October 21st, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Opinion
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Contagion is a thriller about a virus that rapidly spreads to become a global epidemic. There aren’t enough coffins. Gangs roam neighborhoods like ours because police have abandoned their posts, fearful of exposure. Garbage fills the streets because sanitation workers are dying. As scientists work feverishly to understand the virus and develop a vaccine, public panic unravels the fabric of civil society, fueled by terror and rattled by false claims of a homeopathic cure promoted by a charismatic charlatan.
The movie has grossed $76 million worldwide since it opened on September 9th. It has all the elements a successful movie needs: a just-believable dystopian vision of the future, flawed good guys, an evil schemer, suspense, heroic action…the works.
And while it’s an action-thriller first and foremost, you don’t have to concentrate hard to notice that it also shows:
- Why the Federal government is necessary: its authority to communicate, negotiate and work with other nations to solve a global problem; its ability to exert authority across state lines and to marshal resources immediately to protect its citizens from peril with no expectation of profit.
- How scientific research is iterative and complicated, not bumbling or malicious. Research is conducted by scientists—normal people with normal lives—who are Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
October 6th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Health care workers’ fear of flu shots has risen as an issue again.
Refusing flu vaccination has risen among health professionals again and again. And again. And again and again.
Vaccination rates for health care workers stands at 35%, which is “a dismal rate,” according to Margaret C. Fisher, MD, a pediatric disease subspecialist and the medical director of The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center. She spoke about vaccinating adults and health care workers at Internal Medicine 2011.
The issue is as annual as the flu itself, and this time, a physician at London’s Imperial College NHS Trust has jumped into the debate, tackling misinformation given within his country’s own health service. He said: “A very interesting question for me is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
September 17th, 2011 by admin in Health Tips
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With the release of the movie Contagion, I thought it would be appropriate to post my cheat sheet on how to investigate a disease outbreak. Aspiring disease detectives take notes!
What do you think of when you hear the word “outbreak”? Maybe you envision a population decimated by a terrible, novel, and incurable disease like in the aformentioned movie Contagion or you think of Dustin Hoffman roaming around California in a blue biocontainment suit with Rene Russo trying to protect folks from a tiny monkey and narrowly preventing an airstrike by the US military?
Hollywood has done their best to capture what an outbreak is…but here are the facts. An outbreak, or epidemic, occurs when there are more cases of disease than would normally be expected in a specific time and place. The disease may be something doctors have already seen before just in a new form or abnormally high numbers, such as foodborne or healthcare-associated infections, or it may be an emerging disease that we don’t know much about like SARS. Either way, we need to investigate to determine why it is happening and how to prevent other people from getting sick or dying. 
Outbreaks are usually noticed by an astute clinician, such as those who first noticed AIDS in New York City and San Francisco, but there are also many high tech disease detection systems available to help us spot any increase in illness. PulseNet is a laboratory network that uses PFGE (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) to help identify foodborne outbreaks by monitoring the genetic make-up of the bacteria causing what may otherwise look like unrelated illnesses. In the recent events of the Salmonella outbreak in ground turkey, PulseNet and the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System helped identify the cause of the outbreak as well as determine how widely it had spread. Programs such as Biosense and First Watch monitor the chief complaint or reason that someone called 9-1-1 or went to the hospital (aka syndromic surveillance). We also monitor news media for reports of outbreaks and websites such as Google Flu trends, which tracks circulating viruses and illnesses. With new technology ordinary citizens can also increasingly report outbreaks in their communities too.
The Magic Formula
So how do you figure out the who, what, when, and where of a disease outbreak? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Public Health Matters Blog*
July 24th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
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For years I have touted the health benefits of the “Mediterranean Diet” and encouraged patients to eat like the Europeans. Fresh farm vegetables, olive oil, fish and red wine have been linked with longevity and good health. I just read in NPR news that young Italians are forgoing the eating patterns of their elders and are imitating the “U.S. diet”. The result is soaring obesity, just like in the United States.
According the the article, young Italians ages 6-12 are sitting in front of the TV and are eating fast foods and soda. In just three generations, the eating habits and activity of kids has changed from their healthy grandparents. Italian health officials say obesity is reaching epidemic proportions.
Part of the diet changes are a result of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
July 22nd, 2011 by JenniferKearneyStrouse in News, Opinion
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A report released recently by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health issued some grim warnings about the current and future state of the U.S.’s obesity epidemic.
Bluntly titled “F is for fat: How obesity threatens America’s future 2011,” the report found that obesity rates rose in 16 states since 2010 and that more than 30% of people are obese in 12 states, compared with one state just four years ago. The South is still the worst-faring region—nine out of 10 states with the highest obesity rates are located there.
The report compared today’s data with data from 20 years ago, when no state’s obesity rate exceeded 15%. Now, only one state—Colorado—has a rate below 20%. The report also points out that despite the increased attention paid to obesity by government (not to mention the media), no states posted a decrease in rates over the past year. Diabetes and hypertension rates have also risen sharply over the past two decades, the report said.
Recommendations to address the problem include preserving and in some cases restoring federal funding for obesity prevention and implementing legislation to improve nutrition in schools, among others.
Meanwhile, two researchers are making headlines for proposing a more extreme solution: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
