Before April 3, when Oregon Health Authority ended its mask requirement in health care spaces, OHSU announces its new guidelines, strongly recommending that masks continue to be worn in health care settings. Masks are still required in certain areas.

In a Q&A with Pharmacy Times, Alison M. Palumbo, PharmD, discusses innovating tools and means of assessing patient-reported outcome measures at Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association Annual Conference. She says, "Quality of life is a clinical outcome. Patients care about living longer and living better. Quality of life helps address the living better portion. So if we can better collect information on quality of life, then we can hopefully improve patient outcomes."

A MIM Software press release announces its software is in the majority of health care facilities designated as Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Comprehensive Centers of Excellence by the SNMMI, including OHSU. Erik Mittra, M.D., Ph.D., says, "Dosimetry for radiopharmaceutical therapies is an increasingly important tool that will allow us to be more proactive with complex patient treatment decisions. We are excited to start providing this service to patients."

Research by Michael Klein, M.D., and others has identified rare genetic variants that may be involved in developing age-related macular degeneration, and could be used to develop new therapies.

The American Psychological Association writes about disparities in how boys and girls perform at school, and the APA task force project underway to document the issue and develop recommendations to address it. Chistopher Reighluth, Ph.D., chair of the APA task force, says, "There's so much more that can be done to support boys' success in the classroom. As a society, et's make sure that all kids—boys, girls, and kids of other gender identities—have the message that school is important for them and their future."

A team of OHSU researchers, led by Charles Springer, Ph.D., have developed a way to use magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scanning to map activity in fine detail in the human brain and other organs. The innovation — called metabolic activity diffusion imaging, or MADI — is opening up new possibilities for detecting cancers and revealing if a tumor is responding to treatment. Springer says: “MADI is a new way to make images of metabolic activity within organs and tissues at high spatial resolution, and it’s totally noninvasive. In principle, this method could apply to almost any pathology. Right now, we are pushing it in the direction of cancer and neuroscience.”

Joint animal research by OHSU, George Washington University and Mabloc, LLC, suggests monoclonal antibody infusions offer a potential cure for serious cases of yellow fever.

Maria Rodriguez, M.D., is among the experts who informed The New York Times multimedia feature reviewing the scientific literature that has deemed the abortion pill safe.

Before April 3, when Oregon Health Authority ended its mask requirement in health care spaces, OHSU announces its new guidelines, strongly recommending that masks continue to be worn in health care settings. Masks are still required in certain areas.

A national study led by Sue Flocke, Ph.D., found that routine tobacco use assessments plummeted by 50% during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and did not return to pre-pandemic levels. Flocke says: “We know that a large portion of people who use tobacco do want to quit, but the vast majority of them do not have access to or do not use available resources. Health care providers can provide access to a wide variety of resources, including referral for tobacco cessation counseling and prescriptions for FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications. A successful quit attempt typically requires many tries — that’s why these discussions are so important.”