Public health swag!

If you thought you were overwhelmed by the phonebook-sized schedule you were handed at registration, wait until you check out the Public Health Expo. There’s a lot to see and do, and you might even see the U.S. surgeon general milling about — I just did!

I can’t begin to do the expo justice in a short blog entry — but there are plenty of free goodies to be found. Perhaps not surprisingly, a hot item this year is hand sanitizers in every size and shape imaginable.

Luckily, I managed to skirt by the Stata booth, a statistics software business, without too many terrible flashbacks from biostatistics class. No offense to the fine people staffing the booth, I just couldn’t bring myself to linger there.

But, here are a few highlights I would suggest checking out.

If you’re a job seeker, network with some of the organizations offering jobs and fellowships. In particular, the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program was recruiting interested public health graduates, as was the Association of Schools of Public Health. They have a new fellowship in injury prevention and traffic safety that is accepting applications now!

In light of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson’s comments on asthma prevalence in the United States, check out CDC’s Emergency Preparedness and Response booth. They have some new materials on asthma, including a report called “Breathing Easier” and a guide for parents called “Help Your Child Gain Control Over Asthma.”

If you’re a big Twitter user, the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future’s booth has a flat screen TV broadcasting conference attendee’s Tweets.

The National Library of Medicine offered several demonstration sessions today on recent updates to PubMed and other information resources. Check out their booth for more info if you missed that.

You may also score invites to other events at the expo. Physicians for Human Rights is hosting a reception tomorrow from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in room 403 at the Marriott. It’s open to all with free food and drink as well as great conversation on health and human rights. No need to hold an MD to get involved — the group is looking for new members from all areas of public health.

What did you enjoy at the expo? Tell us about your organization’s booth!

— P.T.

Above: APHA's Get Ready booth

Post-It

Female genital mutilation in Tanzania. The dangerous mix of truck drivers and sleep apnea. School-based obesity prevention. Computer literacy skills among public health nursing students.

If you’re looking for a wide range of public health topics, check out the poster sessions located at the back of the Public Health Expo. They’re compelling, hard-hitting and unforgettable.

“I think it’s hard to conceptualize how different life can be for a different culture,” said Emory University doctoral student Aaron Siegler, MHS, whose poster on female genital cutting prevalence and instrument sanitation among the Maasai tribe of Tanzania highlights the fact that education is a powerful weapon.

His study showed that when girls and women have any education at all, they are less likely to undergo the practice that’s long been considered a rite of passage, even though it's outlawed.

Poster presenter Dara D. Mendez, PhD, MPH, looked into young black women’s perspectives on communication with mother figures surrounding sexual health and well-being. Guess what? They want to talk about the nitty gritty of sex, HIV/AIDS and how their mothers and other female elders dealt with sexual intimacy.

Then I was stopped in my tracks by photos of people who died on the job. The grinning face of 26-year-old Austin J. Sawicki, who died when a steel beam fell on him while he was working on a construction site. Vincint Don Lavite, 38, who suffered a fatal fall at a cement plant in Missouri. The poster exhibit was just one of many touching on such occupational health and safety issues as pesticide exposure, hearing loss, respiratory symptoms in workers with asthma, and effects of age and night work on the mental health of people working in a correctional institution.

For workers on the road, Florida A&M’s Felicia N. Green, MPH, found that sleep apnea is prevalent among truck drivers, but they are often scared to seek treatment for fear of losing their jobs.

“It’s a big issue that I think can be changed,” she said. “A lot can be changed for the better.”

And that, after all, is why many of us work in the public health field.

Poster sessions run at different times daily through Wednesday morning. Check out the program for a detailed schedule.

— D.C.

Waterworld

There is no mistaking this year’s theme for APHA’s 137th Annual Meeting. Water and public health is front and center, especially once you set foot in the Public Health Expo hall. Hand sanitizers may be among the most popular giveaways, but water resource management is clearly on the minds of many.

Among the 650 booths present at the expo, two deserve honorable mentions and creative kudos for highlighting this year’s water and public health theme in a particularly unique way.

First is the Environmental Protection Agency for its booth dedicated to the “3Ts” campaign. The 3Ts, (training, testing, and telling) is an outreach program for school officials and child care operators that builds awareness about water quality and seeks to reduce lead in drinking water. Visit the booth and get yourself a copy of the 3Ts toolkit — a how-to guide that can be adapted for local use to reduce risk of childhood lead exposure. After all, lead-free is best for me. (And you! It’s the campaign slogan; I didn’t come up with that one on my own.)

The second water-themed award-winning booth (in this blogger’s view) is the aptly named Infectious Awareables (otherwise known as iAwareables). The company debuted at APHA’s Annual Meeting in 1997 and the rest is history. iAwareables, booth #1405, has a remarkably large collection of awareness products (ties, scarves, etc.) that are designed to promote awareness and feature bacteria, viruses and other scientific images. They even have a whole line of products featuring water-borne illnesses! The goal, they say, is to promote interest and discussion around serious public health issues.

It seems the company has done very well for itself: According to People magazine, “the ties are spreading like swine flu.” The public service-minded company also donates a significant portion of its proceeds to organizations dedicated to research, education or treatment.

And with the holidays approaching, who wouldn’t appreciate a tie or a pair of bioboxers featuring E. Coli or the norovirus? I know it gets me in the mood….

— M.S.

A little birdie told me so: Tweet of the Day

From Twitterers using the #apha09 hashtag, here's today's Tweet of the Day from Twitter user pk3v:

"Great to be with SO many others that believe access to health care is a universal, fundamental, human right."

Right on.

