Hospital Facility Dog Casey in October joined current Hospital Facility dogs Hope and Davis in bringing smiles to young patients, family members and staff, and recently finished her onsite training. Her handler, Nikki Wiggins, M.S.N., RN, says, “The NICU can be a really hard place to be. Our families are here for a very long time, sometimes upwards of 100 days or more. We want this to be a time that they can become resilient and grow as a family, so anything we can do to promote that is really important."

The Lund Report covers a state-appointed task force's proposal to create a universal or “single-payer” health care system in Oregon. Chairman of the group, Bruce Goldberg, M.D., says, “My sense in talking to people every day is there are not a lot of people thrilled with our current health care system,” noting that it is increasingly expensive, and growing costs are being shifted onto individuals and families.

A feature highlighting the team of Miranda Lim, M.D., Ph.D., to understand deep sleep. She says, “We used to think that the need to sleep was something we could minimize or conquer. But really over the past couple of decades, we’ve started to understand just how important it is."

Injury epidemiologist Kathleen Carlson, Ph.D., studies the effect of environment on the recent increase in violent crimes, and received an OHSU grant to develop the OHSU Gun Violence Prevention Research Center.

An evidence review by OHSU researchers finds thin evidence behind the effectiveness of cannabis-related products to treat chronic pain continues; Marian McDonagh, Pharm.D., says, “With so much buzz around cannabis-related products, and the easy availability of recreational and medical marijuana in many states, consumers and patients might assume there would be more evidence about the benefits and side effects."

Sancy Leachman, M.D., Ph.D., comments on a Brown University study that claims to have found a link between eating fish and developing melanoma. She calls the findings “intriguing,” but says when “you crunch large data sets like this,” what you find are correlations between factors, not evidence that one causes another.

News coverage of an evidence review by OHSU researchers that found thin evidence behind the effectiveness of cannabis-related products to treat chronic pain. Marian McDonagh, Pharm.D., says, “With so much buzz around cannabis-related products, and the easy availability of recreational and medical marijuana in many states, consumers and patients might assume there would be more evidence about the benefits and side effects.”

The story of OHSU patient Daryl Osborn, who was in a coma for 70 days at OHSU after contracting COVID-19. He’s thankful for his support system, thankful for the doctors and care providers at OHSU, thankful for his wife for pushing him to recover, and thankful to be alive.

An OHSU long COVID patient shares her mental health struggles and Jordan Anderson, D.O., describes how he supports patients like he, saying: “The mental health aspects of this are very real. The thoughts of suicide are something that I am hearing about every day when I'm talking to my patients, unfortunately."

This magazine quotes Betsy Ferguson, Ph.D., regarding a new form of editing that dials up or dials down the expression of a gene as opposed to changing the DNA code itself. She says this kind of editing will be challenging: “We don’t know what other behaviors are altered by this change. It’s a balance between finding something that’s effective and something that’s not disruptive to everyday life."