Sunday's Have You Heard

Launch!: Join your fellow public health fans in Hall C of the Pennsylvania Convention Center for the Opening Session of APHA’s 137th Annual Meeting. Plus, we’ve got some new speakers for ya. In addition to famed ocean explorer Celine Cousteau and Pan American Health Organization Director Mirta Roses Periago, we’ve got newly confirmed U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. And immediately following what is sure to be an inspirational kick-off, will be the opening of the Public Health Expo (read: free goodies!).

Expo-licious: Because who’s not interested in free goodies? Pile on into the Public Health Expo, which opens after the Opening Session in Exhibit Hall A/B of the convention center, and peruse hundreds of booths, from schools of public health to federal and state health agencies to public health-related vendors and non-profits. And don’t miss Everything APHA, located in the center of the expo (I know — shameless self-promotion, right? But it’s a fabulous resource, offering all the information you ever wanted about APHA, a chance to meet APHA staff, opportunities to meet potential employers via APHA’s Public Health CareerMart, and of course, the place to go for APHA merchandise, publications, books, and much more. Trust me — it’s definitely worth a swing-by.)

Get a grip: Feeling a tad overwhelmed as you were handed a meeting program the size of a small phonebook? Eyes glazing over as you try to focus in on one of hundreds of scientific sessions? Disappointed that you may not get to indulge in all of your public health passions in just four days? Take a breather and get organized at the APHA Member Orientation for the Annual Meeting, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in 111B of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Peace be with you: Need a remedy for first-day weariness? Carve out a moment of personal reflection at the Celebrating the Spirit of APHA Interfaith Celebration, sponsored by APHA’s Caucus on Public Health and the Faith Community, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Franklin 1 of the Marriott Hotel. The event features moments of reflections from a variety of faiths, including Wicca, Bahai and Rastafarianism.

To market, to market

Craving homemade pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing, a gargantuan dill pickle, a famous Philly cheesesteak or coffee chocolate chip granola? How about salmon and tilapia with tomatoes, capers and spinach, a pulled pork sandwich or an Asian pear? If you’re hungry, head over to the Reading Terminal Market just across the street from the Philadelphia Convention Center at the corner of 12th and Arch streets. Be prepared, though, to have a tough time deciding what to eat.

I recommend taking a walk around to survey the place before making any hasty decisions. But knowing more than 10,000 of us are in town, expect a crush of people, especially around the candy shops, cheesesteak stands, bakeries and produce marts.

Start healthy at Iovine’s Produce or Fair Food Farmstand, where all the produce is organic or grown with minimum pesticide use on farms no farther than 25 miles from downtown Philly. They also offer fresh local cheeses, yogurts and apple cider, raw milk, eggs, poultry and meats. You can pick up a bunch of organic rainbow carrots for $4 (they’re orange, white and purple, but all taste like a traditional orange carrot), choose from 15 different types of apples or experiment with a head of cheddar cauliflower (it’s the color of cheddar cheese, but still tastes like cauliflower).

Saturday’s $7 meal special at Pearl’s Oyster Bar was cod on a roll, a cup of chowder and a medium soda. Beker’s Bakery is like many of the Amish-run establishments that are only open Monday-Saturday, but if you have time, walk by for the heavenly smell of fresh-baked sticky buns and dinner rolls. Metropolitan Bakery will be open tomorrow and sells a satisfying and vegan French lentil walnut salad. Their rustic wood shelves are also stocked with flour-dusted rolls of fresh bread, everything from cracked wheat to pumpkin pecan cranberry, walnut, chocolate cherry and New York rye.

I’m a candy fan, so I had to stop at Chocolate by Mueller, where there are more than 20 varieties of licorice (soft and sweet, hard and salty, you name it), jaw breakers the size of a softball alongside white rock candy, Swedish fish, and chocolate noses (the sign says, “I thought you said a dozen noses!”).

Beck’s Cajun Café offers vegetarian black-eyed pea soup and also gator gumbo (made with alligator sausage!) and crawfish etouffee. You can find authentic Japanese fare at Tokyo Sushi, southern cuisine and everyday soul at Delilah’s, Indian and Pakistani cuisine at Nanee’s Kitchen and two scoops of world-famous ice cream for $3.23 at Basetts, where they also sell dry ice so you can bring some pistachio, pralines and cream or cinnamon ice cream back to your hotel for a late-night snack.

