Swine flu

The swine flu outbreak is here and it's real. See my last post for more information, but here are a couple good places to visit:

Obviously any news site would be good - cnn.com, New York Times, whatever you news source of choice is. And of course CDC is always a good standby for all public health related news. http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/ is the place to start.

This New York Times article has a good "Understanding Swine Flu" graphic that is interesting and helpful. Click here to go to the graphic.

This map shows where the outbreaks are, it's a good visual way to picture the spread of the outbreak.

It is important to note that the U.S. declaring a public health emergency does not mean that all hell should break loose. It just frees up resources, allows antivirals to be positioned in case they're needed, etc. The precautions you should take are to wash your hands with warm, soapy water and stay away from being in close contact with those who are sick. That's just general common sense!

Links for the week

Story of the week: Possible swine flu outbreak. Read more about swine flu here. Be assured that we'll post more if we get more news about this!

"Ill from food? Investigations vary by state" - New York Times article about how varied states are in their foodborne illness surveillance and the importance of epidemiology in foodborne illness outbreaks. Go epi!

HHS updates guidelines for health information security

Go public health! An article about what it is that one local public health department does.

Public health goes 21st century. This article briefly touches on public health's use of social networking sites to affect the spread of STDs. This link to CDC's social media page has all sorts of ways that CDC uses blogs, email, Twitter, and other modern communication tools.