Voice Of San Diego: Homeless Deaths Are Rising At A Much Greater Rate Than Homelessness 
Homeless neighbors are dying at unprecedented rates all over San Diego County. Since 2012, homelessness has not increased nearly as much as most people assume. But the death rate among homeless San Diegans has exploded. (Huntsberry, 6/13)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Mayor Takes Credit For Moving 14,000 Homeless People Off The Streets
More than 14,000 people experiencing homelessness have been moved off the streets during the first six months of her administration, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reported Tuesday. About 30%, or 4,332, acquired permanent housing. (Vives and Smith, 6/14)

Los Angeles Times: Skid Row Receivership In Danger Of Financial Collapse, Leaving 1,500 Tenants At Risk
The receivership overseeing the welfare of 1,500 tenants in Skid Row is verging on insolvency, unable to borrow money and piling up $1.7 million in unpaid bills. The financial circumstances have become so dire that Mark Adams, the receiver in charge of 29 properties owned by Skid Row Housing Trust, is asking for emergency action from a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, or else he said he’ll have to cancel security contracts, lay off his staff and surrender the effort. (Dillon and Smith, 6/14)

Bay Area News Group: SJ Mayor Matt Mahan's Controversial Housing Plan To Reallocate Measure E Dollars Goes Down Amid Budget Hearings
Following a monthslong salvo over how to best spend tens of millions of dollars on the city’s homelessness crisis, San Jose has decided to move roughly $8 million away from affordable housing to support interim solutions — millions less than Mayor Matt Mahan initially hoped. (Hase, 6/14)

KQED: Is Housing A Human Right? California Voters Could Decide
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and … housing? California lawmakers are trying to enshrine the right to housing in the state’s constitution. But what exactly does that mean in a state that lacks the resources to give everyone a roof over their heads? Supporters say the constitutional amendment would hold state and local officials more accountable for solving California’s homelessness crisis. (Kendall, 6/14)

Los Angeles Times: Long Beach To Purchase Property For Homeless Shelter 
City leaders in Long Beach last week announced plans to purchase a building near the Los Angeles River for use as a permanent homeless shelter with 85 beds. Mayor Rex Richardson said Long Beach leased the property in April as a temporary winter shelter, and community members asked the city to purchase it. (Kramon, 6/13)

Sacramento Bee: Aging Downtown Sacramento Hotel To Be Turned Into Housing
Another dilapidated downtown Sacramento single room occupancy hotel is set to undergo a major redevelopment. The Sacramento City Council Tuesday unanimously approved $3.5 million in mixed-income housing funds toward the project, to redevelop the Sequoia Hotel at the corner of 9th and K streets. (Clift, 6/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Mayor Breed Defends Controversial Move To Arrest Drug Users
Mayor London Breed fiercely defended her controversial policy to arrest and detain drug users to get them into treatment against criticism from Supervisor Dean Preston on Tuesday, calling him a “white man who’s talking about Black and brown people as if you’re the savior.” (Moench, 6/13)

Stat: ‘The Drug Bust Paradox’: Study Finds Opioid Deaths Rise After Arrests
Police drug busts are strongly associated with a large and sudden spike in overdose deaths, according to a new study. In the week following a major opioid bust, fatal overdoses in the same neighborhood in Indianapolis doubled, the analysis showed. Calls to 911 and the use of naloxone, the overdose-reversal medication, also spiked. (Facher, 6/13)

Stat: Teens Seeking Addiction Care Unlikely To Get Standard Medication
Adolescents who seek treatment for opioid addiction at an inpatient facility are more likely to be offered horseback riding than given full access to a common, highly effective addiction medication. According to a new research paper, just one out of every eight residential treatment facilities open to patients ages 16 or 17 offers full access to buprenorphine. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of adult treatment facilities offer the medication. (Facher, 6/13)

