighting Public Health Problems
A high-ranking federal health official visited Santa Rosa on Tuesday to discuss a new direction for local public health departments, one that would push them far beyond their traditional role as watchdogs of communicable and chronic diseases and make them community partners in identifying the “social determinants” of health. (Espinoza, 4/12)

KERO Bakersfield: GoFundMe Account Setup For Bakersfield Boy Who Was Hit On A Bike
A GoFundMe account has been established for a 6th grade boy who was hit on his bike while riding to school Monday morning. (4/12)