Presenting at the American College of Preventive Medicine's annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., in February 2012, Teresa Skojac, M.D.,  discussed 'Tobacco Use at the Atlanta VAMC-The Sacred Cow.'

U.S. Air Force Col. Teresa M. Skojac, M.D., M.P.H., M.C., F.S., is not a traditional public health graduate student or medical resident, but her mission to learn more about preventive medicine brought her to the Georgia Department of Public Health, where she recently completed a medical rotation with the department's Emergency Preparedness and Response Unit (EPR).

"My coming to Georgia was a mutual decision between myself and the U.S. Air Force," she said. "The USAF has its own preventive medicine residency program at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and I was considered for it as well as a civilian position. However, we agreed that I would benefit from the opportunity to see preventive medicine and public health in the private sector. I was selected into a private sector program at Emory University School of Medicine."
 

 
Like many a hospital, school or business, local health departments now have the opportunity to apply for accreditation.
 
Local public health accreditation seeks to define expectations for the services provided by all health departments nationwide through a set of standards & measures.  Specifically, the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) will assess Cobb & Douglas Public Health's provision of the 10 Essential Services of Public Health. Though some states and health departments have developed their own forms of accreditation, there has never been a national instrument or board for local health department accreditation.  
 

 

Staff from the Office of Child Health of the Department of Public Health gather during a Kite Day they sponsored in honor of Month of the Young Child.

The Office of Child Health of the Department of Public Health sponsored a Kite Day on April 20 at Central Park in Atlanta in honor of Month of the Young Child.  Month of the Young Child is an opportunity for early childhood programs-including child care and Head Start programs, preschools, and elementary schools-to hold activities to bring awareness to the needs of young children. During the month of April, the Office of Child Health encouraged all individuals and organizations to play a role in making Georgia a better place for young children and their families.

Kite Day was a fun opportunity to recognize and celebrate with Georgia's young children and the programs and individuals that serve them. Local pre-K classrooms were invited to bring children to this day of fun in the park to decorate and fly kites.    

Gayle Brannon, new manager of Whitfield County Health Department

Gayle Brannon is the new manager of the Whitfield County Health Department, but she is no stranger to Whitfield County or to public health.

Brannon most recently served the North Georgia Health District in Dalton as assistant director of public health nursing and clinical services and as director of public health nursing and clinical services for the Northwest Georgia Health District based in Rome.

A 1981 graduate of Jacksonville State University, Brannon's nursing career began as team leader in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton. Subsequently, she was nurse manager of the Walker County Health Department, public health nurse specialist for the Walker County and Chattooga County Boards of Health, quality assurance supervisor for North Georgia Home Health Agency in Fort Oglethorpe and health occupations Instructor for the Walker County Board of Education.

In addition to her nursing degree, Brannon is a graduate of Emory University's Leadership Academy 2000 and of the 2001 Management Academy for Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.    

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates 800 infants are born to hepatitis B-infected women in Georgia each year, placing them at risk of developing perinatal hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection that can lead to liver cancer and even death. Only half of these infants are reported to the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). Georgia medical providers and public health districts play a vital role in identifying hepatitis B-infected pregnant women and preventing disease transmission.

The Georgia Perinatal Hepatitis B Prevention Program conducts surveillance to identify hepatitis B-infected pregnant women in each health district. Pregnant women are enrolled in the program during early pregnancy and receive case management throughout their infant's first year of life. Each public health district has a perinatal hepatitis B case manager who is responsible for tracking local cases. Case managers educate obstetricians during pregnancy, ensure newborns receive post-exposure prophylaxis at birth, complete the hepatitis B vaccine series by six months of age and complete hepatitis B post-vaccination testing between nine and 18 months of age. Case managers concurrently track three birth cohorts at all times. The goal of the program is to stop the transmission of hepatitis B virus from mother to child.       

Dr. J. Patrick O'Neal, M.D., Health Protection Director at DPH, compares notes with Charley English, Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security director, prior to their presentations at the annual Emergency Management Agency conference in Savannah.

Promoting the cooperative efforts of emergency management and public health benefits each group and Georgia residents overall-this is especially true at times when numerous agencies are called on for disaster response.

That cooperation was at the heart of this year's annual Emergency Management Association of Georgia conference, held May 2-4 in Savannah. More than 50 topics were addressed by leading professionals in emergency management and public health. Concerns ranged from disaster mental health to regional coordinating of hospitals and mass fatality planning.
 
"I'm not grateful for Georgia having more than its fair share of disasters in recent years, but I am grateful to have learned from those disasters, and learned from those problems," said Dr. J. Patrick O'Neal, M.D., Director of Health Protection, during a presentation at the conference.       

A student at Nebo Elementary makes her way along one of the tracks during RUN-A-PALOOZA, an event that raises money for the school and gets students excited about fitness.

An elementary school in Paulding County focuses on the enjoyment of running while also raising money for the school through RUN-A-PALOOZA, an annual school-wide event that takes place during each grade level's physical education time.  

Entire grade levels at Nebo Elementary run at the same time, with classes spread out across three tracks marked by cones on the school's property. Students are challenged to run 21 laps, which equals three miles, in 35 minutes. Each time a student completes a lap, a teacher or parent volunteer places a mark on a specially-designed RUN-A-PALOOZA T-shirt to keep track of the laps.

Students mentally and physically prepare for RUN-A-PALOOZA during PE classes leading up to the event. The teachers want the students to be as successful as possible and use games and activities to encourage running and make it fun.   

The Bacteriology Unit show their team spirit during Lab Week.  This unit performs a wide range of analyses, ranging from STD to Foodborne Outbreak testing in support of epidemiological investigations. L to R (front): Lynett Poventud, Gladys Maldonado, Rueei-Shu Li, and Tracie Jackson L to R (back): Nellie Luyanda, William Cheek, Calvin Stinson, Patricia Bennie, and Mary Hodel

The Georgia Public Health Laboratory (GPHL) proudly celebrated National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week (NMLPW) and all of its professionals dedicated to providing high quality clinical laboratory diagnostics.  

This celebration was held from April 22nd-28, 2012 with the national theme, "Get Results" and a 2012 subtheme: "Without the Lab, You're Just Guessing." 

Serving the 159 counties in Georgia, GPHL operates with 17 laboratory units and processes approximately 600,000 specimens per year. This includes over six million laboratory tests performed by highly skilled, certified individuals. 

Elizabeth Franko, Dr.PH., serves as GPHL Laboratory Director and oversees the Central Facility, located in Decatur, as well as the Albany Regional Laboratory and the Waycross Public Health Laboratory.