Orange County Register: OC Cities Continue To Wrestle With Irresponsible Addiction Recovery Homes, Grand Jury Finds 
There’s the noise and traffic and clouds of cigarette smoke; the constant parade of new faces before neighbors learn who the old ones were; the ejection of residents who’ve violated house rules or exhausted insurance coverage and are “curbed” with nowhere else to go. (We’ll soon be telling you about a young man in this situation who died behind a nearby gas station.)After wrestling with conflict from sober homes and addiction recovery facilities in residential neighborhoods for more than a decade, Orange County cities remain as torn as ever, a new grand jury report says. And the state of California only makes things worse by automatically assuming that every operator in the recovery sphere has fairy wings, a harp and a halo, while every city trying to set standards for these businesses is a discriminatory, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. (Sforza, 6/13)

Los Angeles Times: Counterfeit Pills Now Found In Pharmacies Across Mexico
Some of the pills looked just like antibiotics. Others were unlabeled white tablets. Several mimicked well-known American pills, and a few came in sealed bottles. They were all purchased in Mexico, at legitimate pharmacies from Tulum, at the country’s southeast tip, to Tijuana, at the northwest border with California. (Sheets and Blakinger, 6/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: COVID Leaves Millions Of Americans Still Without Smell And Taste
Millions of Americans who contracted COVID-19 have not fully regained their senses of smell and taste. According to a recent survey of nearly 30,000 adults conducted by researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and published in the medical journal The Laryngoscope, approximately 1 in 4 individuals infected with the virus during the early stages of the pandemic has yet to recover these crucial senses. (Vaziri, 6/13)

CIDRAP: Researchers Identify Type Of Long COVID With Persistent Inflammation
US researchers say they have discovered a subtype of long COVID characterized by persistent inflammation, a finding that could help identify dominant disease pathways of diagnostic or therapeutic value. ... The study authors noted that long COVID may be caused by persistent inflammation, unresolved tissue damage, or detailed clearance of viral protein or RNA but that the biologic differences these factors represent are not well understood. (Van Beusekom, 6/13)

The Washington Post: This Skin Rash Is Back After Almost Vanishing During The Pandemic 
Before the pandemic began, D.C. dermatologist Adam Friedman routinely treated patients with pityriasis rosea, a temporary but often unbearably itchy skin rash that can last several months. There are 170 cases of pityriasis rosea per 100,000 people each year, according to one study. It can affect people of all ages and races but predominantly afflicts those between the ages of 10 and 35, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. But as the pandemic worsened, curiously, the condition “all but disappeared” from his practice, said Friedman, chair of dermatology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. (Cimons, 6/13)

Roll Call: Republicans Grill Outgoing CDC Director As She Prepares To Exit 
During what’s likely to be her last appearance before skeptical congressional Republicans on Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky once again asked for more data and workforce authorities — and, once again, she was sharply dismissed. (Cohen, 6/13)

Federal Times: GOP Budget Bill Would Ban Abortions, Transgender Services At VA
Abortion procedures, transgender surgeries and LGBTQ Pride flags would all be banned at Veterans Affairs medical centers under a budget bill adopted by House Republicans on Tuesday. The spending plan — which advanced on a party-line vote out of the House Appropriations Committee — also calls for a record $320 billion in veterans program spending next fiscal year, matching the White House’s funding request released earlier this year. (Shane III, 3/13)

Politico: Tuberville Hold Scrambles Marines’ Plans For Top Officer's Retirement 
The Marine Corps could be without a Senate-confirmed leader in less than a month, thanks to a Republican senator’s blockade of hundreds of senior military promotions. ... Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, put a blanket hold on nominees this spring over the Pentagon’s new policy of reimbursing troops and their family members if they travel to receive an abortion. (Seligman, O'Brien and Gould, 6/13)

Military Times: VA Nurses Join Nationwide Protests Over Working Conditions
Nurses at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in California and Georgia took part in nationwide demonstrations June 13 demanding improvements for short-staffed medical facilities. Caregivers from the Jennifer Moreno VA Medical Center in San Diego and the Atlanta VA Medical Center joined peers from 16 other hospitals across the country to protest conditions they claim overburden medical personnel and compromise patient care. National Nurses United, the country’s largest union of registered nurses, organized the rally. (Moore-Carrillo, 6/13)

