Category: Public Health Reads

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public health Public Health Reads

Public Health 101: Contact Tracing

“Contact tracing” is a new buzzword being used in the news lately, as more states are dedicating more time and effort to conduct this practice to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Here’s a quick definition of contact tracing and a simple visual representation of its meaning.

What other terms about COVID-19 and/or public health do you (or others) might want to learn about? I’m making a list for May! Let me know in the comments.

I previously covered social determinants of health and combatting misinformation about coronavirus in a prior post. Read it here.

References:
Simmons-Duffin, S. (2020, April 14). How Contact Tracing Works and How It Can Help Reopen the Country. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/14/833726999/how-contact-tracing-can-help-fight-coronavirus

World Health Organization. (2017, May 9). Contact tracing. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/contact-tracing

Wetsman, N. (2020, April 10). What is contact tracing. The Verge. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216550/contact-tracing-coronavirus-what-is-tracking-spread-how-it-works

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public health Public Health Reads

Public Health Reads – Thursday, May 30, 2019

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Welcome back to my public health curation series, Public Health Reads!

As a young public health professional, it’s important to keep up with industry news and to make sure that people I serve (including you, that is reading this introduction) are informed and well-versed in public health issues. All of the articles below were picked with that in mind.

WHAT IS PUBLIC HEALTH?

You may be wondering what exactly is public health. Here’s a short and excellent primer from the University of Michigan School of Public Health on what our field is about. LINK 

THE THREE CORE FUNCTIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Along with the definition of public health, there are three core functions of public health: ASSESSMENT, POLICY DEVELOPMENT, and ASSURANCE. All of the articles are labeled with one or more two functions to add a critical lens to understanding what constitutes a public health issue and need.

Here’s the definition for each core function.

ASSESSMENT: “ to assess the health needs of the community, to investigate the occurrence of health effects and health hazards in the community, or to analyze the determinants of identified health needs” (Public Health Association of Nebraska (PHANE), n.d).

POLICY DEVELOPMENT:“to advocate for public health, build constituencies, and identify resources in the community; to prioritize among health needs, and to plan and develop policies to address priority health needs”. (PHANE, n.d.)

ASSURANCE: “to manage resources and develop organizational structure; to implement programs; to evaluate programs and provide quality assurance; to inform and educate the public” (PHANE, n.d.)

ARTICLES:

1. No longer in the dark: Navajo Nation homes get electricity by Felicia Fonseca, AP
Core function: ASSESSMENT
EXCERPT: “Navajos without electricity also pack food or medication in coolers with ice or leave it outside in the wintertime. Children use dome lights in cars or kerosene lamps to do their homework at night. Some tribal members have small solar systems that deliver intermittent power. No electricity typically means no running water and a lack of overall economic development. Creating the infrastructure to reach the far-flung homes on the reservation is extremely costly.”
LINK 

2. How One Health System Overcame Resistance to a Surgical Checklist by Kate Hilton and Alex Anderson for Harvard Business Review
Core Function: POLICY DEVELOPMENT
Excerpt: “Yet, the story begins as most change efforts do: with resistance. For 18 months between 2009 and 2010, Rose, an anesthesiologist who was then vice president of surgical services at McLeod, worked with surgical teams to implement the checklist — an evidence-based best practice for safe surgery. Similar to a flight safety checklist in the aviation industry, the surgical safety checklist ensures that the patient is the correct person, the surgery that’s about to be performed is the correct surgery, and surgical teams are prepared for emergent complications. The benefits of the checklist are clear: It takes only a few moments to conduct, improves patient outcomes, and saves lives.”
LINK

3. Here’s exactly how restricting abortion harms public health by Nicole Wetsman for Popular Science
Core Function: ASSESSMENT
EXCERPT: “Using the best modern medicine has to offer, abortions are extremely safe: Only one quarter of 1 percent of abortions have complications, which makes them less risky than having wisdom teeth removed. However, placing restrictions on how and when people can access them makes the procedures less safe. Delaying care with waiting periods, or by limiting the number of clinics in an area, means people have procedures later in pregnancy when they have a higher risk of complications.”
LINK

4. Periods Shouldn’t Be A Privilege for the Rich by Jewel Wicker for Nylon
Core Functions: POLICY DEVELOPMENT, ASSURANCE
EXCERPT: “But changing public perception is only one of the problems that needs to be solved in order to ensure women throughout the country aren’t disadvantaged simply because they are menstruating.

