State Highlights: ‘Suicide Watch’ Isolation In Overcrowded California Jail Actually Caused Increase In Deaths; Texas Failed To Improve Abusive Foster Care System, Judge Says

ProPublica/Sacramento Bee: A Jail Increased Extreme Isolation To Stop Suicides. More People Killed Themselves.
Each year, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office sends hundreds of people into this kind of suicide watch isolation. Inmates awaiting trial spend weeks and sometimes months in solitary, according to state and county records. When those cells fill up, deputies place people into “overflow” areas, rooms with nothing more than four rubberized walls and a grate in the floor for bodily fluids. They receive no mental health treatment, only a yoga mat to rest on. Kern County sheriff’s officials say they turned to isolation rooms to help prevent deaths after a spate of jail suicides that started in 2011. This wasn’t what state lawmakers envisioned when they undertook a sweeping criminal justice overhaul nearly a decade ago to alleviate what the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the “cruel and unusual” conditions for people in overcrowded state prisons. (Pohl and Gabrielson, 11/5)

Texas Tribune: Federal Judge Hammers Texas Officials Over Failures In Foster Care System
Nearly four years after a federal judge first ruled that Texas violated foster children’s civil rights by placing them in a system where rape and over-medication were the norm, it’s high time for the state to stop dragging its feet and start making changes, that same federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Failure to do so could cost the state up to $100,000 per day under a new ruling from U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack, who found the state in contempt of court for failing to comply with some of her earlier orders. (Walters, 11/5)

KCUR: Missouri Senate Committee Holds First Meeting To Address Gun Violence 
A Missouri Senate committee heard several hours of testimony on Monday regarding gun violence throughout the state, with possible solutions including more money for gang intervention and better retention of police officers. Witnesses at the hearing were invited by one of the seven senators on the newly formed Interim Committee on Public Safety. They included police, prosecutors and research analysts. (Driscoll, 11/5)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: New Fisher House Will Give Veterans' Families A Free Place To Stay In New Orleans During Treatment 
Officials broke ground Tuesday on Fisher House of Southern Louisiana, marking the start of construction on a home away from home for veterans receiving treatment at the New Orleans VA Medical Center. "Military service is part of the culture here. Having a Fisher House is vital because it serves the unique culture of Louisiana," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, a New Orleans native who made the trip from Washington, D.C., to lead the groundbreaking ceremony. (Woodruff, 11/5)

Columbus Dispatch: Combatting Childhood Lead Poisoning Focus Of Roundtable Discussion 
Columbus Public Health Commissioner Mysheika Roberts and Gov. Mike DeWine hosted a roundtable discussion on childhood lead poisoning Tuesday in Columbus. Among community efforts are initiatives to increase screenings at pre-K centers, inspect units that receive rental assistance from the shelter system and rehabilitate homes that test positive for lead. Columbus’ top health official says an expanded statewide focus on preventing childhood lead poisoning will allow the community to provide additional treatment for affected youth, remediation of homes with deteriorating lead paint and housing assistance for displaced families. (Viviano, 11/5)

Boston Globe: Toxic Chemicals Can Be Dumped Into Merrimack River, Federal And State Officials Say
Federal and state environmental officials have renewed a controversial permit allowing a New Hampshire landfill to send as much as 100,000 gallons a day of polluted runoff to a Lowell treatment plant that empties into the Merrimack River, a source of drinking water to more than a half-million people. Regulators made the decision in September even though the owner of the Turnkey Landfill acknowledged this year that polluted water drained from its facility in Rochester contains exorbitant amounts of highly toxic chemicals known as PFAS, which have been linked to kidney cancer, low infant birth weights, and other diseases. (Abel, 11/5)

San Francisco Chronicle: California DMV Improperly Shared Social Security Info For Thousands Of People
The California Department of Motor Vehicles granted other state and federal agencies improper access to Social Security information about thousands of its customers, the department said Tuesday. At least seven agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, received permission to review driver’s license records they were not legally entitled to over the past four years, DMV spokeswoman Anita Gore said. (Koseff, 11/5)

