If You’re Worried About the Environment, Consider Being Composted When You Die

The idea of human composting — to help restore a forest or grow flowers — may be a little off-putting to some, but it has many advantages over traditional-but-toxic methods of burial and cremation. (Bernard J. Wolfson, 10/10 )

Brain-Eating Amoeba Still Detectable In Bishop Hot Spring: Recent water testing of a popular California hot springs destination called Hot Ditch in Bishop (Inyo County) reportedly found that the same brain-eating amoeba that killed an 8-year-old boy in 2018 remained present in the water. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Veterans Village Under Heavy Scrutiny After 5 Deaths: For the fifth time this year, a client at Veterans Village of San Diego’s campus has died. Despite a requirement to report all client deaths to a California oversight agency, Veterans Village hasn’t notified the Department of Health Care Services of any deaths that have occurred this month, inewsource reported Thursday. Read more from inewsource.

Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KHN's Morning Briefing. Note to readers: California Healthline's Daily Edition will not be published Monday, Oct. 10, in honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day . Look for it again in your inbox Tuesday. 

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area COVID Cases Level Off, California Numbers Hit A Plateau After a precipitous drop over the past two months, California’s COVID-19 trends have hit a plateau. The state reported an average of 3,336 cases a day as of Thursday, only a 5% decrease from the previous week’s numbers, according to health department data. (Vaziri, 10/6)

Times Of San Diego: New COVID-19 Cases In County Still Exceed 2,200, But Continue Weeks Of Decline  San Diego County public health officials on Thursday reported 2,284 new COVID-19 cases over the past week, along with seven more deaths. The count covers cases recorded over the seven-day period that ended Monday. (10/6)

The Hill: CDC To Stop Reporting Daily COVID-19 Cases, Moving To Weekly Reports  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will stop reporting daily COVID-19 cases later this month and switch to weekly reports after more than two years of near constant daily updates. In an update regarding its coronavirus data and surveillance, the CDC said it was transitioning from daily to weekly reports to allow for more “flexibility” and to reduce the burden on state and local governments. The change in case reporting will take place on Oct. 20. (Choi, 10/6)

CIDRAP: Omicron Infection More Effective Than Earlier Variants Against BA.4/BA.5 Reinfection  Infection with a pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant offered 35.5% protection against symptomatic Omicron BA.4 or BA.5 reinfection, while an Omicron infection was 76.2% protective, according to a Qatari test-negative, case-control study published yesterday in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 10/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Masking Recommendation For School Nurses’ Offices Quietly Dropped By CDC The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has changed its masking guidance for K-12 schools, updating a portion that previously said the agency “recommends masking at all times in healthcare settings, including school nurses’ offices, regardless of the current COVID-19 Community Level.” (Vaziri, 10/6)

Los Angeles Daily News: With Winter Ahead, LA County Public Health — And Sen. Alex Padilla — Urge Boosters As COVID-19 Variants Loom  U.S. Senator Alex Padilla on Thursday, Oct. 10, got his COVID-19 booster shot and flu shots, urging scores of residents in the region and state to do the same ahead of a winter season that officials say could see the reemergence of COVID-19 subvariants. (10/6)

Los Angeles Times: Doctors Uneasy About California Law Aimed At COVID Misinformation California doctors will soon be subject to disciplinary action if they give their patients information about COVID-19 that they know to be false or misleading. On its face, the new state law sounds like a clear blow to the forces that have fueled skepticism about life-saving vaccines, encouraged anxious people to trust discredited and dangerous drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and reduced face masks to symbols of political partisanship. The measure was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week and goes into effect on Jan. 1. (Purtill, 10/6)

FiercePharma: Pfizer, BioNTech Enlist Marvel's Avengers In COVID Booster Push Just like how the Avengers have repeatedly kept the world safe from Ultron, people need to protect themselves by updating their COVID-19 vaccination with the latest booster. That’s the message Pfizer and BioNTech are trying to get across in a new custom comic book partnered with Marvel. The companies unveiled the project Tuesday. (Liu, 10/6)

