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breaking health news & updates
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Coronavirus In California Keeps Rising: Wastewater Levels Worse Than Last Summer |
Coronavirus levels in California’s wastewater now exceed last summer’s peak, an indication of the rapid spread of the super-contagious new FLiRT strains.
California has “very high” coronavirus levels in its wastewater — one of 21 states in that category, up from seven the prior week, according to estimates published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That means about 155 million people — nearly half of America’s population — live in areas with “very high” coronavirus levels in sewage. Besides California, the other states with “very high” levels are Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. Washington, D.C., is also in that category. LA Times
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“If you call — I don’t know — 20 or 30 friends, you’re very, very likely to find a bunch of them actually have COVID, or have had COVID recently, or are starting to be symptomatic.”
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a COVID Expert and Chief of Research and Development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri
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Why Millions Are Trying FDA-Authorized Alternatives To Big Pharma’s Weight Loss Drugs
Pharmacist Mark Mikhael has lost 50 pounds over the past 12 months. He no longer has diabetes and finds himself “at my ideal body weight,” with his cholesterol below 200 for the first time in 20 years. “I feel fantastic,” he said.
Like millions of others, Mikhael credits the new class of weight loss drugs. But he isn’t using brand-name Wegovy or Zepbound. Mikhael, CEO of Orlando, Florida-based Olympia Pharmaceuticals, has been getting by with his own supply: injecting himself with copies of the drugs formulated by his company.
He’s far from alone. Mikhael and other industry officials estimate that several large compounding pharmacies like his are provisioning up to 2 million American patients with regular doses of semaglutide, the scientific name for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, Ozempic, and Rybelsus formulations, or tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro.
The drug-making behemoths fiercely oppose that compounding business. Novo Nordisk and Lilly lump the compounders together with internet cowboys and unregulated medical spas peddling bogus semaglutide, and have high-powered legal teams trying to stop them. KFF Health News Read more
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West Nile Virus-Positive Mosquitoes Found In San Jose; Santa Clara County To Handle It With Pesticide Tonight
Santa Clara County officials will be spraying pesticide in parts of San Jose and unincorporated Santa Clara County tonight after finding West Nile virus-positive mosquitoes in the area. People living in ZIP codes 95127 and 95140 east of Alum Rock and centered around Calco Creek Drive may see a truck rolling around the area around 10 p.m., spraying pesticide to reduce adult mosquito populations as long as the weather permits. The treatment will last between two to four hours. This is the first West Nile virus treatment in the county this year. This kind of treatment has been used regularly since 2003 to reduce mosquito populations with West Nile virus. According to the county, adult mosquitoes are the primary carriers of vector-borne viruses that cause illnesses in humans. The adult-mosquito-control treatments are meant to reduce the mosquito population in the area and decrease the risk of a West Nile virus infection in humans. Mercury News Read more
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South Bay Hospital Reverses Course On Closing Trauma Center, To Remain Open With Reduced Services
Regional Medical Center, which operates one of just three adult trauma centers in Santa Clara County, has reversed course on its previous plans to close its trauma centeron Aug. 12, and will instead remain open — but with fewer services than before. The East San Jose hospital will downgrade its trauma center from Level II to Level III, which means it will no longer provide certain cardiac surgical services. It will also reduce its program that treats the most severe heart attacks, known as STEMI (ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction), but not end the program altogether as previously planned, by paring back its current 24-hour catheterization lab to daytime hours only. The hospital, which treats about a quarter of the county’s trauma patients, will also scale back its stroke services from comprehensive to primary services, which generally means less specialized care. Emergency services will remain open and add 20 beds by 2025.
