Public Health Blog created by Laura Larsson

Public Health Weblog
collected and organized
by
Laura Larsson
Clinical Faculty, SPHCM

University of Washington

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Alanna Shaikh's Blood and Milk: Public Health in Central Asia

Harry Rutter's Public Health Today
(Blog from the UK)

eLearning Blogs

Online Learning Update Blog

Educational Technlogy

Online Higher Ed Notebook

eLearningpost

Internettime

More about Blogs and Their Variations

The Art of Blogging - Part 1
Overview, Definitions, Uses, and Implications
by
George Siemens. December 1, 2002

The Art of Blogging - Part 2
Getting Started, "How To", Tools, Resources
December 6, 2002

Weblog to Moblog
By
Justin Hall, Nov 21 2002

March 2004

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March 25, 2004 6:40 PM

Geo-Health

Geo-Health is a discussion list for anyone interested in the geography
of health or any spatial or locational aspects of public health,
community health, environmental health or epidemiology. Members may post queries and comments, initiate discussions and forward conference
announcements, workshops and seminars and job vacancies. We encourage multidisciplinary input and views.

Click on the title to join the list.

March 24, 2004 9:23 AM

Diet Wars (PBS)

PBS's Frontline will air a program entitled "Diet Wars" on April 8, 2004. Check your local listing for times. A brief description from their website is below. A longer press release can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2211.html

Americans spend $40 billion a year on books, products, and programs designed to do one thing: help us lose weight. From Atkins to Ornish and Weight Watchers to the Zone, today's dieters have a dizzying array of weight loss programs from which to choose--yet the underlying principles of these diets are often contradictory. Is low fat better than low carb? Is Atkins the answer? And has the USDA Food Pyramid done more harm than good? In "Diet Wars," FRONTLINE examines the great diet debate.

Source: Christina Stark, M.S., R.D., C.D.N., Program Leader, Cornell NutritionWorks, Division of Nutritional Sciences, cms11@cornell.edu,
www.nutritionworks.cornell.edu

March 12, 2004 9:23 AM

Fresh From the Farm and Into the Classroom (PDF)

Fresh from the Farm is a pilot project of the Center for Food and Justice, Tierra Miguel Farm and the LAUSD Nutrition Network, and is now in the second year of operation. This report describes how farm fresh produce is being brought into Los Angeles USD classrooms for use in educational activities.

OLDMEDLINE Moves Back in Time
February 24, 2004 [posted]

The contents of the 1951–1952 Current List of Medical Literature (CLML) were added to PubMed® in February 2004. OLDMEDLINE citations now total 1,704,728 citations, with the addition of these 186,889 citations from the 1951-1952 publications. Of these newly added citations, 89,557 are from the 1952 CLML and 97,332 are from the 1951 CLML.

OLDMEDLINE is a subset of PubMed available free of charge at http://pubmed.gov. For information about OLDMEDLINE, please see: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/databases_oldmedline.html. You can read more on OLDMEDLINE citations in the following NLM Technical Bulletin article: Demsey A, Nahin AM, Von Braunsberg S. OLDMEDLINE Citations Join PubMed. NLM Tech Bull. 2003 Sep-Oct;(334):e2.

Source: NLM Technical Bulletin, Jan-Feb 2004, Technical Notes

Eight Entries Added to Tox Town
February 24, 2004 [posted]

The eight additional entries in Tox Town, NLM®'s interactive guide to commonly encountered toxic substances, include common (or "criteria") air pollutants regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency:

* Nitrogen Oxides
* Particulate Matter
* Sulfur Dioxide

Three large groups of substances are also described:

* Pesticides
* Phthalates
* Volatile Organic Compounds

Other chemicals added are:

* Benzene
* Chromium

Tox Town includes a one to two page description of each chemical as well as Internet links for more information. The Web site also shows where a chemical might be found in a town or city. In the Town or City Scenes, select "All Chemicals" at the bottom of the page to see the complete list of chemicals.

By clicking on the Dentist in Tox Town's City scene, dental health professionals can read about potential environmental health concerns at work, such as nitrous oxide exposure, infection control, and hazardous chemicals.

By clicking on the new Pharmacy in the City scene, you can see information about medicines, cosmetics, dietary supplements, drug and medical device safety, latex allergies, occupational health for healthcare providers, vitamin and mineral supplements, and more.

Clip art and publicity materials for Tox Town, suitable for Web sites or newsletters, are available at http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/clipart.html.