Fierce Healthcare: How Much Commercial Plans Could Save If COVID Vaccines Increase If 80% of eligible Americans got fully vaccinated between now and March 31, 2023, the medical cost savings would come to $34 billion for those who receive the treatment through commercial insurance plans, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. If the uptake of bivalent and other COVID-19 vaccines matched the uptake for influenza vaccinations, the medical cost savings would come to $27 billion for individuals in commercial insurance plans. (Diamond, 10/6)

Reuters: COVID Rebound After Pfizer Treatment Likely Due To Robust Immune Response, Study Finds A rebound of COVID-19 symptoms in some patients after taking Pfizer's antiviral Paxlovid may be related to a robust immune response rather than a weak one, U.S. government researchers reported on Thursday. They concluded that taking a longer course of the drug - beyond the recommended five days - was not required to reduce the risk of a recurrence of symptoms as some have suggested, based on an intensive investigation of rebound in eight patients at the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center. (Leo and Steenhuysen, 10/7)

CIDRAP: Report: Monkeypox Case Rates 5 Times Higher In Black Americans A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) based on Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data reveals that monkeypox case rates in the US disproportionately affect Black and Latino Americans, with Black Americans having case rates 5 times of those found among White peers (14.4 cases  vs. 2.6 per 100,000). (Soucheray, 10/6)

ABC News: Monkeypox Has Disproportionately Impacted Hispanic And Latino Men In US Since the early days of the monkeypox outbreak in the United States, Hispanic and Latino men may have been disproportionately affected. While data from the CDC is limited and fewer than 50% of cases include information about race/ethnicity, it indicates that there may be disparities for Hispanic and Latino Americans affected by monkeypox. (Kekatos, 10/7)

The Washington Post: Five Men Share The Personal And Economic Toll Of Having Monkeypox The virus is rarely deadly and only a few fatalities have been reported in the United States. But TikTok and Instagram are flush with firsthand accounts of agony and loneliness. Here are the stories of five men who contracted monkeypox, as told to reporter Fenit Nirappil. (Nirappil, 10/6)

NBC News: Are Pets At Risk Of Catching Monkeypox From Humans? The risk of people with monkeypox passing the virus to their pets is low, the authors of a new study that found no such transmissions in the United Kingdom have concluded. The study’s findings offer a broader perspective in the wake of two recently reported cases of apparent monkeypox transmission from humans to their pets, including a dog in France and a puppy in Brazil. (Ryan, 10/7)

Nature: The Monkeypox Virus Is Mutating. Are Scientists Worried? As researchers at the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul were sequencing samples of the monkeypox virus a few months ago, they made a surprising discovery. In one sample collected from an infected person, a large chunk of the virus’s genome was missing, and another chunk had moved to an entirely different spot in the sequence. (Kozlov, 10/5)

Politico: U.S. Will Divert Travelers Who Have Been To Uganda To 5 Airports As Ebola Outbreak Worsens  The Biden administration will reroute passengers coming to the U.S. who have been in Uganda to five designated airports for additional health screenings, the government said on Thursday, as an Ebola outbreak in the east African nation widens. All passengers, including U.S. citizens and residents, who have been in Uganda in the last 21 days will be flown to airports in New York, Newark, Atlanta, Chicago or Washington, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection will conduct the screening, according to a notification from the U.S. Embassy in Uganda. (Mahr and Pawlyk, 10/6)

AP: US To Begin Screening Travelers Coming From Uganda For Ebola Those passengers will have a “temperature check, risk assessment, visual symptom check, and contact information verification” conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Authorities will share that Information with local health departments at the travelers’ final destination. (Miller, 10/6)

Stat: Citing Ebola Outbreak, U.S. To Screen Travelers Arriving From Uganda Also Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health alert to providers and public health departments outlining the agency’s recommendations for case identification and testing for Ebola. It noted that no cases have been seen in the United States, but that the advisory was meant to serve “as a precaution and to remind clinicians about best practices” and “to raise awareness of this outbreak.” (Joseph, 10/6)

