A gift of calm for dementia patients - Alberta Health Services

The University of British Columbia has received a $40-million gift from alumni Matthew and Natalie MacIsaac, the largest donation ever made to a school of nursing in Canadian history. In recognition of the gift, UBC will formally name the MacIsaac School of Nursing and its future-ready new home, the MacIsaac Health Building, in their honour. Use of the new names will officially launch in early fall. This extraordinary gift will strengthen nursing education, research and practice, and help the MacIsaac School of Nursing — ranked among the top 25 globally and the top three in Canada — prepare the next generation of nurses and health-care leaders to meet B. C.’s growing and evolving health-care needs.

Patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often receive systemic corticosteroids from multiple specialties, and that cumulative exposure is rarely tracked in 1 place. At the same time, the options for reducing reliance on oral steroids have grown, with approvals of dupilumab and mepolizumab for eosinophilic COPD and of depemokimab, a twice-yearly anti-interleukin (IL)-5 agent, for severe asthma.1-4 Clinicians outside pulmonology increasingly manage these patients when specialty access is limited. On October 6, 2026, Mollie Chartoff, FNP-BC, a nurse practitioner on the advanced COPD team at Vanderbilt Lung Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, moderated a virtual clinical forum for advanced practice providers on asthma and COPD. Participants included nurse practitioners and physician assistants in pulmonology, allergy and asthma, dermatology, oncology, and interventional pain practices in Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina. The discussion covered biomarkers, oral corticosteroid (OCS) exposure, biologic selection, and access barriers.

Treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) now spans 5 therapeutic pathways, and the options within them continue to expand. Recent developments include FDA approval of a once-daily single-tablet combination of macitentan and tadalafil, supported by the phase 3 A DUE trial, and a September 2026 European Respiratory Society (ERS) guideline update recommending add-on sotatercept for patients who remain at intermediate-low, intermediate-high, or high risk.1,2 How clinicians sequence oral, inhaled, parenteral, and injectable therapies in practice increasingly depends on risk assessment, payer requirements, and patient preference. In September 2026, Marc Simon, MD, MS, director of pulmonary vascular disease and the Pulmonary Hypertension Comprehensive Care Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), moderated a clinical forum in San Francisco. Participants included pulmonologists, advanced heart failure and critical care cardiologists, and a nurse practitioner from UCSF, Kaiser Permanente, and California Pacific Medical Center. The discussion covered initial combination therapy, risk reassessment, escalation beyond dual therapy, and long-term monitoring.