NPR: VA Hospitals Beat Out Private Facilities, Medicare Survey Shows
A nationwide Medicare survey released today found that veterans rated Veterans Affairs hospitals higher than private health care facilities in all 10 categories of patient satisfaction. The VA takes care of about 9 million veterans at 1,255 facilities — the nation's largest integrated health care system. Despite many widely publicized scandals, VA health care has been consistently rated as competitive with private care in dozens of peer-reviewed articles. (Lawrence, 6/14)

Military Times: No More Neck Or Hip Tape Test To Measure Body Fat, Army Declares
Army gym goers may soon see shorter lines to use neck exercise machines, as the service announced Monday that it will phase out the current system for measuring body fat by mid-2024. Don’t throw away your measuring tapes just yet — the Army is merely changing how it tapes soldiers to calculate their body fat. (Winkie, 6/13)

Sacramento Business Journal: UC Davis Health Administrator Brad Simmons Leaving For UW Medicine 
Brad Simmons, the senior-most administrator at UC Davis Medical Center, will be leaving to take a new job in Seattle later this summer. (Hamann, 6/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Doctor Fights Drugmaker's Halt To Research On Lifesaving Medicine
Diana Mansfield credits her life to a miracle drug. Since undergoing a kidney transplant at UCSF in 2001, Mansfield has received infusions of an immunosuppressant every two months that prevent her body from rejecting the organ. (Castro-Root, 6/13)

The Markup: Suicide Hotlines, Promising Anonymity, Send User Data To Facebook
Websites for mental health crisis resources across the country — which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives — have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook, The Markup has found. Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites. (Lecher and Keegan, 6/13)

CNN: People Who Are Gay, Lesbian Or Bi Have More Mental Health And Substance Use Problems, Survey Finds 
Despite increasing acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, at least in some circles, adults who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are more likely than those who identify as straight to have serious thoughts of suicide and mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and they are more likely to misuse substances like alcohol or drugs, according to a new US government report. (Christensen, 6/13)

Axios: Appellate Court Maintains Access To ACA Preventive Care Mandate
A federal appeals court on Tuesday maintained a freeze on a ruling that struck down the Affordable Care Act's mandate that employers and insurers fully cover preventive health services while the case continues to wind through the courts. (Gonzalez, 6/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Gun Sales Are Booming In This California County
“WARNING: Politically Incorrect Area,” reads a sign tacked on the wall of 29 Outdoor Gear, Jerry Kunzman’s gun shop in the small Napa County city of American Canyon. Packed with Glocks, Bergaras and the occasional SIG Sauer, the store offers guns for a range of firearm enthusiasts, from hunters to dads to off-duty cops, Kunzman says. Clients can get their guns repaired by Paul, the store’s master gunsmith, or get product advice from assistant manager Jesus Guerrero. Pictures of both President Biden and former President Donald Trump hang on the walls. (Neilson, 6/13)

CalMatters: CA Workers Say State Paychecks No Longer Pay Bills
When Tammy Rodriguez landed a job with the California Department of Motor Vehicles 27 years ago, she felt like she had “struck gold.” It was her first job, she said, and she felt secure knowing she was earning not just a salary, but a pension for later in life. Over the years she thought about looking for work at private companies to make more money, especially after she had a child. But she liked the other benefits of state work: the health care coverage, the flexibility of transferring departments when her family moved and the job security when she went on maternity leave. (Kuang, 6/14)

Axios: Here Are The States Where It's Costliest To Give Birth
Having a baby isn't cheap anywhere, but there are some states in the U.S. where it's far pricier to give birth than others, according to data provided first to Axios from FAIR Health. FAIR Health's new Cost of Giving Birth Tracker — which uses data from more than 41 billion private healthcare claim records — offers a glimpse at how much variability there is in the cost of one of the most common health care services. (Reed, 6/13)

The Hill: Who You Are, Where You Live Help Determine Your Chances Of Beating Cancer
About 2 million people in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and 600,000 will die from the disease, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates. But cancer is not equal opportunity. A wide range of factors plays a role in determining whether a person will get and potentially die from the disease, including their genetics and where they live. (O'Connell-Domenech, 6/13)