Sacramento Bee: California GOP Won’t Talk Abortion During Midterm Election  California Republicans are heading into the midterm elections with messages for voters on everything from inflation to crime and education to homelessness. But you’re less likely to hear anything about abortion. (Holden, 10/6)

Los Angeles Times: Your Guide To Proposition 1 On The 2022 California Midterm Ballot This is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that will explicitly protect a person’s right to an abortion in the state. The measure was placed on the November ballot by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected abortion rights nationwide. (10/6)

Los Angeles Times: Your Guide To Proposition 31 On The 2022 California Midterm Ballot If approved, Proposition 31 would ban the sale of most flavored tobacco products in stores and in vending machines. The ban was passed by the California Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 in an effort to stop a youth vaping crisis and weaken the industry’s influence in the state. But in 2021 the law was placed on hold after a referendum by the tobacco industry challenging the law qualified for the November 2022 ballot. (10/6)

KQED: Prop. 31: Should California Ban Flavored Tobacco Products? In 2020, California lawmakers passed SB 793, which banned the retail sale of flavored tobacco products that can be smoked, vaped, or eaten statewide. But shortly after that, tobacco companies worked to put Prop. 31 on the ballot, taking the issue directly to the voters. It asks California voters whether to uphold that 2020 ban, or do away with it. (Guevarra, McClurg, Esquinca and Montecillo, 10/7)

Los Angeles Times: Your Guide To Proposition 27 On The 2022 California Midterm Ballot Proposition 27 would allow licensed tribes and gambling companies, including FanDuel and DraftKings, to offer online sports betting — including on cellphones and other mobile devices. The gambling companies must be affiliated with a tribe. Both the tribes and gambling companies must pay 10% of the sports bets made every month to the state, minus expenses. (10/6)

Becker's Hospital Review: UCSF Physicians Avert Strike Members of the Committee of Interns and Residents have reached a tentative agreement with UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland (Calif.), averting a looming strike. The union, a local of the Service Employees International Union, represents more than 80 physicians at the hospital, according to an Oct. 6 news release shared with Becker's. UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland is part of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals and among the region's only safety-net hospitals. (Gooch, 10/6)

Sacramento Business Journal: Medical Office Building Owner Says No Plans For Apartment Conversion Despite a request for a fee estimate filed with the city earlier this week, the owner of a Sacramento medical office building damaged by fire said there are no plans to shift the site's use to apartments. (van der Meer, 10/6)

Sacramento Bee: UC Davis Stem Cell Trial Leads To Spina Bifida Breakthrough Diagnosed before birth with a spinal defect, three babies have kicked their legs, wiggled their toes and blown away their parents and a team of researchers at UC Davis Health who developed a novel approach to treat them. While still in the womb, each child was diagnosed with spina bifida, a condition that often leaves a section of a newborn’s spinal cord exposed and unprotected by the backbone. Babies born with the defect can have intellectual and physical disabilities that range from mild to severe, depending on how big of a hole they have in their spines, where it is and the impact on the spinal cord or nerves. (Anderson, 10/7)

Oaklandside: Stressed, Scared, Tired: 6 Oakland Students On School Safety After Rudsdale Shooting Last week’s shooting at Rudsdale High School that injured six people, including students, has sparked discussions about how to make Oakland students and school campuses safer and reignited questions about the role of police on campus, less than two years after Oakland’s school district decided to disband its police department. Former school security officers are now “culture and climate keepers,” who are charged with taking a more restorative, and less punitive, approach to campus safety. (McBride, 10/6)

The New York Times: Gun-Related Suicides And Killings Continued To Rise In 2021, C.D.C. Reports  Homicides and suicides involving guns, which soared in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, continued rising in 2021, reaching the highest rates in three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. Firearms caused 47,286 homicide and suicide deaths in 2021, up from 43,675 in 2020, according to the agency’s research, which is based on provisional data. Rates of gun-related homicide and suicide each rose by 8.3 percent last year. (Rabin, 10/6)