SF Chronicle Read more
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UCSF Doctor Leads Research On Treatment For Rare Childhood Strokes
Gabby Lopes doesn’t remember much about that day, two weeks before her 13th birthday, other than she’d just finished running a lap in her P.E. class at San Leandro’s John Muir Middle School and was about to do a pushup when she passed out. She awoke to a crowd standing over her, including her P.E. teacher and a vice principal. She recalls someone told a “dad joke” and that she laughed — only to discover the right side of her face was numb. She tried to lift herself up but couldn’t move the right side of her body. “I thought, ‘That was weird,’ ” said Gabby, now 14, of that day on Sept. 19, 2022. “It was really confusing. I felt like I was in a dream.” She initially thought she was dehydrated, since it was a hot day and she hadn’t drunk much water. Her mother, Sara Lopes, who rushed to her daughter’s side and rode with her in the ambulance to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, thought the same. But medical scans soon revealed Gabby, then a healthy and active eighth-grader who’d played soccer since she was 6 and showed no signs of illness, had suffered a stroke — an occurrence so commonly associated with older adults that many people don’t know it can happen in children. SF Chronicle Read more
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Billionaire Tech Exec Makes Second Huge Contribution To S.F. Cancer Research Institute
The Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy, the San Francisco nonprofit founded by former Napster and Facebook executive Sean Parker, has received $125 million that it will distribute over the next five years to fund cancer research, the organization announced Thursday. The vast majority of the contribution is from billionaire Parker and his wife, Alexandra, though other philanthropists contributed as well. It is the second largest tranche of funding the institute has received since it was created in 2016 with $250 million from the Parker Foundation — at that time the single largest donation to cancer immunotherapy research. Since then, the institute — which funds research collaborations among top cancer centers in the United States, including UCSF and Stanford — has helped back 440 research projects and clinical trials and invested in 17 biotech startups that develop immunotherapies. SF Chronicle Read more
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Hayward's Community Resources for Independent Living Hosting ADA Anniversary Disability Fair On Friday
Join Community Resources for Independent Living (CRIL) for the 34th ADA Anniversary Disability Resource Fair at CRIL Hayward, located at 439 A Street, on Friday, July 26, 2024, from 10 a.m. to 2 pm. Vendors include: Easy Does It (for wheelchair repair), La Familia (flu and COVID-19 vaccines), 2-1-1 (information about community resources) and many more.
Get details
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Why COVID Is Surging This Summer — And What Health Experts Say Has Changed
President Biden’s positive test for COVID-19 on Wednesday is a sign of a broader trend: COVID cases are on the rise this summer, gauged by rising wastewater measures and an increase in hospitalizations. Many Americans have likely experienced the uptick firsthand over the past few weeks. They’ve either tested positive themselves or know someone else chagrined to see those two lines bloom on a home test. Even as SARS-CoV-2 has joined the ranks of the respiratory viruses that will continue circulating and causing infections, a spike in cases like this summer’s still causes disruptions in people’s lives — as well as some confusion over issues like tracking down tests, the best time to get vaccine boosters, and the latest advice on managing the infection. One key message from public health experts - Despite the increase in cases, the protection people have built up thanks to rounds of vaccination and prior infections is still sparing the vast majority of people from severe illness. STAT Read more
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Vaccination Slashes Risk Of Long COVID, Says Large Study Tracing Cases Through Delta And Omicron Variants
Vaccination lowers the chance of developing long COVID, according to a large new study that also found that the risk of serious complications has diminished but not disappeared as new coronavirus variants emerged. The study, published last Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared the health records of more than 440,000 Veterans Affairs patients who were infected with COVID-19 with records of more than 4 million uninfected people. The analysis found that cases of long COVID — also called PASC (post-acute sequelae of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) — fell among all participants during the Delta and Omicron eras of the pandemic, but dropped almost twice as much for vaccinated people when the Omicron variant dominated cases. STAT Read more
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Long COVID Has Affected Millions. Here's What Scientists Now Know
Since 2020, the condition known as long COVID-19 has become a widespread disability affecting the health and quality of life of millions of people across the globe and costing economies billions of dollars in reduced productivity of employees and an overall drop in the work force. The intense scientific effort that long COVID sparked has resulted in more than 24,000 scientific publications, making it the most researched health condition in any four years of recorded human history. Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that limits people's ability to work, and conditions such as heart failure and diabetes, which are known to last a lifetime. CBS News Read more
