{ 2003 }

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February 2003

With many staff in public health having little or no actual training in the discipline of public health, this hour-long training is a great way to learn just what it is. The course was developed by the New York New Jersey Public Health Training Center and the School of Public Health University at Albany, SUNY.

Designed for support and technical staff in public health agencies and helpful for anyone new to public health practice, the course can be incorporated into routine orientation programs. Librarians just getting started providing services to public health practitioners will find it an interesting exercise in online learning in the public health domain.

You, as a new employee, get to meet other staff and learn what they are doing and what their main roles and functions are. You will get to determine what public health is through a quiz, organize newspaper articles by broad subject and generally interact with the program to increase your public health knowledge.

The site requires registration (free) and that you assign yourself a password. The course should take about an hour but you can log out and back in again later if you do not have time to complete the whole learning module in one session.

Staff at the two institutions ought to be congratulated on making this learning opportunity open to all.

posted February 28, 2003 11:25 AM

I attended the second day of the Washington Health Foundation's health care quality and safety conference on February 14th; so I have healthcare safety on my mind. I also have a very close friend who is an MD at Duke University Medical Center, which is working through a tragic safety system breakdown that resulted in the death of a young patient last week. I just recently
read of AHRQ's new web-based medical journal and wanted to share the resource with others pondering this important topic.

"The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, launched a monthly Web-based medical journal last week that highlights patient safety lessons taken from real-life instances of medical errors.

The Web journal, called AHRQ WebM&M (http://www.webmm.ahrq.gov), is part of an ongoing effort by the agency to educate healthcare professionals about how to prevent medical errors in a blame-free environment, according to AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, MD. Little discussed outside of hospital walls
until recently, the magnitude of medical errors grabbed national headlines in 1999, with the publication of the Institute of Medicine's landmark report, "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System." That report
concluded that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals.

AHRQ WebM&M will feature five "near-miss" cases or those that do no permanent harm each month, including commentaries from experts and a forum for readers' comments. The February issue includes a case in which a man nearly received a medication intended for another patient with the same last name located in the same room and another case in which a woman is required to have emergency vascular surgery due to a complication during a routine tubal ligation."

Used with permission from: Margo Harris. margo@pnwhealth.com . Internet: www.pnwhealth.com

posted February 26, 2003 11:11 AM

Meet Linus Pauling at the National Library of Medicine's Profiles of Science Web site. According to the NLM's news release, Linus was a "high school drop-out, a maverick who jumped disciplinary fences, and an activist who was attacked for his political beliefs. Yet he won two Nobel prizes and published more than 500 papers and 11 books.

The Profiles online exhibit features correspondence, unpublished manuscripts, lecture notes, photographs, reprints, and transcripts from speeches documenting the life and career of Dr. Pauling. Visitors to the Pauling site can view, for example, his senior class oration at Oregon State Agricultural College, photographs of Pauling at work in his laboratory, and the petition that he and other scientists circulated that called for an end to nuclear testing.

Pauling was a descendent of a Portland, Oregon pioneer family. He grew up in an impoverished household after the death of his father when Pauling was 9. His interest in science began at age 14, following a visit to a friend with a toy chemistry set.

Between 1973 and 1994, Pauling's research focused on a field he termed "orthomolecular medicine," the concept that optimal health could result from ensuring the right molecules were present in the right amount in the body. He viewed Vitamin C as one of the most important of these molecules, oversaw a number of investigations into its effects on diseases, and encouraged the ingestion of daily amounts many times greater than the accepted minimum daily requirement.. He conducted research in this field until his death from cancer in 1994, at age 93."

Visitors to the site can begin by perusing the online Exhibit and then go on to access additional materials through the alphabetical or chronological listings, or by using the search Engine that looks for character strings in the metadata and in the scanned images.

Contributing to our understanding of this great man's mind are the essays, newspaper columns and petitions written by him - and his speeches and transcripts. Always interesting to look at are the many images taken of him and his work.

Also in this series are profiles of Barbara McClintock, Julius Axelrod and Joshua Lederberg among others.

posted February 19, 2003 4:11 AM

In the event that you need a good medical dictionary to find out what a disease or condition is, be sure to visit this Website and bookmark it. MEDLINEplus is the site maintained by the National Library of Medicine for consumers and health care providers. It's aim is to provide links to the highest possible content. 

"The Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary contains definitions for 60,000 words and phrases used by health- care professionals. Designed to be easy to read, it offers the right spellings of medical terms, a pronunciation guide, and biographies of individuals who have given their names to the language of medicine." (Web site)

 posted February 15, 2003 4:01 AM

"The Violence Prevention Research Program is an organized research program of the University of California, Davis. Our work addresses the causes, nature, and prevention of violence". Their mission "is to conduct research that will further America's efforts to understand and prevent violence".

If you are interested in the whole issue of guns and violence, this is one of the places that you should bookmark. Over 25 articles populate the publications page. Although not there to answer questions from the public, they have provided access to their research. 

