Mike McCaffrey is interviewed by the Portland Business Journal for a story in a series regarding supply chain disruptions due to COVID-19. McCaffrey discusses the early "chaos" the pandemic brought and says: “Ultimately, we ended up filling our warehouse with more PPE than ever and added an auxiliary warehouse with 20,000 square feet of supplies, which is almost unheard of. Our goal is to make sure we get through any surge and not be in a position where we’re scrambling to get what’s needed. It really has changed the way we do things.”

Babak Nazer, M.D., describes the OHSU Multidisciplinary Ventricular Arrhythmia Program, which combines ventricular arrhythmia care with the psychosocial symptoms associated with ventricular tachycardia and defibrillator shocks, as having an integrated approach that offers patients “one-stop shopping.”

Brian Druker, M.D., is among several oncology experts interviewed for an American Society of Hematology Clinical News story on the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act: “If you look at our progress on understanding what is driving these diseases and project that to the next 50 years, there is enormous promise and potential in terms of preventing, managing, and curing all hematologic malignancies.”

In a story about organ transplantation centers requiring patients to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before receiving a transplant, Douglas Norman, M.D., says immunosuppressed patients who aren’t vaccinated don’t fare well if they get COVID-19.

In a column about why coffee makes some people defecate, which acknowledges researchers no little about how coffee affects the gastrointestinal tract, Robert Martindale, M.D., Ph.D., says the body’s response to coffee is “probably going through the gut-brain axis” and that coffee’s presence in the stomach “stimulates the colon to say, ‘Well, we’d better empty out’”

In a story about seven HIV vaccines under development, Louis Picker, M.D., describes the cytomegalovirus-based vaccine he developed at OHSU and is now being tested in humans through a clinical trial sponsored by Vir Biotechnology: “The results have shown great promise: 50-60% of vaccinated monkeys are protected against the simian immunodeficiency virus."

In light of the new omicron variant, William Messer, M.D., Ph.D., says: “I think we should be vigilant. I think we should do what we know works, which is vaccination, distancing inside, mask wearing, particularly in high-risk settings … a practice that works for all the variants."

Bill Messer, M.D., Ph.D., provides an "insider's look" to Oregon Public Broadcasting on what is currently known regarding the Omicron variant. Messer is part of the Oregon SARS-CoV-2 Genome Sequencing Center, a team at OHSU leading the state’s surveillance effort for COVID-19 variants of concern. Messer says: "We don’t know where this virus evolved to acquire all of these mutations. We don’t know for sure what the driving force was, but you can imagine why that would be really important to understand.”

Preliminary findings from a survey led by OHSU’s Oregon Rural Practice Based Research Network found that while Oregon’s vaccination requirement for health care workers had minor or no impact at more than half of the state’s primary care clinics, it had a greater impact on rural clinics. Nancy Elder, M.D., says: “That’s not surprising. In urban areas, there are more staff to choose from.

In a story about patients needing to remain hospitalized even though they no longer need hospital-level care because they aren’t well enough to go home alone and there isn’t another available facility or method to provide them a lower level of care, Matthias Merkel, M.D., says: “We need a very centralized organization in how we manage that so we can use these resources the most effectively across all health systems. I don’t think anyone has discovered the magic bullet."