The Flo Code founder says she recently met with legislatures to advocate for Texas to eliminate the “tampon tax” that places a sales tax on menstrual products. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida and, most recently, Nevada are among the 10 states that have already abolished the tax, according to the New York Times. While bills that would eliminate the tax have been introduced during this legislative session, the Texas Tribune notes several bills aiming to eliminate the tax have been introduced in the past and failed to be successful. With the state sales tax in Texas ranging from 6.25 percent to 8.25 percent, successfully eliminating this hurdle would go a long way in making menstrual products more accessible.”
LINK

5. CDC Grant to ‘Lay the Groundwork’ for Further Action on Maternal Mortality by Katelyn Burns for ReWire.News
Core Functions: Policy Development, Assurance
EXCERPT: “The federal grants offered in the CDC’s announcement encourage individual states to track racial demographic information related to maternal deaths, according to Mayes. However, she cautioned that maintaining the privacy of families that belong to smaller racial groups is also important. “Reporting pregnancy-related mortality ratios for all racial/ethnic groups may not be possible for all because small numbers create unreliable ratios,” she said. “It is an important way to acknowledge and honor these women and their communities, but also must only be done in a way that does not identify her or her family. The more MMRCs that are sharing data, and the more years of consistent data we have, the more MMRCs and CDC will be able to provide a depth of information on pregnancy-related deaths, including by race/ethnicity.”
LINK

6. Historically redlined communities face higher asthma rates by Kara Manke for Berkeley News
Core Function: ASSESSMENT
EXCERPT: “Though diesel particular matter has been linked to asthma, the researchers emphasize that higher levels of air pollution in redlined neighborhoods may not be the only factor behind the disparity. The psychosocial stresses associated with living in neighborhoods that have been historically divested from — including poverty, high crime rates and even poor political reputation — have also been linked to asthma and must be addressed in efforts to improve public health.”
LINK

7. The Stress of a Natural Disaster Can Take Toll on Babies In Utero by Amal Ahmed for The Atlantic
CORE FUNCTION: Assessment
EXCERPT: “Six months after giving birth, mothers were asked to report the frequency of certain infant behaviors and reactions, like laughing or smiling and sadness or fear. In line with existing research on stress, the results showed that for women who had already shown symptoms of prenatal depression, the storm exacerbated the consequences for their babies. They showed higher rates of distress and lower rates of pleasure seeking than babies born before the storm. In other words, living through the storm amplified the impacts of existing prenatal depression. The effect was moderate but significant, and the researchers do not yet know how or whether there will be longer-term consequences. While the researchers found that the effect was observable across income groups, it will take further research to understand the nuances of how this plays out across class and race, as the study sample was too small to draw those conclusions.”
LINK

8. #PleaseSaveMe: When Crowdfunding Is The Difference Between Lying and Dying by Kim Kelly for Bitch Magazine
Core Functions: ASSESSMENT, ASSURANCE
EXCERPT: “One of this new economy’s major flaws, aside from the fact that it operates this way at all, is that those with more social capital stand a markedly better chance of having successful campaigns. Crowdfunding works best for individuals who have large followings on social media, marketing experience, or proximity to highly developed online networks. And most people are well aware of the risks and inequities of the process. (Some even hire crowdfunding consultants, further widening the gap between the hopeful and the damned.)”
LINK

9. There Will Be Blood: The Precarious Politics of Representing Abortion Onscreen by Gretchen Sisson for Bitch Magazine
Core Function: ASSESSMENT
EXCERPT: “About 5 percent of fictional women, like the character in The Knick, died because of medical complications of the abortion, and about 20 percent of characters face major consequences such as infection, hemorrhage, hysterectomy, depression, and infertility. Of course, we cannot and should not expect the onscreen world to perfectly mirror reality. Screenwriters find drama and humor in rare, extreme, bizarre, or fantastical circumstances. Yet while other medical procedures, such as CPR, are consistently shown as safer and more effective on television, abortion continues to be depicted as unsafe. These manifold stories linking abortion and risk build a social mythology that abortion is dangerous for women, full stop.”
LINK

10. Offering Health Check-Ups In Barbershops Could Transform Health Care for Black Men in America by Lois Parshley for Pacific Standard
Core Functions: ASSESSMENT, ASSURANCE
EXCERPT: “It may sound simple, but few researchers make this kind of effort to report back to the communities they study. Ravenell calls the normal approach the “Seagull Effect”—“swoop in, swoop out.” In contrast, he believes he found success in the barbershops because he communicated clearly how the community might benefit, mobilized a racially congruent staff, and left the clinical setting to meet people in their own cultural contexts.”
LINK 

This article list is also available on Flipboard.

