Author:
Madeline Roberts, PhD, MPH
Dr. Deborah
Lawlor is the First Woman Awardee of the Richard Doll Prize
The International Epidemiological Association (IEA)
awarded Dr. Deborah Lawlor the 2024 Richard Doll Prize.
The Association's highest honor, the Richard Doll Prize is named
after a British physician and epidemiologist whose pioneering
contributions to the field included linking smoking to
deleterious health outcomes and characterizing the relationship
between asbestos and lung cancer. The IEA established the
Richard Doll Prize in 2007 and awards it every three years to an
epidemiologist who has “advanced our understanding of the
determinants of a disease of importance for health in
populations through a body of research,” often over a series of
studies. This year is the first time this honor has been given
to a woman epidemiologist.
Dr. Lawlor’s work centers on perinatal and reproductive health,
and she has also made pivotal contributions in triangulation of
evidence to improve causal inference. She co-authored “Triangulation
in Aetiological Epidemiology,”
an article which effectively defined triangulation of evidence
as “The practice of strengthening causal inferences by
integrating results from several different approaches, where
each approach has different (and assumed to be largely
unrelated) key sources of potential bias.” Within reproductive
and perinatal research, randomized control trials are often not
possible, which makes triangulation of evidence critically
important. Her research in Artificial Reproductive Technology
has helped to identify the optimal number of embryos for
transfer in women of differing age groups (i.e., under vs. over
40 years of age). Dr. Lawlor’s achievements will be honored in
the opening session of the World Congress of Epidemiology, to be
held September 24-27, 2024 in Cape Town, South Africa.
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National Public Health Week and
The Invisible Shield Docu-Series
National Public
Health Week
kicks off April 1, and in that spirit, one of the things we’re
looking forward to is watching
The Invisible Shield.
This four-part documentary (streaming March 26 on PBS) looks at
the history, purpose, scope, and future of public health. It
addresses the public health achievements we have come to take
for granted, and discusses how under typical circumstances
public health functions unseen, and how that invisibility was
lost, perhaps indefinitely, during the pandemic. The documentary
also covers the outdated American public health system which is
in need of repair, how the erosion of public trust compromises
the effectiveness of public health, and how after years of
progress we are beginning to see a decline in life expectancy.
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“Ready or Not” Public Health Preparedness Report Released
In mid-March, Trust for America’s Health (TFAH)
released their report “Ready
or Not: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters,
and Bioterrorism,”
which gauges preparedness and strength of public health systems.
TFAH was founded in 2001 to be a “nonprofit, nonpartisan
public health policy, research, and advocacy organization that
promotes optimal health for every person and community and makes
the prevention of illness and injury a national priority.” This
is the 21st
edition of “Ready or Not,” one of their annual publications
since 2002. TFAH aims to track indicators over several
years for consistency, primarily based on National Health
Security Preparedness Index (NHSPI) measures as well as state
public health funding trends external to the NHSPI.
The evaluation criteria for “Ready or Not”
include nine indicators (nurse licensure compact; accreditation
(indicators 2 and 3); public health funding; community water
system safety; access to paid time off; flu vaccination rate;
patient safety in hospitals; public health laboratory surge
capacity). Performance in these indicators led to three
readiness levels (high, middle, and low). The District of
Columbia and 21 states including Colorado, Kansas, and Tennessee
were scored in the high-performance tier. Thirteen states scored
in the middle-performance tier, and 16 states in the
low-performance tier including California, Kentucky, and Texas.
Some points of interest included the following:
♦
Public health funding increased or remained
stable in 37 states.
♦
All but four states (California, Missouri, Utah
and Virginia) have written plans for six- to eight-week
lab-testing surge capacity in response to an outbreak or public
health emergency.
♦
The report found just 25% of US hospitals
received an average “A” grade for patient safety, meaning these
facilities are well-prepared in measures like intensive care
capacity, prevention of hospital-acquired infections, error
prevention, and their ability to navigate public health
emergencies.
♦
The report also included a special feature on
extreme heat health impacts and higher risks for specific
sub-populations such as pregnant people, the elderly, and those
living in public housing.
In light of findings, the report outlines seven
priority areas for policy action at the federal, state, local,
and territorial levels: (1) stable and sufficient funding for
public health security; (2) effective leadership and
coordination; (3) prevention and response to outbreaks and
pandemics; (4) resilient communities and health equity in
preparedness; (5) accelerate development and distribution of
medical countermeasures; (6) healthcare system response and
recovery; (7) prepare for environmental threats and extreme
weather.
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Plague and
Measles
In early March, New Mexico reported a
death from plague. The
U.S. annual average
is seven cases of plague, with a range of 1 to 17. The two
regions most commonly reporting plague cases are in the
southwest (Northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern
Colorado) and the west (California, southern Oregon, and far
western Nevada).
Thus far in 2024 we’ve had 64
measles cases reported across 17 states from California to
Florida. As
reference points, in all of 2023 there were 58 cases, and in
all of 2022 there were 121 cases.
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On the Lighter Side…
We’d like to leave you with this meme from
the
fantastic Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Instagram
account, which we have been greatly enjoying.
Source: @johnshopkinssph Instagram account
Captioned: “Here for the Victorian Era memes, not
the Victorian Era diseases? Unfortunately, the latter have
cropping back up recently…”
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