Source: NLM Technical Bulletin, Jan-Feb 2004, Technical Notes

March 11, 2004 9:13 AM

Minority Links

From the U.S. Census Bureau comes this collection of links on the latest data on racial and ethnic populations in the United States. Three main populations are covered: Black or African Americans, Hispanic or Latino s, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other islanders. You can expect to find Decennial Census and American Community Survey data, Social Characteristics (age, children, disability, education, families, fertility, foreign born, health insurance, local profiles, mobility, marital status, voting, women) and Economic Characteristics (business, employment, income, occupation, poverty). View the profiles, stock photos, multimedia pages, and other news information. Additional Resources are also provided.

March 9, 2004 1:01 PM

Small Step Web Site

Yet another educational Web site from the government intended to help us lose weight and become more healthy. I do like the idea of making change using the "small steps" concept. The new national education
campaign and research strategy targets two of the nation's leading
preventable causes of death - poor diet and physical inactivity. Get success stories, a newsletter sent to you via email, information on the four steps: get the facts, eat better, get active, learn more, and news at this site.

Content in English and Spanish.

March 3, 2004 10:43 AM

The Role of the Media in Childhood Obesity, Kaiser Family Foundation Report

This report explores reasons why so many American children are becoming obese. Reasons given include exposure to television, video games and
movies as well as food advertising targeted at kids. The report also describes the role the media could play in solving the obesity problem. The report, announced at a February 24th briefing is also available as a Webcast. The report is available as a PDF file.

March 2, 2004 10:02 AM

Chicken Genome Deposited to GenBank

First Avian Genome Now Available to Scientists Worldwide

BETHESDA, MARYLAND -- The National Human Genome Research
Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), today announced that the first draft of the
chicken genome sequence has been deposited into free
public databases for use by biomedical and agricultural
researchers around the globe.

A team led by Richard Wilson, Ph.D., from the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis successfully
assembled the genome of the Red Jungle Fowl, "Gallus
gallus", which is the ancestor of domestic chickens.
Comprised of about 1 billion DNA base pairs, the chicken
genome is the first avian genome to be sequenced.

The Washington University researchers have deposited the
initial assembly, which is based on seven-fold sequence
coverage of the chicken genome, into the public database,
GenBank (www.ncbi.nih.gov/Genbank (http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/Genbank)). In turn, GenBank will
distribute the sequence data to the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory's Nucleotide Sequence Database, EMBL-
Bank (www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/index.html (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/index.html)), and the DNA Data
Bank of Japan, DDBJ (www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp (http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp)).

To facilitate comparative genomic analysis, the
researchers also have aligned the draft version of the
chicken sequence with the human sequence. Those alignments
can be scanned using the University of California, Santa
Cruz's Genome Browser, (http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-
bin/hgGateway); the National Center for Biotechnology
Information's Map Viewer, (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview));
and the European Bioinformatics Institute's Ensembl
system, (http://www.ensembl.org/).

Sequencing of the chicken genome began in March 2003.
NHGRI provided about $13 million in funding for the
project.

Recent outbreaks of avian flu have accelerated scientists'
interest in learning more about the chicken genome and how
genetic variation may play a role in the susceptibility of
different strains to the disease. In addition to its
tremendous economic value as a source of eggs and meat,
the chicken is widely used in biomedical research. It
serves as an important model for the study of embryology
and development, as well as for research into the
connection between viruses and some types of cancer.

The chicken also is well positioned from an evolutionary
standpoint to provide an intermediate perspective between
mammals, such as humans, and lower vertebrates, such as
fish. By comparing the human genome sequence with those of
other organisms, researchers can identify regions of
similarity and difference. This information can help
scientists better understand the structure and function of
genes and thereby develop new strategies to combat human
disease.

For more on the rapidly growing field of comparative
genomic analysis, go to: www.genome.gov/10005835 (http://www.genome.gov/10005835). To read
the white paper outlining the scientific rationale for
sequencing the chicken genome, go to:
www.genome.gov/Pages/Research/Sequencing/SeqProposals/Chic (http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Research/Sequencing/SeqProposals/Chic)
ken_Genome.pdf

Information on how to obtain a high-resolution photo of
the Red Jungle Fowl is available at:
www.genome.gov/10005141 (http://www.genome.gov/10005141).

NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers at NIH, an
agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The
NHGRI Division of Extramural Research supports grants for
research and for training and career development at sites
nationwide. Information about NHGRI can be found at:
www.genome.gov (http://www.genome.gov).

Announcement: March 2004

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