And, sure, the food’s the big draw, but the market also features the “Best Shoe Shine in Philly” at the Shoe Doctor, a new/used bookstore and vendors selling hand-made pottery, jewelry and crafts. Philbert, the metal pig statue in the middle of the market, has an open mouth for donations “to provide affordable and nutritious food for children in needy communities” if you’re looking for a spot to drop your spare change.

Market hours are 8 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday–Saturday and 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Sundays.

What about you, fair reader? Got any good suggestions for quick bites during the meeting?

— D.C.

Top photo: Philbert the pig beckons donations from Reading Market Terminal customers. Middle photo: A young man entertains the market crowds. Bottom photo: An APHA Annual Meeting blogger shows off her colorful market carrots.

Students tackle health reform

Inside the beltway, outside the beltway, on CNN, in town hall meetings and on the opinion pages, health reform has been front and center on the national stage in recent months.

The same was true at Saturday’s APHA Student Assembly meeting, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: Transforming the U.S. Health Care System.” Prior to the official kick-off of the APHA 137th Annual Meeting tomorrow here at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, about 150 students from public health programs across the country spent their afternoon engaging with expert speakers and networking with peers.

Glenna Krooks, PhD, a health care consultant who founded the Philadelphia-based Strategic Health Policy International Inc., told the student attendees that we should ditch the moniker “health care reform” and instead call it “health care reforming,” a term that better reflects the ongoing nature of improving such a complex system. She reminded listeners that with every problem solved in the field of public health, a new problem emerges.

Here’s an example: Infectious diseases used to be a leading cause of death, but as medicine and public health advanced, many diseases that were often serious or fatal became easily treatable. As a result, people lived long enough to develop chronic diseases — undoubtedly, one of today’s biggest public health problems. But does that “unintended consequence” of a rise in chronic disease rates mean that we’d want to give back penicillin or the polio vaccine? Of course not.

On the health care side, the ongoing challenge is to balance the competing interests of quality, cost and access. One important way to address quality and cost is the advancement of electronic health records, a priority funded to the tune of $10 billion in the federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, more commonly known as the stimulus bill. Kesa Bond, an assistant professor in health information management at Temple University, said during the student meeting that an integrated, sharable electronic health records system is essential to save serious time and money in the health care sector — not to mention to prevent dangerous mix-ups.

A main message from the Student Assembly meeting: Advancing health care records into the 21st century is one important way to contribute to the continual process of improving medical care and public health — a process that shouldn’t end, regardless of how Congress moves on health reform.

For more from Krooks, check out the fantastically named blog she contributes to: Disruptive Women in Health Care.

— P.T.

A little birdie told me so: Tweet of the Day

We're starting a new tradition here at the APHA Annual Meeting Blog: Everyday we'll be posting a "Tweet of the Day" picked from Twitterers using the #apha09 hashtag. (Us social media users gotta stick together, right?)

So, let's start this tradition off with something a little sweet. From Twitterer mgchuk5673:

"Heading to #apha09 in Philly tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing lots of old friends."

Check out APHA's Public Health Twitter and APHA Annual Meeting Twitter

A grand entrance

First and foremost: Condolences to all you Phillies fans. There’s always next year, right?

And since we’re on the topic of great, longtime American traditions, let me be the first to welcome you to the 137th APHA Annual Meeting. It’s the third Philadelphia meeting for this blogger, so walking through the doors of the Pennsylvania Convention Center felt like slipping on an old glove (though I’d almost rather be slipping on new gloves at the Lord & Taylor down the street. Did I say that?)

So what’s where in this giant convention center? Let’s start with a topic everyone cares about: food. There are a handful of places to grab a bite and a drink inside the convention center, such as the Overlook Café & Bar on the third level and the EcoGrounds coffee shop on the second level. Of course, there’s the enormous and historic Reading Terminal Market right across the street from the convention center, filled with every kind of yumminess you could imagine. (Check back later for a posting on the market’s aromatic attractions.)