If you have an article you feel like more people should read, contact me and I will credit you!

REFERENCES

Public Health Association of Nebraska (PHANE). (n.d.). Core Government Public Health Functions in Basic Duties of Public Health Departments. [Article]. Retrieved from http://publichealthne.org/phan-sections/public-health-education-section/marketing/core-functions-of-public-health/

University of Michigan School of Public Health. (2018, November 13). What Is Public Health? Pt. 1. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZFyI5eegY&t=2s

 

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FridayReads Public Health Reads

Public Health Reads, Vol. 1

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Volume 1 – Friday, February 1, 2019 

Welcome to my public health curation series, Public Health Reads, which will be released every 1st and 4th Friday of every month!
As a young public health professional, it’s important for me to keep up with topics within my field and to make sure that people I serve (including you, that is reading this intro) are informed and well-versed in public health issues.  All of the articles below were picked with that in mind.
You may be wondering what exactly is public health. Here’s a short and excellent primer from the University of Michigan School of Public Health on what our field is about.
Along with learning the definition of public health, there are three core functions of public health: ASSESSMENT, POLICY DEVELOPMENT, and ASSURANCE. All of the articles are divided by the functions to add a critical lens to understanding what constitutes a public health issue and need. Some of the articles featured in this volume showcased how community folks have created their own solutions to their own issues, which I find to be empowering.
Happy reading!

ASSESSMENT: “ to assess the health needs of the community, to investigate the occurrence of health effects and health hazards in the community, or to analyze the determinants of identified health needs” (Public Health Association of Nebraska (PHANE), n.d).

ARTICLES: 
The Rebel Midwives of Alabama by Rebecca Grant, Highline
LINK
Excerpt: “The 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, eventually led to the integration of medical services. By the 1970s, 99 percent of American births took place in hospitals and states were passing laws preventing midwives from practicing, ostensibly for health and safety reasons. Alabama ended the legal practice of lay midwifery in 1976. A tiny number of home birthers persisted, mostly white, middle-class women seeking an alternative to the hospital. It was technically a misdemeanor for midwives to assist them, but the likelihood of being prosecuted seemed slim.”

When Racism Anchors Your Health by George Johnson, Tonic
LINK
Excerpt: “Consider the medical crimes committed against us—the Tuskegee study or J. Marion Sims’s experiments on slave women sans anesthesia, for example—that have planted seeds of mistrust for doctors. Consider that medical professionals often don’t believe some of us when we say we’re in pain—it’s reflected in the underdiagnosis of disease and the denial of pain medications for black Americans who actually need them.”

“Freedom Farmers” Tells The History of Black Farmers Uniting Against Racism by Cynthia Greenlee, Civil Eats
LINK
Excerpt: “Agency is mostly defined as a very individual thing. The language has to capture that as an individual, yes, you make the decision that you’re going to grow food. But what about when several people decide they want to [farm] as a strategy for increasing access to nutrient-rich food and pool our resources together? What happens when we care about each other in terms of health, education, safety, security, and wellness and there’s this collective decision to move in these directions? I couldn’t find a way to explain it other than “collective agency.””

America Is Failing Its Black Mothers by Amy Roeder, Harvard Health
LINK
Excerpt: “ “Barfield and others in the field are pushing for wider adoption of Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs), now operating in about 30 states. Every time a mother dies, these volunteer expert panels meet to review official data as well as other information about the mother’s life, such as media stories or her social media postings. The goal is to identify what went wrong and to develop guidelines for action. In Georgia, for example, where the country’s maternal death rates are highest, the committee has found records of women who developed hypertension during pregnancy and didn’t receive medication soon enough, women who died waiting for unavailable ambulances, and women whose providers didn’t understand warning signs that led to a hemorrhage, just to name a few gaps in the system. “We need these stories to save women’s lives,” Barfield says.”

