Los Angeles Times: LAUSD 'Compassion Fund' To Help Immigrant Families Amid ICE Raids
As many immigrant parents express fear about sending their children back to school next week, Los Angeles Unified has set a goal of $1 million in donations for a “compassion fund” for families affected by federal immigration raids, Supt. Alberto Carvalho announced Tuesday. The funds donated to the LAUSD Education Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the school system, will cover needs from “A to Z,” said Carvalho during an annual event in which he makes home visits to encourage regular school attendance. (Blume, 8/5)

Los Angeles Times: Living Unhoused And Undocumented In One Of California's Hottest Regions
Temperatures were fast approaching 116 degrees as Rubén Partida and his wife, Kimberly, loaded their dusty Nissan Frontier truck with two coolers of water and Gatorades blanketed in ice. As their neighbors prepared to shelter during the hottest part of the day on June 30, the Partidas began their outreach efforts to members of the unhoused community in Brawley, a city of about 25,000 in the heart of California’s agricultural Imperial Valley. This has been the couple’s reality every weekday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. since June, when temperatures began regularly exceeding 100. (Magaña, 8/6)

Voice of San Diego: Police Begin Cracking Down On Campers In Mission Bay
Capt. Steve Shebloski, head of San Diego Neighborhood Policing Division, said he receives the most parking complaints about Mission Bay — where RVs line the roads and fill the parking spaces on a daily basis. That led City Council President Joe LaCava to push for increased enforcement of parking regulations, which prohibit people from parking around Mission Bay between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. A federal lawsuit had tied the city’s hands, but now — after the opening of a new safe parking lot at H Barracks — San Diego police officers are starting to crack down. (Martinez Barba, 8/5)

Times of San Diego: Local Nonprofit Hosts Conference On Neurodiversity-Affirming Care
Mentoring Autistic Minds, a locally-based nonprofit pushing for a neurodiversity-affirming country, held a conference over the weekend to discuss the future of neurodiversity and neurodiversity-affirming care. The conference, which was at Balboa Park Club, hosted autistic and non-autistic minds alike from a variety of organizations with neurodiversity-friendly pasts. Neurodivergent individuals shared their experiences, and academic researchers shared their findings and ways to provide better affirming care. (Wallace, 8/5)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Native Youth Say Culture Aids Mental Health Help
Jordan Burkart learned pain at a young age. She was placed in foster care at just three days old after Child Protective Services learned her parents were using drugs, she said. Though she was later adopted, she boomeranged between her birth and adoptive parents during her early childhood. Life was especially chaotic with her biological parents. Burkart, now 22 and an incoming senior at Sacramento State, recalled that they used to steal her shoes and hang them over electrical wires signaling to a dealer that they wanted to buy drugs. She didn’t feel safe. Burkart said she started feeling depressed and anxious in social situations as a preteen. (Hall, 8/6)

Los Angeles Times: Flea-Borne Typhus Infections Rise In SoCal: How To Stay Safe
Pet owners, beware: Flea-borne typhus is on the rise in parts of Southern California. The good news is there are several commonsense ways to protect your pet and yourself from getting infected. A flea becomes infected when it bites rats, opossums and stray cats that are carrying the disease. The disease is caused by Rickettsia typhi bacteria, which can be spread to humans when feces from infected fleas is rubbed into cuts or scrapes on the skin or into the eyes. (Garcia, 8/5)

San Francisco Chronicle: Chikungunya Outbreak In China Prompts U.S. Travel Alert
U.S. health officials have issued a travel advisory for parts of China following a surge in chikungunya infections, a mosquito-borne viral disease that has sickened more than 7,000 people in Guangdong province since mid-June. ... Chikungunya, primarily transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, causes fever and severe joint pain that can last for months or even years. While the disease is rarely fatal, it poses elevated risks for newborns, the elderly and individuals with underlying health conditions, according to the CDC. (Vaziri, 8/5)

Bay Area News Group: Cleanup Of Toxic Richmond Waterway Creates Divisions
Renewed efforts to clear toxic pesticides from a Richmond waterway are creating divisions between local environmental groups and the Environmental Protection Agency, which previously attempted to clean the site in the 1990s. (Lopez, 8/6)