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State/National/International News | | |
"Long-Duration" Heat Wave Again Cooking California, Raising Health And Wildfire Concerns
Another bout of prolonged heat has kicked off across California and much of the West, expected to again bring several days of triple-digit temperatures to most inland areas. July’s second major heat wave isn’t forecast to be as extreme as the last event, which set several all-time records for high temperatures. Nevertheless, the National Weather Service predicted that it will be a “long-duration heat wave,” which creates uniquely dangerous conditions — especially when temperatures barely drop at night. “Heat is cumulative over multiple days,” said David Gomberg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “It starts to impact more people the longer the duration — and this has that going for it.” The next few days of extreme heat could cap a potentially historic month when it comes to hot temperatures. “Given what has already transpired, and the forecast for the next week or so, it’s quite likely that much of California and the Southwest will end up experiencing their hottest July on record,” UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain wrote in a blog post this weekend. LA Times Read more
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Rescue From Above: How Drones May Narrow Emergency Response Times
The drones are coming. Starting in September, if someone in Clemmons, North Carolina, calls 911 to report a cardiac arrest, the first responder on the scene may be a drone carrying an automated external defibrillator, or AED. "The idea is for the drone to get there several minutes before first responders,” such as an emergency medical technician or an ambulance, said Daniel Crews, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office in Forsyth County, where Clemmons is located. The sheriff’s office is partnering on the project with local emergency services, the Clinical Research Institute at Duke University, and the drone consulting firm Hovecon. “The ultimate goal is to save lives and improve life expectancy for someone experiencing a cardiac episode,” Crews said. The Forsyth County program is one of a growing number of efforts by public safety and health care organizations across the country to use drones to speed up lifesaving treatment in situations in which every second counts. KFF Health News Read more
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These Are The States That Rank Highest And Lowest For Women’s Health In New Report - California Ranks 11th
Women in the United States face a growing number of threats to their health and well-being, a new report says, and there are vast disparities from state to state. In their inaugural state-by-state analysis on women’s health, researchers at the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on health issues, collected data on health care quality, outcomes and access for women in the US. The data came from several sources, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the researchers evaluated states on 32 specific metrics, scoring them relative to each other. The report, released Thursday, reveals that states in the Northeast scored highest. Massachusetts came out on top as “the best-performing health system for women overall,” with Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire rounding out the top five. California ranks 11th. CNN Read more
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Some Seniors Readily Step Back. Some Never Will
Beth Bergmans liked working as a project manager for an online university based in Minnesota. “We are offering opportunities for people to advance in life — that brought some satisfaction,” she said. “And the people I work with are awesome.” Ms. Bergmans, 63, planned to stay on the job for two years, until she qualified for Medicare. But in recent months, something had shifted, subtly. In her fast-paced workplace, she began to find it harder to recall the details of recent meetings, to retrieve words and to filter out distractions. She took short breaks at her desk to recharge. “You find ways to adapt,” she said. “You use Post-it notes and whiteboards, and you spend more time prepping before a meeting.” Nobody complained or even seemed to notice, but Ms. Bergmans worried. NY Times Read more
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A Discontinued Asthma Medication Has Patients Scrambling, Some To The ER
When Jacqueline Vakil needed a refill for Flovent, her 4-year-old son’s asthma medicine, she couldn’t get it. The drugmaker GSK had stopped making the popular inhaler, back in January.
To make matters worse, Vakil’s insurance provider wouldn’t cover the alternative drug their doctor suggested. “It got to the point that I was on the phone constantly with our doctor to try to find a substitute,” Vakil says. All the while, her son James was up at night coughing. She tried Vicks VapoRub, a humidifier, and steam from a hot shower to help soothe his deep cough. "He couldn't sleep at night with the cough,” she says. “He would go to school and his school would tell me that he's having a constant cough there as well." NPR Read more
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Energy Drinks Are Everywhere. How Dangerous Are They?
If you believe the ads, energy drinks turn ordinary schnooks like you and me into lean, mean, git-her-done machines. They promise to give you wings, unleash the beast, make you the boss of time, and enable the crushing of your enemies.
