Kristen Beiers-Jones, M.S.N., R.N., and Kate Ballard, B.S.N., R.N., describe a new Oregon law that requires prescription labels to be made available in another language upon request. They advocated for the law after working with patients who couldn’t read their prescription labels.

Shira Einstein, M.D., shares her thoughts on the vaccine: “As a childhood cancer survivor and now a pediatrician, I know how critical vaccines are for the health and safety of our community. We know that vaccines are safe, that they work, and that they save lives.”

Oregon’s decision to continue insurance coverage for in-network telehealth visits through June 30 “will greatly benefit our patients, our staff and our providers as we work to maintain high-quality access to our clinical services,” OHSU said in a statement.

Walter C. Reynolds, M.D., the first Black person to graduate from the then-University of Oregon Medical School and who also served as president of the Urban League of Portland, died Nov. 17 at the age of 100.

In a guest op-ed citing several pediatricians recommending parents not delay their children’s care during the pandemic, Ellen Stevenson, M.D., M.P.H., says some children’s skin infections have progressed until oral antibiotics were needed when soaks and ointments could have worked if they had been treated sooner.

OHSU nursing graduate Samantha Hickey is among the COVID victims remembered.

Carlos Crespo, Dr.P.H., says a new coronavirus variant found in the U.K. can spread from person to person more easily.

Eric Herman, M.D., describe OHSU’s efforts to launch a multi-disciplinary, patient-centered program to better meet the needs of long COVID patients in early 2021, saying “We’ve heard that patients are frustrated, and understandably frustrated, because we’re sort of in a learning curve right now. And we’re trying to get up to speed as quickly as we can.”

In an article on the clinical challenges of genetic testing in breast cancer, Zahi Mitri, M.D., says: “The two main purposes of genetic profiling are to identify targetable mutations with approved therapies and to identify mutations with matched clinical trial options. From the standpoint of identifying targetable mutations with approved therapies, it is important for oncologists to be familiar with the rapidly expanding indication.

Marcel Curlin, M.D. describes the tremendous response OHSU is receiving from the more than 13,000 Oregonians who have volunteered for the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine clinical trial at OHSU: “We sort of knew Portland was a good place for this, because there’s a public-minded spirt in Portland. The study team at AstraZeneca was more surprised. We crashed their server twice, and we were the talk of the whole recruitment unit at AstraZeneca because of the high interest.”