A nice list of Websites with the major players in the gun and violence control and use business is also available (including the NRA, Police Departments, FBI and similar sites).

posted February 11, 2003 9:01 AM

Great site for states sharing food and nutrition information content. On this site find:

	State Developed Materials
	WIC Works Headlines Newsletter
	Links to Other Newsletters
	Contact Information for State Agencies
	WIC On the Web
	WIC Images

In the State Developed Materials section, I found Counseling Guides from Texas, Exit Counseling Nutrition Education Pamphlet from Florida, Family Meals Materials from Washington State, Help Me Be Healthy Series from Maryland and many more useful handouts.

For those interested in learning, be sure to visit the WIC Learning Center where Nutrition Services Plans, Staffing, and Assessment self-learning and online, interactive training materials are linked. There's almost too much material here to be able to grasp at one time - so plan on visiting this site often. What was mentioned here was just the tip of the iceburg.

posted February 10, 2003 10:31 AM

It's really hard to beat a good dictionary. The National Cancer Institute has produced a dictionary that you can use to track terms you may not be familiar with. Use the search engine to find terms or click on the letter of the alphabet and scroll down to the term you want defined. Also very useful is the list of terms by subject area. Find more than you want to know about bacteria (102 entries), rheumatology (40 entries), paleontology (262), tumour (519) and more.

The only thing I dislike about the subject section is the way all the terms are cramped together in one long string. If it is hard for me to read and tease out individual terms, I can imagine that it must be very difficult for seniors to read.

What I really like is that each definition is itself composed of further defined terms. Also find Previous terms in the list and Next terms in the sequence. Not a fancy site for sure, but obviously a workhorse site.

posted February 10, 2003 10:21 AM

This is a Web site that our honored elders and their families will love. Launched by the National Council of Aging,  www.BenefitsCheckUp.org now allows families and seniors to obtain a personalized report of discount drug programs for which he or she qualifies. The site catalogs some 240 state and company-sponsored programs. It was designed with a view to helping senior citizens find more affordable prescription medications. (Communications-Related Headlines for January 23, 2003)

posted February 2, 2003 10:13 PM

Mental health information from The Center for Mental Health Services. Site provides links to  programs & other information online including order forms for specific documents, and links to state mental health resources. Spanish language sites are uncovered and some information on safety in schools for those who need safety information in that environment.

posted February 2, 2003 6:13 PM

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Since I just got back from Corvallis, OR where I taught a half-day workshop in preparing online and print Family and Consumer Science content for use on Palm OS handhelds, I was surprised to come across this free encyclopedia with articles on "nutrition, cooking, parenting, interior decoration, textiles, and other useful aspects of home management".  Content is organized hierarchically so that each of the broad subjects mentioned above is broken down into finer segments.

Public health practitioners will find articles that they can use to understand the complexities of their domain. Either search by broad topic and narrow down, or use the available search engine. The term, "Health Promotion" is mentioned over 500 times in the database.

Like any discipline, librarians have their own peculiar way of looking at the world. If you want to be successful in getting information from a librarian (asking questions), then you should understand a few of the terms that he or she uses so that you will understand her when s/he says something.

For example, while we talk about checking out a book from a librarian, he or she will refer to the process as that of circulation or that he or she is circulating the book. We librarians use reference books (as well as the Web) to answer questions. Many kinds of information go into making up a reference collection including, dictionaries, encyclopedia, government documents (or government publications). Reference books are shelved in a special section occasionally referred to as a "Quick Reference Section".

If we cannot find a book in our library we request it from another library using a process called InterLibrary Loan.  We classify books so that like books are put on the shelf adjacent to others on the same subject.

To decipher what a librarian means, use the following sites to find terms and meanings:

• Glossary of Library Terminology (NZ)
• Bilingual List of Library Terminology  (no definitions)
• Library Terminology (Del Mar College Libraries)
• Library Terminology, Bladen Library, U of T at Scarborough
• Help: Library Terminology

posted February 2, 2003 10:23 AM

"The Report is the second in a series of publications that provide an ongoing assessment of the exposure of the U.S. population to environmental chemicals using biomonitoring. Biomonitoring is the assessment of human exposure to chemicals by measuring the chemicals or their metabolites in human specimens such as blood or urine".  (Website)

I found the section titled, "Public Health Uses of the Report" a great summary of the document. The "Information Available on the Internet" section provides links to key environmental health sites and agencies. For those interested in the health effects of tobacco, be sure to get the chapter titled, " Tobacco Smoke: Cotinine - General Information and Tables". The report can be downloaded in PDF for reading online or offline.

posted February 2, 2003 10:23 AM

Although the SkeeterMeter(TM) is closed until Spring finally comes, this site says it can, through the use of a mosquito forecasting model, forecast mosquito activity throughout the U.S. Get facts about mosquitoes, information on West Nile Virus and  other mosquito-borne and tick diseases.  Finally, read over the mosquito and tick defense tips to keep your property and body, pest free.

Since this is a commercial site, you will also get marketing information on Deet and other insect repellants for the home and garden. Still, the site is a useful place to point people to especially if they can watch videos.

posted February 1, 2003 2:33 AM