March 26, 2012- In This Issue

Home | Henry Schools Tobacco-Free | District 5-2 WIC Celebrates | Mercer Partner-UP! Winner | Dangers of Rural Roads | Clinic Getting $3 Million | Fight to Control TB | PHBRIEFS | PHRECIPE | PHTRAINING | PHEVENTS | PHNEWS

Henry County Schools Tobacco-Free Work Recognized   
 
Hayla Hall (front, center) presents Erik Charles with a plaque, while supported by youth advisory council members from local communities.
Henry County Schools Board of Education was formally recognized by District 4 Public Health (LaGrange district) officials during Monday evening's board meeting.  Hayla Hall, public information officer for District 4 Public Health, presented a plaque to board Vice Chairman Erik Charles recognizing the school system's efforts to become tobacco-free.
 
Henry County Schools became the 80th system in the state to approve the 100% Tobacco-Free Schools Model Policy during last month's meeting.  Hall, as well as youth from advisory councils representing Shiloh McDonough Community Outreach, Inc. and Zion Community Center of Hampton, were in attendance to help make the presentation to the Board of Education.
 
"This is a very positive policy update for our employees, students, and community," said Rodney Bowler, Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services.  "A tobacco-free school system supports a healthy lifestyle that we can all be proud of."
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The WIC program in North Central Health District, District 5-2 in Macon, is celebrating National Nutrition month during March, kicking off their celebration with a show of colors during their February staff meeting.   

Terri Williams, nutritionist and certified lactation consultant at the Family Advocacy WIC clinic, coordinated the colorful attire for each WIC clinic.  She assigned groups different colors to wear that matched the colors on the MyPlate icon.  MyPlate illustrates the five food groups that are the building blocks for a healthy diet using a familiar image-a place setting for a meal.

"I asked that they wear blue for dairy, red for fruits, green for vegetables, orange for grains and purple for protein," Williams said. "Some of the groups showed up with masks, balloons and food models to further showcase their assigned food group. What a colorful group they made!"
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Mercer University Public Health Association selected as Partner Up! Video Contest winner    
 
Mercer University Public Health Association team members won the Partner Up! for Public Health video contest with their video about public health at work in the Macon area.
In November of 2011, Partner Up! for Public Health invited Georgia students to recreate the "This is Public Health" national campaign by creating a video emphasizing the importance of public health in their community. Students were encouraged to produce creative, original and informative videos addressing the question - "What is public health?"

By the March 1 deadline, 12 student teams from across the state had submitted videos that tackled the subject matter from a wide range of approaches.

"It was very gratifying to see the different ways the student teams came at this assignment," said Charles Hayslett, the Partner Up! campaign leader.  "They brought a lot of creativity and passion to these videos, and all, in their own way, were very impressive."
 
The Mercer University Public Health Association video submission was selected as the contest winner by a panel of judges comprised of Partner Up! for Public Health campaign staff and advisory board members. The video, "This is Public Health: Addressing Issues and Creating Solutions", running just over 5 minutes, focuses on public health at work in the Macon area. The Mercer University Public Health Association video contest team members are Shekita Maxwell, Brittany Taylor, Else Seifu, Patience Sellers, Melanie Williams, Phylicia Hammonds, Jennifer Jones, Chanda Redd, Meghan Gondron and Karishma Saini. Mercer University Public Health Association president Crystal Davis also played a supporting role.
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Initiative Addresses Dangers of Rural Roads       
 
Steve Davidson (left) project director for the Rural Roads Initiativ and David Brake (right), a county environmentalist, distribute information to students at a teen traffic safety event in Appling county.
Traffic fatalities on rural roads made up 57 percent of total fatalities in 2007 in Georgia even though only 23 percent of Georgia's population lives in rural areas. Recognizing the disparity, the Department of Public Health (DPH) along with the University of Georgia teamed with the Governor's Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) to launch a Rural Roads Initiative.
 
Funded to identify risk factors and ultimately decrease injury on these country roads, the initiative addresses environmental risks such as inadequate signage and striping on roads, behavioral factors such as lack of seat belt usage and speeding, and best program practices and evaluation data. The initiative reinforced that Georgians driving or riding on rural roadways face a much greater risk of being killed or injured in traffic crashes (than those in urban or suburban areas) because Georgians in rural areas are more likely not to wear a seat belt. 

Consequently, attention is now focused on increasing teen seat belt usage. The model consists of surveys to determine the current and post intervention seat belt usage levels, incentives to encourage teens to use seat belts, and disincentives for non-usage.  
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HIV/AIDS Clinic Getting $3 million        
 
David Thompson, a community outreach specialist with Georgia Health Sciences University, administers an OraQuick Advance HIV-1/2 antibody test at Walgreens on Peach Orchard Road in Augusta.(Photo by EMILY ROSE BENNETT/STAFF)
The HIV/AIDS clinic at Georgia Health Sciences University is getting a $3 million renewal, money that will become even more critical as the waiting list for help with AIDS drugs in Georgia becomes the longest in the country.
 
The university received a federal $3.4 million renewal for three years to serve the 13 counties surrounding Augusta in Georgia, and Aiken and Edgefield counties in South Carolina.
 
The clinic has received funding since 1995 through the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act to enable it to treat 1,300 patients and do outreach such as rapid HIV testing. 

 

The funding is even more critical because Georgia and South Carolina limit the number of patients who can receive help through the state AIDS Drug Assistance Program. 
Of the 4,774 patients nationwide who are on a waiting list to receive financial help from the states, 1,320 of them are in Georgia, the largest waiting list of any state, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 224 are on South Carolina's waiting list. 

 

The lack of funding hasn't hurt patient care at a large clinic like the one at GHSU, said Dr. J. Peter Rissing, chief of infectious diseases and professor of medicine at GHSU.

"It means that we have more hoops to jump through and the folks that assist us in that are doing more solicitation from pharmaceutical (companies)," he said. The ones likely hurt by it are patients who are being seen at smaller providers that might have only a few HIV patients and lack the staff to do the contacts and paperwork, Rissing said.

 
Public Health Crucial in Fight to Control TB    
 
March 24 commemorated World Tuberculosis (TB) Day and marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the germ that causes TB.  The 2012 World TB Day campaign in the U.S. focused on the slogan "Stop TB in My Lifetime".  In Georgia, TB cases dropped 62 percent from 909 cases reported in 1992, the peak year of a TB resurgent period in Georgia, to 347 cases in 2011.   The Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) TB Program attributes the decline in TB cases to successful public health program interventions.

The majority of TB cases in Georgia are treated in public health clinics. Program interventions include directly observed therapy, effective case management and thorough contact investigations conducted by dedicated public health staff.

Georgia TB program staff, along with state TB laboratory and TB program staff from districts close to Atlanta, participated in the CDC-sponsored annual TB Walk held at Grant Park in Atlanta on World TB Day.  The group participates every year and is often joined by other DPH employees.
 
 

PHRECIPE

 

Couscous and Fruit Salad

Servings: 4

(about 3/4 cups each)  

  

Click Here for Full Recipe

 

 

 

Home | Henry Schools Tobacco-Free | District 5-2 WIC Celebrates | Mercer Partner-UP! Winner | Dangers of Rural Roads | Clinic Getting $3 Million | Fight to Control TB | PHBRIEFS | PHRECIPE | PHTRAINING | PHEVENTS | PHNEWS