Los Angeles Times: Wild Pigs With 'Neon Blue' Flesh: California Officials Sound The Alarm
Dan Burton has trapped hundreds of wild pigs for clients of his wildlife control company in Salinas, but even he was startled when he cut one of them open and found blue meat inside. ... [The California Department of Fish and Wildlife] is now warning trappers and hunters to keep an eye out for possibly contaminated wildlife in the area, and not to consume the tainted meat, over concerns the blue meat is a sign that the animal may have consumed poison. (Hernandez, 8/5)

Becker's Hospital Review: Adventist Health Taps $1B In Bonds To Fund Epic EHR, Refinance Debt
Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health System/West has been approved to issue up to $1 billion in tax-exempt bonds to help upgrade its EHR system and pay off some of its debt. The bonds will support the rollout of a new Epic EHR systemwide, according to an Aug. 4 news release from the California State Treasurer’s Office. They will also be used to refinance existing debt, including commercial paper and a line of credit. (Diaz, 8/5)

Stat: Kennedy Cancels $500 Million In MRNA Vaccine Contracts 
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday announced that the government’s emergency preparedness agency will no longer fund work on messenger RNA vaccines, delivering a crippling blow to the country’s capacity to develop vaccines during the next pandemic or public health emergency. (Branswell, 8/5)

The New York Times: Kennedy’s Crusade Against Food Safety Rule Threatens Supplement Industry
By going after an obscure regulatory designation he describes as a “loophole,” Mr. Kennedy has put an industry he champions on the defensive. (Black, 8/6)

The Washington Post: Is Orange Juice Healthy? An FDA Sugar Proposal Renews The Debate
Orange juice, known for its tangy, sweet taste, could be made with slightly less sugary oranges under a regulation proposed Tuesday by the Trump administration. While that move can sound like a way to make America healthier, it’s actually at the behest of Florida’s citrus industry as it grapples with changes to the crop and its sugar levels. The Food and Drug Administration described the proposed change as unlikely to affect taste and nutritional value while providing “flexibility to the food industry.” (Roubein, 8/5)

MedPage Today: Screen Every Adult For Unhealthy Alcohol Use, USPSTF Says
In updated draft guidance, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) said that all adults should be screened for unhealthy alcohol use in primary care settings, recommendations that align with those from 2018. For adults who screen positive for "risky or hazardous drinking," the task force recommended brief behavioral counseling interventions -- a grade B, based on moderate net benefit. (Firth, 8/5)

ABC News: CDC Launches New National Campaign To Tackle Mental Health, Substance Use Among Teens
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a new campaign on Tuesday aimed at tackling mental health and substance use among teens ahead of the upcoming school year. The federal campaign, entitled Free Mind, aims to provide teens and their parents or caregivers with "resources and information about substance use, mental health and the connection between the two." (Benadjaoud, 8/5)

The Intersection: Cutting Off The Base: How Trump’s Budget Hits His Own Voters
In rural parts of California’s Central Valley, where sun-baked highways connect towns with few doctors and even fewer hospitals, majorities of voters supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Now, after the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” — Trump’s signature federal budget reform — some of those voters are at risk of losing access to health care. That’s because the bill includes some of the deepest cuts to Medicaid in a generation. In California, where the program is called Medi-Cal, millions of low-income residents could feel the impact. Clinics, hospitals and safety net providers across the state are bracing for what comes next. (Mayer, 8/5)

The Hill: Trump Threatens 250% Tariffs On Pharmaceutical Imports
President Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose tariffs of up to 250 percent on pharmaceutical imports, the highest rate he’s discussed to date. “We’ll be putting a, initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “But in one year, one in a half years maximum, it’s going to go to 150 percent, and then it’s going to go to 250 percent, because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” Trump said. (Weixel, 8/5)

NPR: CDC To Disburse Delayed Funds Including For Overdose Prevention, Staffers Say
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be able to fully fund the Overdose Data to Action or OD2A program ahead of a key budget deadline, according to a CDC senior leader. A second CDC staff member confirmed that "there have been developments and we are likely to have full funding," although they did not have details on when the funding would become available. Both spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity because they fear retribution for speaking to the press without authorization. Some staffers at CDC expressed to NPR that this appeared to be good news, although the funding situation was still fluid and confusing. (Simmons-Duffin and Mann, 8/5)