If you’re looking for a place to take that lunch break, rest those weary feet or simply do a little public health people watching, grab a seat in the Mix & Mingle Lounge on the second level. There’s Wi-Fi in the lounge too. Adjacent to the Mix & Mingle Lounge is the Activity Posting Center, where you can view or post updates on scientific sessions and social events.

And if you’re feeling a little lost, look for the clearly marked information booths in the convention center’s Grand Hall (which is way cool looking), outside room 309 on the third floor of the Marriott Hotel, which is attached to the convention center, or outside Commonwealth Hall in the Loews Hotel, which is across from the convention center on Market Street.

Also, don’t forget to use the many recycling bins placed eco-strategically around the convention center. Let’s leave Philly as we phound it.

— K.K.

Above: The Grand Hall of the Pennsylvania Convention Center

From Philly with love

What better way to kick-off the third year of the APHA Annual Meeting Blog than with a little love?

Above: The famous LOVE Park at the corner of 16th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, just a few blocks from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Bottom photo: A group of morris dancers gives us a show in LOVE Park. (According to the dance group's brochure, morris dancing is a "peculiar and wonderful folk tradition from England and was well-established by the 1500s." Talk about sweatin' to the oldies.)

The final countdown

T-minus five days to the launch of APHA’s 137th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, and this space cadet is ready to explore strange, new public health worlds — to boldly go to a convention center filled with 10,000 people in the middle of an H1N1 flu epidemic!

Which brings me to my first point: Don’t forget to take extra-special precautions this year. Wash your hands and take advantage of the hand sanitizer that will be strategically placed at the meeting’s registration counters and in the convention center bathrooms. There’ll also be plenty of sanitizing handouts, flu prevention information, games, prizes, T-shirts and much more at the APHA Get Ready booth, #511, at the Public Health Expo. And this year, the booth is being produced in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In recent weeks, a handful of new speakers have been added to the Annual Meeting agenda. In her first speech since receiving congressional confirmation in late October, new U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin will be speaking at the meeting’s opening session, which takes place on Sunday, Nov. 8, from noon to 2 p.m. Benjamin will be joined at the session by Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as conservationist Celine Cousteau and Mirta Roses Periago, director of the Pan American Health Organization. Another new speaker is Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, who will present during session 3292, from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9.

For all of you space cadets more familiar with wikis than rockets, there’ll be plenty of ways to keep up with the Annual Meeting. Of course, you can sign up to receive e-mail updates from this very blog. Then you can follow APHA’s Public Health Twitter and the APHA Annual Meeting Twitter (and receive details about a special public health Tweet-up in Philly). Visit the APHA Facebook page, share your photos with the APHA Flickr group, or take a moment to visit APHA’s YouTube channel for new videos. And don’t forget to use the hashtag #apha09 if you’re Tweeting from the meeting.

With that, this blogger bids you safe, flu-free travels. See you in Philly fellow public health fans.

P.S. If you’ll take a look at the top and bottom of our blog, you’ll see we’ve got a brand-spankin-new sponsor, the Peace Corps. Go ahead — give ‘em a click.

P.S.S. And don’t forget that in keeping with this year’s meeting theme of “Water and Public Health: The 21st Century Challenge,” everyone is encouraged to use reusable water bottles instead of buying disposable water bottles. In fact, if you’re looking for an Annual Meeting souvenir and want to limit your Philly footprint, stop by the Everything APHA booth to buy an APHA water bottle.

— K.K.

City of brotherly love

APHA is headed back to good ol’ Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, home to a cracked copper bell and temptress of gooey cheesesteaks. With a theme of “Water and Public Health,” the 137th APHA Annual Meeting will take place Nov. 7–11 at Philly’s Pennsylvania Convention Center. Online registration for the Annual Meeting opens June 1, and those who register by Aug. 28 can save some major bucks.

And since you’re already reading this blog, why not sign up to receive regular updates in your e-mail? We’ll be in Philly with you posting daily entries during the Annual Meeting, covering everything from scientific sessions to public health celebrations to, hey, where’d you get that gelato?

And while you’re signing up for stuff, follow the APHA Annual Meeting Twitter for info on new speakers, sessions, happenings as well as all the fun stuff to do during your stay in Philly.

Photo by James Gritz, courtesy iStockphoto