NBC News: Gun Deaths In 2021 Hit Highs Not Seen Since Early '90s, CDC Finds "We had hoped after a 35% increase in one year, that it would either level off or go down," said Thomas Simon, the lead author of the new study and the associate director for science in the CDC's division of violence prevention. "But instead, it continued to climb in 2021. And now the suicide rate also climbed." Simon said disparities in gun homicide rates among racial groups have widened.(Griffith, 10/6)

The New York Times: Can Smartphones Help Predict Suicide?  In March, Katelin Cruz left her latest psychiatric hospitalization with a familiar mix of feelings. She was, on the one hand, relieved to leave the ward, where aides took away her shoelaces and sometimes followed her into the shower to ensure that she would not harm herself. But her life on the outside was as unsettled as ever, she said in an interview, with a stack of unpaid bills and no permanent home. It was easy to slide back into suicidal thoughts. For fragile patients, the weeks after discharge from a psychiatric facility are a notoriously difficult period, with a suicide rate around 15 times the national rate, according to one study. (Barry, 9/30)

Scientific American: Do You 'Matter' To Others? The Answer Could Predict Your Mental Health  In South Carolina a grieving mother whose son died by suicide hands out stickers to young people. The sticker bears the words “Jackson Matters and So Do You.” To be important to others—to matter—has become more than just a truism. “You Matter” is the tagline of the National Suicide Prevention hotline. And the phrase “Black Lives Matter” calls attention to the exclusionary racism to which more than one in eight Americans is exposed. Over the past 30 years, but never more so than now, psychologists have formalized “mattering” into a psychological construct that uniquely predicts depression, suicidal thoughts or other mental ills. It also foretells physical resilience among the elderly. (Russo, 10/6)

If you are in need of help —

Dial 9-8-8 for 24/7 support from the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It's free and confidential.

The New York Times: Teenagers Keep Vaping Despite Crackdowns On E-Cigarettes  High school students resumed taking the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey in school this year and 14 percent of them reported using e-cigarettes, underscoring how an upstart industry is dodging regulators’ efforts to spare a generation from nicotine addiction. The number shows a slight change from 11 percent last year, but researchers cautioned against drawing comparisons to 2021’s survey, which was conducted differently because it took place when many schools were closed during the pandemic. The latest results were released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. (Jewett, 10/6)

USA Today: Millions Of Teens Still Vape, Use Flavored E-Cigarettes, Survey Finds The Food and Drug Administration banned flavored vaping products derived from tobacco, but underage users have increasingly turned to synthetic nicotine products, often disposable and sold in flavors favored by underage vapers. The survey, conducted Jan.18 through May 31, reported 85% of teen vapers said they used flavored e-cigarettes and more than half used disposable e-cigarettes. Unlike in 2019 when the Silicon Valley-based JUUL was the most recognizable brand, teens reported a wide variety of favored brands. (Alltucker, 10/6)

Axios: More Than 2.5 Million Youth Used E-Cigarettes In 2022, Study Says About 85% of those who reported e-cigarette usage said they used flavored products, with fruit flavors being the most popular variety, followed by preferences for candy or dessert flavors or mint. A majority used disposable e-cigarettes, and a quarter preferred refillable or prefilled cartridges or pods, the survey found. (Saric, 10/6)

AP: Biden Pardons Thousands For 'Simple Possession' Of Marijuana President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, as his administration takes a dramatic step toward decriminalizing the drug and addressing charging practices that disproportionately impact people of color. Biden’s move also covers thousands convicted of the crime in the District of Columbia. He is also calling on governors to issue similar pardons for those convicted of state marijuana offenses, which reflect the vast majority of marijuana possession cases. (Miller and Megerian, 10/7)

Sacramento Bee: President Biden’s Marijuana Orders Will Impact CA, Expert Says  California law already provides for the automatic review and expungement of many marijuana convictions. But Biden’s order provides political cover for Gov. Gavin Newsom to go even further, said Hirsh Jain, a cannabis industry consultant and board member for California NORML, which works to reform California cannabis laws. “California has the green light at the state level to issue more pardons,” Jain said. (Sheeler, 10/6)

