Becker's Hospital Review: Community Health Centers Treat Record Patients In 2023
In 2023, a record number of more than 31 million people received care at health centers funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration. This increased 2.7 million since 2020, according to an Aug. 5 news release from HHS. Community health centers treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. (Kuchno, 8/6)

Becker's Hospital Review: Los Angeles Hospital Names CEO
Jeremy Zoch, PhD, was appointed president and CEO of Dignity Health - Northridge Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Zoch will begin his new role Aug. 19, according to a news release shared with Becker's. (Gooch, 8/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Biotech Companies Slash Hundreds Of Jobs
Two San Francisco biotechnology companies slashed hundreds of jobs in the past week, according to state regulatory filings. Vir Biotechnology announced a plan to permanently cut 141 employees, or approximately a quarter of its workforce, at its facility at 1800 Owens St., according to a state filing. (Vaziri, 8/6)

Becker's Hospital Review: A Case For 4-Day Workweeks For Physicians
Four-day workweeks are starting to gain traction among nursing leaders. But physicians have been hesitant to embrace flexible schedules for several reasons, MDLinx reported Aug. 5. Physician burnout has been high the last few years, costing the U.S. healthcare system approximately $4.6 billion annually due to employee turnover, productivity loss and decreased patient safety and satisfaction, experts told the publication. (Taylor, 8/6)

Los Angeles Times: California Could Make It Harder For Cities To Block Abortion Clinics
The Fontana City Council meeting seemed mundane. With little debate, council members last summer unanimously voted to halt certain building permits in a stretch of downtown, allowing only entertainment-related development and citing a need to boost the local economy. But one business that was planned for that city corridor in San Bernardino County and subsequently blocked by the new emergency ordinance stood out: a Planned Parenthood clinic. (Mays, 8/7)

Los Angeles Times: 'Bubble Zones' Proposed To Keep Back Protesters At Abortion Clinics And Synagogues In L.A.
Protesters would need to give 8 feet of space to people entering abortion clinics, schools or places of worship across swaths of Los Angeles County under two “bubble zone” proposals gaining speed. Citing rising violence and unruly protests, L.A. County and city officials inched forward Tuesday with the proposals, which would make it a misdemeanor for protesters to intentionally block the entrances of healthcare facilities, schools or religious institutions — or demonstrate within 8 feet of anyone trying to get inside. The protective 8-foot “bubble” would be required within 100 feet of a facility’s entrance. (Ellis and Zahniser, 8/7)

Bloomberg: Abortion Access: Walmart, Costco Pressured By Investor Group Over Mifepristone
A group of faith-based investors are warning some of the largest US retailers including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Walmart Inc. against selling the abortion pill mifepristone. Companies offering the drug risk reputation and legal repercussions, according to an Aug. 2 letter sent to chief executive officers at the two retail giants, as well as Kroger Co., Albertsons Co. and medical distribution company McKesson Corp. (Green and Kishan, 8/6)

HuffPost: Roe v. Wade Didn’t Go Far Enough For Abortion Rights, Hundreds Of Health Care Providers Tell Biden And Harris
More than 400 health care providers called on the Biden administration to “actively and unequivocally” support an abortion rights policy that goes further than Roe v. Wade and restores access to abortion later in pregnancy. Advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health, along with 430 physicians providing sexual and reproductive health care, on Tuesday sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, urging them to do better on abortion care and gender-affirming care. (Vagianos, 8/6)

CalMatters: Audit: California Put Millions Of Homelessness Dollars At Risk Of Fraud
California put hundreds of millions of homelessness dollars at risk because of its “disorganized” and “chaotic” anti-fraud policies, according to a critical federal audit released today. The audit analyzed California’s Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees the state’s homelessness programs. It gave the California agency its lowest possible ranking, finding that it lacked adequate policies to prevent, detect and respond to fraud. As a result, the audit found, the state agency failed to properly protect $319.5 million in federal homelessness funds, which were distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the possibility of misuse. (Kendall, 8/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: One Week After Mayor Breed Boosts Sweeps, S.F. Police Citations Rise
In the first week since San Francisco began escalating a crackdown on homeless encampments, police officers issued at least 13 citations for illegally setting up tents on public property — surpassing the total handed out in the prior four weeks combined. From July 30 through Aug. 5, officers issued 13 citations for illegal lodging, compared with 11 in the month prior, according to data from the San Francisco Police Department. Officials say they are using citations as a “last resort” for people living in encampments who turn down offers of shelter or housing. (Angst, 8/6)

KQED: SF Promises To Make Life ‘Uncomfortable’ For People Sleeping Outside
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has promised ‘very aggressive’ sweeps of homeless encampments this month, on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that gives cities more leeway to fine or jail people for camping in public. KQED’s Sara Hossaini joins us to talk about what’s changed on the ground — and what hasn’t. (Guevarra, Hossaini and Montecillo, 8/7)