North Carolina Health News: To Help Those In Crisis, Program Uses Peers
With an emphasis on community inclusion and peer support, GreenTree’s model of support marks a shift toward “mental health recovery” rather than the usual model of using medications to adjust brain chemistry and manage symptoms, said Laurie Coker, director of GreenTree. ...In addition to promoting self-expression, the center’s PhotoVoice project measured the level of community participation of its eight subjects, said Chinyu Wu, a professor at Winston-Salem State University who ran the study. The participants received point-and-shoot digital cameras and three photo assignments “to voice their experiences [and] to share their worldview,” Wu said. At feedback meetings, the participants discussed how the photos touched on their community, work, identity, spirituality and family. (Duong, 11/6)

MPR: State Developing Report Card For Assisted Living Facilities
The state of Minnesota wants to create a new report card system that rates assisted living facilities across key metrics, much like the system for nursing homes. The report card came out of a series of new regulations and oversights for the assisted living industry passed by the state legislature last session. (Cox, 11/5)

Los Angeles Times: California Fire Season Likely To Last Through December, With No Rain In Sight
The sun was beginning to set on Halloween when a small fire began to glow on a hillside near Santa Paula. Within seconds — fanned by the most potent Santa Ana winds of the season — the blaze roared to life with immense speed, chewing through thousands of acres of bone-dry brush and eventually consuming homes. Devastating fire weather that ushered in a flurry of blazes across the state last month helped the Maria fire, which charred nearly 10,000 acres in four days, earn the title of this year’s largest Southern California wildfire. (Fry and Rong-Gong, 11/5)

WABE: Atlanta Researcher Looks To Trees To Help Ease Highway Air Pollution
In addition to greenhouse gases that cause climate change, car and truck emissions have been linked to heart and lung problems. So a Georgia State University public health professor is studying how effectively trees can help filter out some of that pollution. (Samuel, 11/5)

Kansas City Star: Sharice Davids Urges Kansas GOP To Speak Out On LGBTQ Rights
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids urged her Kansas GOP colleagues Tuesday to speak out against a Trump administration policy that will enable faith-based adoption services to turn away same-sex couples. They won’t be heeding her advice. (Lowry, 11/5)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: State To Require Greater Transparency For Regional EMS Councils
Georgians would get better information on the time it takes an ambulance to arrive on the scene of an emergency, as a result of a proposal aimed at improving the quality of emergency medical services in Georgia. Set for adoption by Dec. 9, the proposal demands that regional EMS councils adhere to the state open meetings law and that council members disclose potential conflicts of interest. (Berard, 11/5)

Houston Chronicle: Montgomery County Doctors Charged In Overdose Deaths Of 8 Patients
Four Montgomery County doctors have been taken into custody and are facing felony charges as a result of an investigation into their medical practices. Authorities are saying three of the doctors prescribed drugs to eight patients who suffered overdose deaths, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. Doctors Emad Bishai, Miguel Flores and Fadi Ghanem are each facing charges for committing unprofessional or dishonorable conduct by prescribing to a person they knew or should have known was an abuser of controlled substances, a third-degree felony, and of prescribing without a medical purpose, a state jail felony. (Gonzalez, 11/5)

California Healthline: California Air Quality: Mapping The Progress
Ed Avol grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, but he rarely caught a glimpse of the rolling green contours and snowy peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains just east of the city. More often than not, they were obscured by the low-hanging gauze of smog that cloaked the L.A. basin in a dreary gray much of the year.“Most days you could not see the mountains” said Avol, now a professor of clinical preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and chief of its environmental health division. “I was amazed that there were even mountains there.” (Rowan, 11/5)

The Advocate: Lafayette, Houston Home Health Companies Pay $2.5 Million To Settle Fraud Claims 
Home health firms in Lafayette and Houston have agreed to pay $2.5 million to resolve allegations that they defrauded the federal Medicare and Louisiana Medicaid programs, U.S. Attorney Brandon Fremin reported Tuesday. Health Care Options Inc. and Health Care Options of Lafayette, and Home Care Options of Houston, were accused of submitting fraudulent claims for payment for home health services without the required face-to-face encounters between patients and physicians, Fremin stated. (Gyan, 11/5)

Wyoming Public Radio: Legislators Look For Answers With Impending Coal Plant Closures
Wyoming's Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee used its last hearing before the budget session to discuss concerns over Rocky Mountain Power's recently announced Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The public utility's long-awaited plan detailed its shift away from coal, including the early retirement of two Wyoming coal plants. (McKim, 11/5)