The Hill: Advocates Cheer Biden Marijuana Decision, Call For Legalization Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement that she is “thrilled” with Thursday’s news, adding that Biden should fully deschedule marijuana rather than reschedule it to a lower drug classification. “Keeping marijuana on the federal drug schedule will mean people will continue to face criminal charges for marijuana,” she said. “It also means that research will continue to be inhibited and state-level markets will be at odds with federal law.” (Evers-Hillstrom, 10/6)

San Francisco Chronicle: Democratic Leaders Praise Biden’s Pardon Of Marijuana Users, But The President Can Do More, They Say “This is a major step, a historic step,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. “No one should be in prison for possessing a substance that is legal in some form in the majority of states.” (Egelko, 10/6)

The Atlantic: Joe Biden's Midterm Marijuana Gambit Joe Biden is an unlikely stoner hero. Three of his four Baby Boomer predecessors in the Oval Office had explored marijuana in their youth, but by the time they became president, they all disdained the stuff. But Biden, like Donald Trump, was a straight-edge who says he never touched marijuana and was skeptical of any liberalization of drug laws throughout his long career in politics. (Graham, 10/6)

Los Angeles Times: Suicide Is Complicated. So Is Prevention I was 11 years old when I thought about killing myself for the first time. Since then, I’ve struggled for more than a decade to overcome  suicidal ideations on a regular basis. (Madalyn Amato, 10/2)

East Bay Times: Stop Traumatizing Children With Active Shooter Drills Conducting active-shooter drills at schools allows us to believe that we are doing something to keep our children safe. But there is no actual evidence that these drills are effective at increasing safety during an active-shooter event. (Katherin A. Wilkinson, 10/4)

Los Angeles Daily News: Newsom’s CARE Courts: Why Did This Take So Long?  Anyone who has volunteered at homeless shelters, handing out bananas, sleeping bags and more to unhoused individuals bused in from surrounding areas, knows the CARE courts due to begin operating early next year in seven California counties are long overdue. (Thomas D. Elias, 10/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: No, There’s No Tech Hack Around Discrimination Would you pay someone to break your legs? Many guys are reportedly doing just that. Leg lengthening is a procedure that entails breaking both femurs in order to insert adjustable metal nails in the center of the bones. (Justin Ray, 10/4)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Vote Yes On Proposition 1 To Firmly Preserve Californians' Reproductive Rights California voters can take a stand on the Nov. 8 ballot by approving Proposition 1 and installing existing protections for abortion and contraception in state law directly into the California Constitution. (10/5)

San Diego Union-Tribune: No On California Prop. 29. It Could Kill Dialysis Patients. Since California voters embraced direct democracy in 1911, few, if any, ballot measures have abused the system as much as the initiatives targeting dialysis clinic rules put before voters after signature-gathering campaigns by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022. (10/6)

The Bakersfield Californian: Community Voices: Heart Care In Kern  In the last couple of decades, Bakersfield Heart Hospital has repeatedly ranked in the nation's top 10 percent in cardiac care. We have brought the leading technologies to the community and delivered results that favorably compete with the best in the world. (Dr. Brij Bhambi, 10/6)

The Bakersfield Californian: Community Voices: The Importance Of The Flu Vaccine Vaccination provides an important protection from influenza illness and potential complications, which include bacterial pneumonia, worsening of any chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and heart failure as well as respiratory failure and encephalitis, which could be fatal. (Dr. Gerard Roque David, 10/4)

Health Care Survey The 2022 CHCF California Health Policy Survey

This recent statewide survey found that one in four Californians had trouble paying a medical bill in the last 12 months. The survey also captures Californians' health care priorities for the governor and legislature to address.

Listening to Black Californians Black Californians on Racism and Health Care

CHCF commissioned interviews with 100 Black Californians to understand their views on health and well-being, their perceptions of discrimination and bias in the health care system, and their views on what a quality health care system looks like.

Mental Health Mental Health in California

Using the most recent data available, CHCF’s 2022 Almanac provides an overview of mental health statewide: disease prevalence, suicide rates, supply and use of treatment providers, and mental health in the criminal justice system.

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