Lightning, Struck: How An Atlanta Neighborhood Died on The Altar of Super Bowl Dreams by Max Blau and Dustin Chambers, The Bitter Southerner
LINK
Excerpt: “Over a quarter century, 37 million people flocked to the Georgia Dome for Falcons games, two Super Bowls, and the Atlanta Summer Olympics. The stadium elevated Atlanta’s image in the eyes of the world. But the city’s profile ascended at the cost of families who not only lost their fight against displacement but also their right to be remembered.”

The Instagram Community That’s Decolonizing Fitness by Deonna Anderson, YES! Magazine
LINK
Excerpt: “Queer and trans people often experience discrimination in fitness spaces. The very design of gyms, both in the physical buildings and their processes, is often gendered. Intake forms offer “male” and “female” gender options, and restrooms and changing rooms typically don’t make room for people who identify as nonbinary. Additionally, people point to other patrons misgendering or harassing them. That’s where the Decolonizing Fitness database comes in. Ilya Parker, owner of Decolonizing Fitness LLC, posted that callout to confirm the need to create a free, downloadable list of fitness trainers and movement trainers who provide affirming services for queer and trans clients.”

POLICY DEVELOPMENT: “to advocate for public health, build constituencies, and identify resources in the community; to prioritize among health needs, and to plan and develop policies to address priority health needs”. (PHANE, n.d.)

ARTICLES: 
Black Patients Miss Out on Promising Cancer Drugs by Caroline Chen and Riley Wong, ProPublica
LINK
Excerpt: “Still, trial protocols are rarely designed with minority communities in mind, Burhansstipanov said. It has long been rumored among Native Americans, she said, that a clinical trial in the 1990s required patients to take a medication upon rising in the morning. In many Native American tribes, the first thing people do when they wake up is greet the sun with morning prayers. For some tribes, prayers can take more than half an hour. Because of the delay, the tale goes, Native American patients were kicked out of the clinical trial for violating the protocol. “The story spread and became a barrier for people to take part in clinical trials,” she said.”

Two-Thirds of Low-Income Women In 1 Major City Can’t Always Afford Tampons and Pads by Catherine Pearson, Huffington Post
LINK
Excerpt: “In most of the U.S., tampons, and pads are subject to sales tax because they’re not classified as products that fill a basic, essential need. Only a handful of states have abolished the so-called “tampon tax.” Food assistance funding like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cannot be used for menstrual products, nor can Medicaid. Women’s advocates say there is a pressing need to make menstrual hygiene products more accessible to all women, regardless of their economic situation.”

ASSURANCE: “to manage resources and develop organizational structure; to implement programs; to evaluate programs and provide quality assurance; to inform and educate the public” (PHANE, n.d.)

ARTICLES:

In Columbus, Expectant Moms Will Get On-Demand Rides to the Doctor by Laura Bliss, CityLab
LINK
Excerpt: “To her, the fact that the transportation pilot includes trips to grocery shopping and other daily errands signals a greater recognition by city officials that infant mortality is about more than getting moms to doctor’s offices. “You can’t have an impact by just addressing prenatal care,” she said. “You have to look at the overall holistic picture of women’s lives.”

Chicago’s Jail Is One of the Country’s Biggest Mental Health Care Providers. Here’s A Look Inside. by Samantha Jones and Lili Kobielski, Mother Jones
LINK
Excerpt: “Chicago may be the biggest example of the mental health crisis in jails, but the problem there is not unique. Between 2009 and 2012, state legislatures around the country cut $4.35 billion in services for people with psychiatric problems, even while the need for services increased. Today, roughly 2 million people with serious mental illness are booked into jails each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. That’s about the population of Houston, the fourth most populous city in America. In 44 states, jails or prisons care for more mentally ill people than hospitals, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.”

This article list is also available on Flipboard.
If you have an article you feel like more people should read, contact me and I will credit you!

References

Public Health Association of Nebraska (PHANE). (n.d.). Core Government Public Health Functions in Basic Duties of Public Health Departments. [Article]. Retrieved from http://publichealthne.org/phan-sections/public-health-education-section/marketing/core-functions-of-public-health/
University of Michigan School of Public Health. (2018, November 13). What Is Public Health? Pt. 1. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZFyI5eegY