BERKELEY -- Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, a nonprofit corporation, is exempt from millions of dollars in property, income and sales taxes. In exchange, the hospital is obligated to provide benefits to the community. But at its July 16 meeting, the City Council expressed frustration at not knowing precisely what those benefits are. How much of the community benefits reported by the hospital goes to charity care, and how much of that is targeted to low-income Berkeley residents, council members asked. "Community benefits can be anything they decide," Dan Johnston, a researcher with the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the research arm of the California Nurses Association, told to the council.

A federal judge dealt a blow to MedStar Health's goal to provide more in-house medical care for its employees, siding with a labor union that objected to hikes to workers' out-of-pocket expenses when they seek treatment elsewhere.

Two studies show effects on health of long- and short-term exposure to pollutants from traffic and industry. Air pollution, chiefly from traffic exhaust fumes in cities, is having a serious and sometimes fatal effect on health, according to two studies that link it to lung cancer and heart failure.

RNs from the California Nurses Association attended Mayor Ed Lee's signing ceremony approving the plan to rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital and build a new hospital on Cathedral Hill. This victory came after nurses and community members spent years fighting to keep St. Luke's open for medically underserved residents.

A weekly report by National Nurses United on the pulse of Almeria. The American jobs disaster. Low U.S. Wages Spell Demise. Not Much Equality in New Mexico. Half of poor African-American children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. Golden Parachutes Are Still Very Much in Style.