AAPHP News, Volume 2 Issue 1 ,News Items
Happy New Year
Item 1. Joel Nitzkin jln-md@mindspring.com is hard at work on the job market issue.. Kim Buttery our webmaster has posted many of the recent resolutions and plans on our web site at http://www.aaphp.org/resources/phtools.htm under the job market plan section. The problem statement is listed below (Item 1) in the hope that it will make you interested enough to see the rest. Please send comments to Joel. He is also interested in receiving anecdotal stories about situations where preventive medicine training made a difference.
Item 2. Email viruses are getting nasty. One no longer has to open attachments in order to become infected. See below for some tips for partially protecting yourself. They are not inclusive and should be used in addition to a good virus checker and backup plan.
Item 3.This news item came from ACPM news. DHHS RELEASES FINAL PRIVACY REGULATIONS http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/admnsimp
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Item 1 Problem
Statement
A. The job market for Public Health Physicians (PHPs) is no where near as large
as it should be, and does not have the richness in quality offerings that it
should include.
B. Many of the jobs that should be done by public health physicians, in both health care and public health systems, are done by non-physicians. Some are done by physicians without public health training--sometimes without any understanding of epidemiology or how it's principles should be applied. Please see http://www.aaphp.org/resources/phtools.htm for the additional material.
Item 2 . TIPS on
protecting against email viruses, reprinted with permission from Joe Armata at
the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
Here are 3 tips to protect
your NT computer from email viruses that depend on Visual Basic
Scripting or VBS (viruses like I Love You, FBI Secrets, 40 Jokes, Mother's Day,
and on and on...). Basically the advice is Just Say No to VBS files. If you
apply these fixes, those nasty files won't be able to run on your computer.
The first 2 tips are for all NT computers, the 3rd is just for people who use
the Outlook email program. For more information, here's a lengthy web page
that gives reasons for opting out of VBS files: http://www.nsclean.com/psc-vbs.html
1) Delete the vbs file association. Double-click on My Computer (usually in the upper left of your screen), then click on View/Options/File Types. Scroll down to near the bottom and look for "VBScript Script File". If it's there, click on it to highlight it, then click on Remove.
2) Disable wscript.exe and cscript.exe in your c:\winnt\system32 directory. Click on Start/Find/Files Or Folders. In the "Named" box, put in wscript.exe, and click on Find Now. The file should show up in the bottom pane. Right-click on the file name and rename it wscript.old. Then do the same for cscript.exe and rename it cscript.old
3) Disable E-mail scripting in Outlook/Outlook Express, if you use them for email. Vulnerabilities in the default configuration of Outlook 98, Outlook Express 5, and Outlook 2000 make systems susceptible to serious compromise simply by viewing E-mail (without opening any attachments). Protect yourself by reconfiguring Outlook 98, Outlook Express 5, and Outlook 2000 as described in the pages listed below.
Note: Outlook 97 does not appear to support scripting in e-mail, and is
therefore not vulnerable.
Outlook 98: http://www2.axent.com/swat/News/mailsecurity/O98.html
Outlook Express 5: http://www2.axent.com/swat/News/mailsecurity/OE5.html
Outlook 2000: http://www2.axent.com/swat/News/mailsecurity/O2000.html