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| March 05, 2012- In This Issue |
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Home
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Priorities for Children |
Healthy Breakfast |
DPH Trains Doc |
Crick Heads Floyd Health |
Social Marketing Campaign |
Social Media Harnessed |
PHBRIEFS |
PHRECIPE |
PHTRAINING |
PHEVENTS
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PHNEWS
 On Feb. 22, Governor Deal addressed a crowd of
nearly 100 people - child and health advocates,
legislators, and agency heads - at Voices for
Georgia's Children's reception to celebrate the new,
executive-level Georgia Department of Public Health
(DPH) and welcome Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald as its
commissioner. (In July 2011, DPH became a
stand-alone, cabinet-level agency after more than 30
years of being consolidated under other
departments.)
Governor Deal, with First Lady Sandra Deal and
Comr. Fitzgerald standing by, spoke to the group
at the Freight Depot about the important role
DPH plays in the lives of Georgia's children,
especially in reducing childhood obesity - a
significant problem in Georgia, as our children
are the heaviest in the country next to
Mississippi.
Comr. Fitzgerald - a founding board member of
Voices and new member of Governor Deal's
"Leadership Team for Children" - also addressed
the crowd and discussed DPH's priorities for
2012, which include, but are not limited to,
infant mortality, childhood immunizations and
childhood obesity. (Learn more about Comr.
Fitzgerald's plans for DPH
here and read our 2012 Health Steps
Indicators publication for more information on
these issues in Georgia.) 
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 Breakfast has long been considered the most
important meal of the day and it is incredibly
important for students, as it provides the energy
necessary to get ready for a day of learning.
Studies have shown that students who eat
breakfast have a general increase in math and
reading scores, increased attention and improved
behavior. A study in Pediatrics suggests that
hungry students are more likely to have to
repeat a grade, and according to the Minnesota
Department of Children and Learning, students
who eat breakfast before starting school have
fewer discipline problems and visit school
nurses' offices less often.
Many schools in Georgia are adopting programs
that encourage students to eat healthy
breakfasts. In fact, 85 percent of Georgia's
schools have a breakfast program. Marietta City
Schools adopted a Grab n' Go Breakfast program
geared towards placing healthy and nutritious
breakfast foods in mobile units for students to
"grab" on the way to class.
The program is free for all the students in the
district. As students enter their schools, they
can grab an easy, balanced breakfast and head to
class. By the time the bell rings, they are
fueled up and ready to learn. The successful
program was featured recently during a CBS "Fit
Kids Fit Families" segment.
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Public Health Training Proves Significant for Medical Doctor
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Fresh out of his residency, Luke Shouse,
M.D., M.P.H., is pictured here as a new
employee in the HIV section in 2003.
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Luke Shouse, M.D., M.P.H., experienced the
inside world of Public Health as a medical resident,
full-time employee, and now as the CDC assignee
to the HIV/AIDS surveillance section. A graduate
of East Tennessee State University's Quillen
College of Medicine in 1999, Dr. Shouse is board
certified in Preventive Medicine/Public Health.
"I completed my Preventive Medicine residency at
Morehouse School of Medicine in June 2002," said
Dr. Shouse. "During my residency, I participated
in a three month rotation at the Georgia
Department of Public Health (formerly Division
of Public Health) in the Epidemiology Branch."
Dr. Shouse has landed once again in the
Epidemiology Branch as he fills a recent
vacancy.
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Crick Heads Floyd County Health Department
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Nichole Crick, Nurse Manager,
Floyd County Health Department
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Nichole Crick has been named Nurse Manager for
the Floyd County Health Department. She has
been serving in that capacity since the first of
the year. She also continues as Program Manager
for the Ryan White Specialty Clinic. Crick has
ten years public health experience at both
county and district levels.
She has experience with most state and local
public health programs, including extensive
experience with the Children with Special Needs
program, which she previously managed. Crick
also worked for four years in the private sector
as director of a private hospice program.
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HIV Social Marketing Campaign to Target Women, Girls
 National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
is a nationwide observance that encourages
people to take action in the fight against
HIV/AIDS and raise awareness of its impact
on women and girls. It is observed on March
10, but throughout the month organizations
and health
agencies in Georgia come together to
support, encourage discussion, and teach
women and girls about prevention of HIV, the
importance of getting tested for HIV, and
how to live with and manage HIV/AIDS.
This year, the Georgia Department of Public
Health (DPH) Office of HIV is excited to
support this national observance by
partnering with the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
(CDC) and other local agencies and health
departments to launch a new multi-faceted
social marketing campaign - "Take Charge.
Take the Test." (TCTT). This new initiative
is designed to increase HIV testing among
minority women by empowering them with
information, encouraging them to get tested,
and enabling them to take charge of their
lives - whatever their HIV test result.
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Epidemiologists Consider How Social Media Could be Harnessed
to Predict Disease Outbreaks
Epidemiologists converged on Feb.16 at the
2012 International Conference on Digital
Disease Detection at Harvard Medical School
in Boston, Massachusetts. On the agenda is
informal media-like Twitter, blog posts, and
web searches-and how these could be applied
to identify, track, and predict disease
outbreaks. The meeting is sponsored by the
CDC and Health Map, and run by a team of
researchers at Children's Hospital Boston,
which mines online data to identify and
track disease outbreaks.
Although informal media is already being
utilized by researchers, such as Twitter to
track cholera outbreaks in Haiti, not
everyone is ready to incorporate it into
their surveillance. Informal data's
reliability is yet untested, Andrea Dugas of
Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore told
Nature. Informal data have also not been
shown to help predict outbreaks, added
Richard Rothman, an emergency-medicine
physician at the Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine who co-authored with Dugas a paper
correlating influenza-related web searches
with a spike in emergency room visits for
the illness. Other researchers are concerned
with sifting through the sea of possible
data to find the pertinent information.
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Home
|
Priorities for Children |
Healthy Breakfast |
DPH Trains Doc |
Crick Heads Floyd Health |
Social Marketing Campaign |
Social Media Harnessed |
PHBRIEFS |
PHRECIPE |
PHTRAINING |
PHEVENTS
|
PHNEWS
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