San Francisco Chronicle: Homeless San Francisco Families Living In RVs Displaced
Still sore after giving birth just days before, Roxana Alfaro clutched her newborn son in her arms as police closed in. The recent immigrant from Venezuela said she had been living in an RV parked on Winston Drive outside Stonestown Galleria mall for nearly six months, trying to make ends meet while pregnant with her second child. But at about 10 p.m. on July 30, Alfaro and her family — along with the dozens of people living in RVs and vehicles on Winston — were told by police they needed to move. (Toledo, 8/7)

KQED: San Francisco Workers Clearing Homeless Encampments Need Better Training, Judge Rules
As San Francisco officials vow to ramp up sweeps of homeless encampments, a federal judge is requiring the city to better train its workers on what to do with people’s belongings. The case filed by a group of unhoused residents in 2022 centered on arguments that the city routinely disregarded its own policy by destroying property during sweeps and that workers were violating residents’ Fourth Amendment rights, protecting them from unreasonable seizures by the government. (Baldassari, 8/6)

Fresno Bee: Fresno County Takes First Step To Banning Homeless Camps 
For the second time in about a week, the practice of camping by homeless people on public property in the greater Fresno area has been targeted by elected officials for potential criminal penalties. (Sheehan, 8/6)

Bay Area News Group: Death Of Contra County Resident A Painful Reminder Of West Nile Virus Danger
In Contra Costa County, health officials offered a reminder to people not to take their health for granted amid those flying insects, especially following the death from West Nile virus of a county resident in July. (Hurd, 8/7)

The New York Times: Free Covid Vaccines Will Soon Become Harder For Some To Find
After Covid-19 vaccines transitioned to the commercial market last fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stepped in to ensure that adults without insurance, or those whose insurance plans did not fully cover the vaccine, could receive shots for free. The agency’s Bridge Access Program provided roughly 1.5 million shots, said Dr. Georgina Peacock, the director of the immunization services division at the C.D.C. Nationwide, about 27 million adults do not have health insurance. But the program ends this month, making it even harder for health centers to provide shots for free. (Blum and Mogg, 8/6)

The Hill: Tim Walz On Health Care: Progressive With Some Pragmatism
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who was chosen Tuesday to be Vice President Harris’s running mate, brings a progressive approach to health care, with a focus on reducing costs. Walz has said his health policy priorities have been shaped in part by his personal experience. His father died of cancer when Walz was 19, leaving his mother drowning in medical debt.  (Weixel and Choi, 8/6)

Roll Call: Walz’s Personal Experiences Shape His Health Policy Outlook 
At age 19, he lost his father to cancer, leaving his mother strapped with medical debt, an experience that informed some of the policy priorities. “This I think shaped me later in life, and it certainly shaped me as it deals with health care. That last week cost my Mom a decade of having to go back to work to pay those bills,” Walz said in a 2018 campaign video. In June, Walz signed legislation banning medical providers from withholding medically necessary care because of unpaid debt. The law also banned debt transfer to a widow. (Cohen, DeGroot and Raman, 8/6)

The Washington Post: Tim Walz Policy Positions On Abortion, Climate, Immigration, Marijuana 
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Walz signed a bill protecting abortion as a state law in January 2023, making the state a hub for the procedure in the Midwest. In March, Harris visited a Planned Parenthood health center that provides abortions. In April 2023, Walz signed the “trans refuge” bill that shields people seeking and providing gender-affirming care in Minnesota. That same day, he also approved a bill banning conversion therapy. (Brasch, 8/6)

Stat: Tim Walz Stood Up To Corporate Health Care. Mayo Clinic Was A Powerful Exception
Even for the most progressive of politicians, money talks. And elite nonprofit hospitals can throw around a lot of money. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday as her vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, has cast himself as a progressive with a reputation for advancing policies like paid family and medical leave, free meals for children in school, and legalizing recreational marijuana. He’s been willing to take on some corporate interests in health care as well, provoking a lawsuit over a law that limited UnitedHealth Group’s role in the state’s Medicaid program and creating a prescription drug affordability board that can set limits on what medicines cost. (Zhang, Bannow and Herman, 8/6)

ABC News: Critics Blast New VP Nominee Tim Walz For 'Massive' COVID-19 Fraud 'Under His Watch' 
With Tim Walz joining Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the campaign trail as her newly selected running mate, critics are blasting the Minnesota governor for what they claim was his failure to prevent a massive COVID-19 fraud scheme that has ensnared the state government. According to federal charges filed over the past couple of years, at least 70 people were part of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy that exploited two federally-funded nutrition programs to fraudulently obtain more than $250 million in one of the largest COVID-era fraud schemes anywhere in the nation. (Levine, 8/7)

KVPR: We're Not 'Out Of The Woods' In The Youth Mental Health Crisis, A CDC Researcher Says
The mental health of high school students has largely worsened in the past decade, except between 2021 and 2023, when things improved slightly. Those are among the findings of a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which features results from the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted every two years. (Chatterjee, 8/7)

The New York Times: Sadness Among Teen Girls May Be Improving, C.D.C. Finds 
In 2021, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on teen mental health focused on a stark crisis: Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistent sadness, the highest rate in a decade. But the newest iteration of the survey, distributed in 2023 to more than 20,000 high school students across the country, suggests that some of the despair seen at the height of the pandemic may be lessening. (Ghorayshi, 8/6)

