Newsmakers

Greg Simon, MD, MPH, a psychiatrist with Washington Permanente Medical Group, told Health that situational depression occurs after a life event – such as job loss, death of a loved one, or serious illness diagnosis – that leaves the person feeling stressed or upset.

Stephen Parodi, MD, an associate executive director of The Permanente Medical Group in Northern California, told Voice of America that Kaiser Permanente is working with “light speed” to build a new 7,000-square-foot testing lab in Berkeley.

In a recent USA Today article, Robert Sallis, MD, a family medicine doctor with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group and co-director of Kaiser Permanente’s Sports Medicine Fellowship, was among experts quoted about how to exercise safely. Dr. Sallis explained that there is a sweet spot when it comes to the amount of time spent working out.

On Thursday, the American Medical Association (AMA) and The Permanente Federation co-hosted a tweet chat, "Clinical Perspectives on Safely Reopening America," which generated an online conversation centered on a path for safely steering Americans through the COVID-19 pandemic and toward a return to normalcy.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused significant emotional distress for many individuals coping with a new and unfamiliar reality. In a recent interview with Fast Company, Don Mordecai, MD, psychiatrist with The Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Permanente national leader for mental and behavioral health, shared that learning how to navigate through these emotions is critical for supporting one’s mental health.

Many patients with severe cases of COVID-19 have extremely low levels of oxygen in the blood. That may be one reason why interest in pulse oximeters — medical devices that measure the saturation of oxygen in red blood cells — has increased recently.

Stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus have significantly accelerated the use of telehealth in California, making such visits the “new normal” during current the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent story in CalMatters.

More than 14 million people living in communities of color are subject to high levels of air pollution because “areas with cleaner air tend to be more expensive to live in,” Afif Haitham El-Hasan, MD, a pediatrician with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, told Forbes.