A study led by Dan Hoover, M.D., finds nearly half of people who use illicit drugs in rural areas have been recently incarcerated: “You have a reachable time in jails, and most jails are not providing this kind of addiction care. In a broader sense, our correctional institutions have a mandate to rehabilitate people who have entered the system — and treating addiction is a huge part of that.”

OHSU Health and Aetna agree to a new multi-year agreement that will keep OHSU Health as an in-network provider for Aetna members.

In a KATU-TV story on OHSU’s efforts to improve lung cancer screening, Peter Lee, M.D., says: “Early detection is key. We have fantastic advances in chemotherapy and robotic surgeries and radiation, but we haven't been able to tip the scale toward improved five-year survival in the general population and among all the therapies of lung cancer. The biggest benefit in mortality has been lung cancer screening and early detection."

David Lieberman, M.D., presents study results at the 2023 American College of Gastroenterology meeting on stool-based testing for colon cancer.

Jason Hedges, M.D., discusses the rise in vasectomies in the Northwest, following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe V. Wade.

Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay, a Knight Cancer Network member, hosts free lung cancer screening for qualified patients. Bay Area Hospital administrator Jared Carter says: "Since 2018, we've found 34 patients total that have a positive cancer finding because of the low dose screening. Forty-eight percent of those were low stage, so we caught them early enough where they could have treatment."

Scientists produce the first live-born chimeric primate to have a high proportion of cells originating from donor stem cells, which opens the door to using chimeric monkeys, which are more biologically similar to humans than chimeric rats and mice, for studying human diseases and developing treatments. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D., says the method used by the scientists might be used to grow human organs in pig or nonhuman primate tissues: “If we can delete the genes encoding for, say, the kidney, in a large animal such as a pig or primate, we could introduce human cells to produce that organ instead,” adding that using human–animal chimeras for organ collection, especially if human embryonic stem cells contribute to the nervous system, brain or reproductive cells, comes with many ethical concerns.

Allison Lindauer, M.D., says: “There’s this myth of the loving caregiver," but anger and frustration are inevitable parts of the caregiver experience, and that it is important to normalize those feelings. “There is a lot of stigma," she says.

In response to a national increase in congenital syphilis, Dawn Nolt, M.D., says the rise seen in Oregon can be blamed, at least partly, on one of the things that is causing the rise nationwide: a lack of prenatal care: “Hospitals around the country are struggling with maternity unit closures, recruitment and staffing. Recent studies have found that millions of reproductive-aged individuals are vulnerable to poor health outcomes due to a lack of access to reproductive healthcare services.”

Informed by a systematic review of the evidence on primary care screening and prevention of dental caries and periodontal disease in adults, led by Roger Chou, M.D., and colleagues, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concludes the evidence is insufficient for assessing the balance of benefits and harms of screening and preventive interventions for oral health conditions performed by primary care clinicians for adults and children.