ABC News: More Than 40% Of LGBTQ Youth Said They Considered Suicide In The Past Year, CDC Report Finds
Youth who identify as LGBTQ+ reported higher rates of poor mental health and experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors than their cisgender and heterosexual peers, a new U.S. survey found. In 2023, more than three in five LGBTQ+ -- lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or another non-heterosexual identity -- high school students said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and more than half reported having poor mental health, according to the latest results of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, published Tuesday morning by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Kekatos, 8/6)

Modern Healthcare: Talkspace Expands Telehealth Services To 6M Military Members
Mental health company Talkspace has inked a contract with a government-sponsored insurance plan to offer in-network therapy to active duty military, retirees and their families, marking the company’s latest agreement with a public health insurance plan. ... The plan enrolls 6 million individuals who live across 32 states in the eastern U.S., according to Talkspace. (D'Ambrosio, 8/6)

Axios: FDA Deadline On Ecstasy For PTSD Prompts Lobbying Blitz
Lobbying around using ecstasy to treat PTSD is reaching a fever pitch this week ahead of a Food and Drug Administration deadline that could be a milestone for psychedelic drugs. Psychedelics — combined with psychotherapy — have shown promise for treating a range of addictions and mental health disorders and attracted billions of dollars in investment. But no treatment has won the FDA's approval yet. (Goldman, 8/7)

CalMatters: UC Students Push For A Drug Recovery Center On Each Campus
Four years clean from methamphetamine and with five associate degrees in hand from a community college in California’s Central Coast, Cheech Raygoza began his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley in 2022 feeling like he was in prison — again. Away from his fiancé, kids and grandchildren, and plucked from his community in Santa Maria, he was alone — like all those years he served behind bars. (Zinshteyn, 8/7)

KQED: 'Dignity Where There Was Little To Be Found': Inside The Fight For California Needle Exchange Programs
About a decade ago, Toni Rodriguez opened up to family members for the first time about using drugs. Rodriguez, who primarily uses the pronoun “they,” was in their 20s and living in Santa Cruz at the time, and was in a bad place and hoping for support. But instead, Rodriguez said family members reacted with personal attacks. (McDede, 8/7)

The New York Times: E.P.A. Pulls From the Market a Weedkiller Harmful to Fetuses
In a move not seen for almost 40 years, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an emergency order suspending all uses of a weedkiller linked to serious health risks for unborn babies. The herbicide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal, is used on crops such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions. Fetuses exposed to it could suffer from low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased I.Q., and impaired motor skills later in life, the E.P.A. said. (Tabuchi, 8/6)

CalMatters: Why California Farmworkers Are Still At Risk Of Heat Illness
They worked nearly three triple-digit days before it felt unsafe to go on. Maria Paredes said she already had a headache while working in a tomato field near Dixon on June 5, when high temperatures hit between 99 to 107 degrees. The hotter the next day got, the 40-year-old farmworker said, “the more it started to go back to my head, and I started to feel like vomiting.” (Kuang, 8/7)

San Diego Union-Tribune: CDC Determining Ways To Help Address Health Effects Of Border Sewage Crisis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is determining what kind of immediate help it can offer to address the cross-border sewage crisis affecting South County communities. (Murga, 8/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Family Of Jailed Man Who Overdosed On Water Sues Alameda County
The family of a 26-year-old man who died from drinking too much water at the Santa Rita Jail last year has sued Alameda County and health care company Wellpath, accusing them of showing “deliberate indifference” to his medical needs. It is the latest of numerous lawsuits accusing Wellpath of neglecting inmates whose care it supervises in jails across California. Jesus Eric Magana was arrested and jailed on suspicion of burglary in Livermore in March 2023 and placed in a high-security housing unit at the jail. About a month later, the suit said, a guard saw trash in Magana’s cell and told him to pick it up, but Magana said he was too ill. (Egelko, 8/6)

Los Angeles Times: Tattoo Removal Businessman Pleads Guilty To Health Fraud
The owner of a tattoo removal business admitted to defrauding Anthem Blue Cross out of more than $1.7 million, after lying about having nine paraplegic employees who required special health benefits. Joseph Tusia, 60, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles last month to tax evasion and healthcare fraud for a four-year scheme he ran out of his South Gate company, Tattoo Removal Inc. (Goldberg, 8/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Court Upholds Damages Suit By Consumers Of Debunked Joint Pain Cure
A federal appeals court upheld a multimillion-dollar damage award Tuesday for consumers of Joint Juice, a dietary supplement drink that was marketed as a cure for joint pain caused by osteoarthritis. The $8.3 million damage verdict followed a trial in San Francisco federal court in which medical witnesses for the company, Premier Nutrition, and its customers disputed whether the product’s ingredients, glucosamine and chondroitin, would ease pain in the knees, spine and other joints. The company had profited by $20 million a year from nationwide sales of Joint Juice, but has discontinued the product. (Egelko, 8/6)