This is an electronic update for members and friends of the American Association of Public Health Physicians (AAPHP). We issue this from time to time, whenever several items of interest come to our attention.
Please send items of interest for the E-News -- and any other feedback -- to AAPHP's Secretary, Dave Cundiff, MD, MPH <cundiff@reachone.com>. Thanks!
CONTENTS:
1) Public Health Responds to Hurricane Katrina
2) Three New Topics for "Notes Washed Up In a Bottle"
3) NPR Tackles Vaccine Topics
4) APHA Seeks New Site for its 2005 Annual Meeting
5) CDC¹s Community Guide Now Available
6) AAPHP Member Update
1) Public Health Responds to Hurricane Katrina:
AAPHP E-News can be a communications network for Public Health disaster recovery efforts. We are awed by the size and complexity of the public health tasks involved in responding to the massive displacements seen in Katrina's aftermath.
So far, AAPHP's information on Katrina is mostly limited to what's been reported in the public news media. AAPHP Board members are exploring, as individuals and as a group, how best to help.
News reports suggest that, at least in downtown New Orleans, medical workers were abundant but lacked resources. There has been abundant reporting about public health problems at the Superdome. I've seen no reporting about the work of public health workers at the non-medical evacuation sites.
Techniques for protecting the public's health at mass shelters are well known and have been published in print documents. Web resources include basic materials such as the Pan American Health Organization's "Guide to Sanitation in Shelters and Camps" at http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PED/te_albe.htm. That guide covers "Water", "Excreta", and "Solid Waste".
CDC's Web site features a hurricane recovery page at http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/index.asp. CDC's "Public Health Emergency Response Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Public Health Directors", primarily a planning checklist, is found at http://www.bt.cdc.gov/planning/responseguide.asp. As we receive more recommendations for electronically available resources, we will publish them for E-News readers and their colleagues.
We welcome requests for consultation from physicians and other public health workers in the field. Routine requests should be sent to the E-News editor at cundiff@reachone.com. That E-mail is checked at least daily.Urgent communications may be directed by mobile phone to Dave Cundiff, MD, MPH at (360) 870-2483 or Joel Nitzkin, MD, MPH, DPA at (954) 234-8186.
We will do our best to locate resources and we will publish information of general interest promptly.
AAPHP will do everything possible to support local, state, and national recovery efforts.
---------------------------
2) Three New Topics for "Notes Washed Up In a Bottle":
Don MacCorquodale's 2005-08-28 "Notes Washed Up In a Bottle"
(http://www.aaphp.org/bottle/2005/aug28.htm) discusses how government policies affect fertility (or don't); mobile phones and increased risk for motor vehicle crashes; and chemoprevention of colorectal cancer with aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs.
Past issues of "Notes in a Bottle" are indexed at http://www.aaphp.org/bottle/allnotes.htm. Thanks to Dr. MacCorquodale, and to AAPHP Webmaster Dr. Kim Buttery, for making this available.
---------------------------
3) NPR Tackles Vaccine Topics:
National Public Radio broadcast back-to-back articles on vaccine topics on 2005-08-30. Both are available on the Web for computers running Real Player or Windows Media Player.
The first, "A New Vaccine for Meningitis, But Limited Stores", is archived at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4823340.
Recommendations for the new meningococcal vaccine have outstripped the manufacturer's initial production capacity.
The second, U.S. Pertussis, Whooping Cases Climb", is archived at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4823343. This discusses pertussis epidemiology, with an audio recording of childhood pertussis and a physician's simulation of an adult pertussis cough. The reporter continues by discussing the expanding role of DtaP vaccine in protecting adolescents, adults, and small children who may be in close contact with them.
---------------------------
4) APHA Seeks New Site for its 2005 Annual Meeting:
We learned yesterday that the American Public Health Association must relocate or cancel its 2005 Annual Meeting, originally scheduled for early November 2005 in New Orleans. This may affect the date and time of AAPHP's fall meeting as well.
We'll keep you posted as we learn more.
---------------------------
5) CDC¹s Community Guide Now Available:
CDC recently announced: "The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) provides public health decision makers with recommendations regarding population-based interventions to promote health and to prevent disease, injury, disability and premature death, appropriate for use by communities and health care systems.
"The Community Guide is a federally sponsored initiative and is part of a family of federal public health initiatives, including Healthy People 2010 and the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services. More information is available at http://www.thecommunityguide.org."
6) AAPHP Member Update:
Thanks to Donald S. MacCorquodale, MD, MPH, and Anand Chabra, MD, MPH, for joining AAPHP or renewing AAPHP membership since the last E-news.
Membership/renewal information is available at http://www.aaphp.org, or call Rob Rader at (202) 207-0709.
Dave Cundiff, MD, MPH
AAPHP Secretary
cundiff@reachone.com