No wonder sales have boomed in recent years, growing by 73 percent from 2018 to 2023. Nearly half of consumers drink them multiple times a week. In addition to the offerings at retail and convenience stores, chains like Starbucks, Dunkin, and Caribou Coffee are adding energy drinks to their menus. In the next five years, energy drink sales are on track to reach $30 billion in the U.S. The vast majority of the people who drink energy drinks — mostly teens and men aged 18 to 34 — don’t die as a result. Occasionally, though, some do. VOX Read more
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Oakland Sweeps Beach Encampment Where Unhoused Residents Sued To Stay Put
The city of Oakland on Tuesday began to sweep a small community of unhoused people who call a tiny beach near the Bay Bridge home, according to an attorney representing the residents in a federal lawsuit. Most of the 12 residents of the Interstate 80 toll plaza camp, many of whom have disabilities, plan to stick together as they move on to another roadside about three miles away. “A lot of them are very sad,” said Andrea Henson, an attorney for the encampment residents who visited Tuesday morning as homeless advocates arrived with UHauls and police stood by to oversee the city sweep. “They’re scared, of course. They’re concerned about their safety, especially the women who have children. They were very happy that the community decided to stay together because they do provide protection and assistance to one another that, had they been isolated, they wouldn’t have.” KQED Read more
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Mayor Breed Says "Very Aggressive" Sweep Of S.F. Homeless Encampments Will Launch In August
Mayor London Breed said that San Francisco will launch a “very aggressive” crackdown on homeless encampments in the city next month. The mayor’s comments — made Thursday during an election debate hosted by the firefighters union — come about three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court granted cities broad power to evict unhoused people from encampments. “We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments which may even include criminal penalties,” Breed said at Thursday’s debate. “The problem is not going to be solved by building more housing,” Breed added. “Thank goodness for the Supreme Court decision.” Breed said the city has had to move from a compassionate approach to one focused on accountability. Long-term issues will not be solved by “just building housing and shelter,” she added. She said the city would start the sweeps in August because it needs time to retrain workers to follow the new legal guidance. SF Chronicle Read more
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California Passed A Law To Fix Unsafe Homeless Shelters. Cities And Counties Are Ignoring It
Now that the Supreme Court has granted cities more power to ban sleeping outside, homeless Californians face a crucial decision: Try to get into a shelter, or risk going to jail. Those able to find a shelter bed will step into a world rife with reports of violence, theft, health hazards — and a lack of accountability. Public records obtained by CalMatters show that most cities and counties have seemingly ignored a recent state law that aimed to reform dangerous conditions in shelters. In 2021, following earlier reports of maggots, flooding and sexual harassment in shelters, the state Legislature created a new system requiring local governments to inspect the facilities after complaints and file annual reports on shelter conditions, including plans to fix safety and building code violations. CalMatters Read more
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California Forges Ahead With Social Media Rules Despite Legal Barriers
California lawmakers are pursuing legislation aimed at protecting children from the dangers of social media, one of many efforts around the country to confront what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and other public health experts say is a mental health emergency among young people. But California’s efforts, like those in other states, will likely face the same legal challenges that have thwarted previous legislative attempts to regulate social media. The tech industry has argued successfully that imposing rules regulating how social media operate and how people can use the online services violates the free speech rights of the companies and their customers. California Healthline Read more
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Stressed About Politics? Here Are 5 Ways To Take Care Of Your Mental Health
The presidential election is taking a toll on the mental health of Americans. And that's according to recent surveys conducted before the attempt on one candidate's life and widespread calls for another to drop out of the race. In a poll by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents said they're feeling anxious about the election. Another poll by Myriad Genetics found that nearly 40% said they are feeling anxious and/or depressed about the election season, and a similar share said they are "checked out" by the amount of news and social media attention on politics and the upcoming election. Psychologists say it's normal for people to feel heightened negative emotions during this time. "There's a range of emotions that people experience during this time leading up to elections that can go from fear to anger to feeling stressed out to feeling extremely sad and fearful of the future," says psychologist Krystal Lewis at the National Institute of Mental Health. "Those emotions are all valid, and it's OK to feel those emotions." NPR Read more
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Moving In Childhood Contributes To Depression, Study Finds
In recent decades, mental health providers began screening for “adverse childhood experiences” — generally defined as abuse, neglect, violence, family dissolution and poverty — as risk factors for later disorders. But what if other things are just as damaging? Researchers who conducted a large study of adults in Denmark, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found something they had not expected: Adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in a community. In fact, the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly greater than the risk of living in a poor neighborhood, said Clive Sabel, a professor at the University of Plymouth and the paper’s lead author. NY Times Read more
