From December 25 to January 1, the South Central, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, and Southeast regions will get hit harder by the flu and colds than other regions of the country, according to projections by WebMD, a leading source of online health information.
Using a combination of geo-location data and self-reported information from consumers experiencing influenza-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat, and cough, identified the top five cities expected to be hardest hit: Austin, TX; Baltimore, MD; Fort Smith, AR/ Fayetteville, AR/ Springdale, OK/ Rogers, OK; San Diego, CA; and Charleston, SC.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) is warning that tax legislation approved by Congress “will create a dangerous environment for public health in which millions fewer Americans are insured, key health programs and agencies are desperately underfunded and income inequality is dramatically worsened.”
In a statement, the APHA said the legislations’s repeal of the individual health insurance mandate will cause deep automatic cuts to key health programs like Medicare and the Prevention and Public Health Fund.
While opioid overdose rates remain high among adults, American teens are misusing opioid pain medications less than they did a decade ago. That’s the good news from the 2017 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of eighth, 10th and 12th graders in schools nationwide. The bad news? More kids are “vaping” – and they’re not really sure what’s in that mist that they’re inhaling.
In the early 1900s, a young dentist named Frederick McKay moved to a Colorado town where the residents’ teeth — though in some cases stained chocolate brown — had far less decay than was typical back then. He and other researchers eventually linked the phenomenon to fluoride in the town’s drinking water – a eureka moment that would usher in what is often called one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.
Under Food Code, to prevent spread of foodborne illness, yes
December 14, 2017
While health concerns are usually considered private matters, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants restaurant managers to talk to employees who are ill, to make sure they don’t spread foodborne illness to co-workers and customers.
It’s a significant problem. Nearly half of restaurant-related outbreaks are caused by sick food workers.
Managers may be hesitant to ask their employees about symptoms and diagnoses, especially since that conversation might lead to workers missing work and forgoing pay.
Employees with laboratory-confirmed influenza have more lost work time — including absences and reduced productivity while at work—compared to those with other types of acute respiratory illness (ARI), reports a study in the December Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
"Compared to non-influenza ARI, [workers] with influenza lose an additional half-day of work due to absenteeism/presenteeism over the week following symptom onset."
Research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on noise-induced hearing loss in non-workplace settings has produced some alarming statistics. Testing on nearly 4,000 adults in the U.S. in 2014 found that:
Approximately 15% of American adults, aged 18 and older, reported some degree of trouble with hearing—about as much as the prevalence reported for both diabetes and cancer combined (Vital Health Stat 10. 2014;260:1 http://bit.ly/2lZlMX0).
Nearly 24% of adults have measurable hearing damage in one or both ears.
Nearly 50% of adults with this damage were not exposed to noise at work (MMWR. 2017; 66[5]:139 http://bit.ly/2lZxpNr).
Infant deaths from critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) decreased more than 33 percent in eight states that mandated screening for CCHD using a test called pulse oximetry, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In addition, deaths from other or unspecified cardiac causes decreased by 21 percent.
Pulse oximetry is a simple bedside test to determine the amount of oxygen in a baby’s blood and the baby’s pulse rate. Low levels of oxygen in the blood can be a sign of a CCHD.
What’s the best way to avoid the flu? You hate needles, so should you get that flu vaccine that comes in a nasal spray? Or how about that new kind of vaccine that may also be given without a needle?
And will the type of vaccine that’s available during the 2017-2018 flu season be effective against whatever variant of the bug makes an appearance this time around?
Fortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and OSHA have all of the information you need to protect yourself – and your workplace – from the flu.
A group of 15 non-partisan patient and consumer organizations say the Senate Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed this week “takes yet another step towards undermining the stability of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) insurance markets." The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network; American Heart Association and others said; "The repeal of the individual insurance mandate destabilizes an essential pillar of the ACA by removing incentives for young and healthy people to purchase insurance."