'Environmental protection is public health protection'

On the heels of the historic passage of health reform legislation last night on Capitol Hill, it’s no surprise that it was on everyone’s mind during today’s Opening Session of the APHA Annual Meeting in Philly. In fact, APHA Executive Director Dr. Georges Benjamin kicked off the session with a big smile and this quip: “How’d you like that House vote last night?” And by the sound of the whooping applause, it seemed everyone liked it, indeed.

Following Dr. B (as he’s affectionately called around the APHA offices), Philadelphia officials welcomed the nation’s largest public health gathering to their city, describing why Philly is such an appropriate meeting place for such a gathering of public health minds. It’s a city of firsts, they all said, the first city with a nursing school and a medical school, the first to have a public hospital, the first to have a medical dispensary designed to care for the poor, and the location where the first woman was awarded a doctorate of medicine. Decades later, Philadelphia is still leading the way with tobacco-free laws, celebratory child immunization rates and a happily high number of residents who walk to work. No wonder city health commissioner Don Schwarz said he feels like the “most fortunate public health official in the nation.”

A few speeches later came a well-deserved standing ovation for a late-breaking speaker, new U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin (no relation to APHA’s Dr. B), who told attendees her personal public health story. As a physician, she said, there were simply things “my prescription pad wouldn’t take care of,” such as making sure patients were breathing fresh air, drinking clean water. She told of patients having trouble with their prescription meds, not necessarily because they couldn’t pay, but because they couldn’t read the label. Or of another patient, who even though she had insurance, couldn’t afford the co-pay for the pain medication she so desperately needed. The experiences will move with Benjamin into her new office as surgeon general, where she said she is “proud to welcome 300 million Americans as new patients.”

Fellow federal official Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, took to the Opening Session stage next — a woman Dr. B described as “putting the protection back into environmental health.” Illuminating the connections between environmentalism and human health, Jackson noted that “environmentalism started because of concerns over public health.”

“Environmental protection is public health protection,” Jackson said.

Near the end of her speech, Jackson called on the public health attendees to get involved in reforming the nation’s chemical management law, known as the Toxic Substances Control Act. Since the law's creation in 1976, EPA has only regulated five chemicals out of tens of thousands, Jackson said. (Shocking, right?) And with today’s kids receiving a steady infusion of chemicals even before they start to eat solid food, it’s time for a change, she said, asking for attendees’ help in making it happen.

“Help us do a better job of bringing our work together,” Jackson asked attendees.

Finally, filmmaker and granddaughter of legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, Celine Cousteau, spoke before the crowd to tell the story of why the health of the world’s oceans is also important for the health of the world’s people.

“It is all completely connected,” Cousteau said. “All of our actions have a reaction somewhere.”

P.S. To get involved in Jackson’s call to reform the nation’s chemical safety law, download EPA’s “Essential Principles for Reform of Chemicals Management Legislation.”

— K.K.

Top: New U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin; bottom: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Photos courtesy Jim Ezell/EZ Event Photography

Hooray for the House! Health reform passes!

They say the first step is always the hardest, and when it comes to health reform, that first step is almost like trying to walk through quicksand. But in the wee hours of last night in the U.S. House of Representatives, lawmakers managed to wrangle the votes to pass H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, in a squeaker vote of 220 to 215.

While the health reform process is far from over — next it’s up to the Senate to vote on their version of a bill — the House bill would expand coverage to 96 percent of all Americans, bar insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing medical conditions, create a public option insurance program and provide billions of dollars in prevention and wellness funds. Hooray for the House!

(Although there is a bit of a “boo” in the House bill: An amendment passed that would restrict access to reproductive health services both in the private insurance market and in the proposed public option. According to advocates such as Planned Parenthood, the amendment is an “unacceptable addition to the health care reform bill that, if enacted, would result in women losing health benefits they have today.”)

Wanna find out more and take some action? Read APHA’s news release and visit our health reform page.

Students speak out

Even though this blogger considers herself entrenched in public health and policy, I still haven’t quite figured out where I stand on the current health reform bill passed by the House of Representatives last night. Of course, I favor increased access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans, but will this bill do that? I just don’t know. So, I asked attendees at the APHA Student Assembly meeting in Philly what they think.

Veronyca Washington, a second-year MSPH candidate at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, said she’s skeptical this bill can change the whole structure of the health care system.

“The health care industry is profit-driven, and it’s hard to change that dynamic,” she said.

Washington’s interest is in prevention — something that too often gets lost in the medical side of the health system. After all, hospitals get paid when a cardiologist performs a triple bypass, not when heart disease is prevented in the first place. It’s more complicated to orient the system toward one that promotes health over economics.

Arlene Burns, of the DuPage County, Ill., Health Department, agreed.

“The health care system has been in place for years, and they are trying to rush it through too quickly,” she said.

Even though the current system is dysfunctional, Burns said opposition to the bill is to be expected.

The latest political hostage in the reform debate is coverage of abortion under a proposed public option insurance program. An amendment, which passed last night, would block people receiving federal subsidies for health insurance from buying policies that cover abortion services.
Tahra Johnson, an MPH student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said she understands the opposition to public funding of abortions. She identifies herself as pro-choice, and feels that abortions should be available as an option on private insurance plans or for people willing to pay out of pocket, but she said it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer money.

What about you, reader? What do you think about the health reform bill that passed last night on Capitol Hill? C’mon, we know you have an opinion — show it off in the comments sections below.

— P.T.

Above, a student takes to the mic during Saturday's Student Assembly meeting. Photo courtesy Jim Ezell/EZ Event Photography

Reunited and it feels so good

During Saturday night's Committee on Affiliates annual reception, members from APHA's 53 affiliated state and regional public health associations partied the night away, honoring the achievements of some of the nation's best and brightest public health advocates and workers.

Photos courtesy Jim Ezell/EZ Event Photography