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Fentanyl Crisis/Drug Trends | | |
S.F. Nonprofits Give Foil And Pipes To Fentanyl Users. Critics Say It’s Making Drug Crisis Worse
Glide Foundation’s center in the Tenderloin helps keep Angelina Pacheco fed and warm, supplying her with hot meals and hand warmers. She appreciates the friendly staff and the fact that the location feels like it’s right in her backyard. Another reason the 41-year-old returns to the nonprofit on a regular basis is to get free pieces of aluminum foil that she uses to smoke fentanyl. “It’s better quality,” she said of the foil Glide hands out, as she ate a doughnut in front of her tent across the street from the center. “It’s heavy duty.” Handing out foil and other smoking equipment, such as straws and glass pipes, has been a part of harm reduction strategies for city-funded nonprofits in San Francisco for a few years — though officials say the city does not provide the equipment or explicitly fund the purchases. Health experts say that giving out equipment to users, whether it’s foil or clean needles for injection, is an important part of keeping users safe and getting them connected to long-term treatment. SF Chronicle Read more
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Opioid Prevention Education Coming To Sonoma County Schools This Fall
Sonoma County teachers, staff and students this fall will learn more about the dangers of opioids and how to assist in overdose prevention following a state mandate passed last year. The Sonoma County Office of Education will develop updated guidelines about fentanyl awareness, overdose and prevention for middle and high schools to be added to existing safety for local school districts, said Eric Wittmershaus, Sonoma County Office of Education spokesperson. The Sonoma County Department of Health Services also is working to expand fentanyl prevention and opioid education in schools through the IMPACT program managed by their partner, Panaptic, according to county spokesperson Sheri Cardo. Panaptic, a Sonoma-based organization, produces evidence-based substance abuse prevention curriculum through engaging youth with compassion. Through its Sonoma County Prevention Partnership, the health department has collaborated with Panaptic since 2019 and currently serves seven campuses with plans to expand annually, Cardo said. Press Democrat Read more
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Could This Van Help People Quit Fentanyl?
Before he started taking methadone, Vinny Parisi had overdosed 16 times from using street drugs, including fentanyl. Eating out of garbage cans and sleeping under a bridge in Harlem, he finally hit bottom, he said. Now, Mr. Parisi goes every weekday morning to an R.V.-size white van parked at a Days Inn in the South Bronx. Within a few minutes, he drinks a bright pink fluid — a dose of methadone — saving him the hours of commuting and waiting it often takes to visit a brick-and-mortar clinic to get the drug. “This definitely works, I’m living proof,” Mr. Parisi said on a recent Tuesday outside the van, where he was waiting with about a dozen other men from his residential drug treatment program. He is only 30 years old, but has been in and out of treatment programs since age 15, after starting to abuse pain pills on Staten Island. NY Times Read more
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Serious Maternal Complications Linked With Use Of Marijuana Before And Early In Pregnancy, Study Says
More and more people are using marijuana before or during pregnancy to ease nausea, pain, stress and help with sleep. In fact, research found that use has more than doubled in the last two decades. Marijuana use in pregnancy has been linked to such adverse outcomes for the baby as lower birthweight, preterm birth and higher admission rates to neonatal intensive care units. What about the potential danger to the mother if she uses cannabis before or during early pregnancy? According to a new study, the news there is alarming as well. There’s an increased risk of serious, potentially life-threatening maternal complications such as gestational hypertension and preeclampsia, which are both disorders of high blood pressure. “Pregnant individuals who used versus did not use cannabis during early pregnancy had a 17% greater risk of gestational hypertension (and) an 8% greater risk of preeclampsia,” said lead study author Kelly Young-Wolff, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Pleasanton, California. CNN Read more
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Too Many Pills? How To Talk To Your Doctor About Reviewing What’s Needed
Swallowing a handful of pills is a daily ritual for many people, from young adults coping with anxiety to older adults managing chronic conditions. Overall, 13% of people in the U.S. take five or more prescription drugs. For those 65 and older, that number is 42%. If you’re taking multiple meds, it’s smart to be aware of potential problems. One pill can lead to a side effect, leading to another pill and another side effect in what experts call a “prescribing cascade.” Some drugs can cause harm if taken for years. Others stop working or interact badly with a new drug. A drug tolerated well at first can cause side effects later, leading to cognitive decline and injuries from falls. AP Read more
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About Eden Health District | | |
The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Chair Pam Russo, Vice Chair Ed Hernandez, Secretary/Treasurer Roxann Lewis, Mariellen Faria and Surlene Grant. The Chief Executive Officer is Mark Friedman.
The Eden Health District is committed to ensuring that policy makers and community members receive accurate and timely information to help make the best policy and personal choices to meet and overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other health issues.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Lisa Mahoney.
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