Public health
Category archives for Public health
Student guest post: The Fallacious Fad of Foregoing Vaccinations
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 23, 2013 It’s time for this year’s second installment of student guest posts for my class on infectious causes of chronic disease. First one this year is by Dana Lowry. Humans have a long history of illness and death from infectious diseases. It wasn’t until the 1790s that we had a solution. Edward Jenner recognized that milkmaids…
Temple Grandin is wrong on vaccines and autism
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 15, 2013 Temple Grandin is undoubtedly one of the most famous women with autism of our time. Trained in animal science, Dr. Grandin is a widely read author and noted speaker on autism. April is National Autism Awareness Month, and Dr. Grandin has a new book out, “The Autistic Brain.” Together, this must have seemed like a…
An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings
Posted by Tara C. Smith on April 3, 2013 Dear Pa, I know you care deeply about many issues, especially social justice. You’re tired of wars, you’re ashamed of the attempts to destroy social programs in this country, you hate seeing the unions that helped you as a worker provide for our family get dismantled by wealthy CEOs whose only goal is to make…
HIV In-Home Testing Kits: Increased Awareness or Increased Problems?
Posted by Tara C. Smith on March 1, 2013 Fifth of five student guest posts by Jonathan Yuska The saying, “The more you know, the more you can control,” is no more meaningful than when used in the context of HIV detection and prevention. Public health advocates endlessly stress the need for knowing one’s status; and one would assume that any way in which the most…
The impact of HIV on Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
Posted by Tara C. Smith on February 26, 2013 Second of five student guest posts by Nai-Chung N. Chang Tuberculosis (TB) is a major disease burden in many areas of the world. As such, it was declared a global public health emergency in 1993 by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is a bacterial disease that is transmitted through the air when an infected…
Plague in Victorian San Francisco–lessons for public health communication
Posted by Tara C. Smith on February 18, 2013 I have a post up today at the Scientific American Guest blog, discussing how an earthquake and denial led to prairie dog plague. It details an outbreak of plague in Victorian San Francisco–the first time plague hit the United States–and the many downstream consequences of that outbreak (which began in 1900 and wasn’t really contained…
Matt Damon: no poo for you
Posted by Tara C. Smith on February 13, 2013 Readers may be familiar with Matt Damon’s charity work with water.org, an organization he co-founded. Water.org seeks to raise awareness of the lack of clean water by almost a billion people on earth, and lack of toilets by almost 2.5 billion–and more importantly, they work to remedy that situation by providing sustainable, local solutions. His…
So God created advertising
Posted by Tara C. Smith on February 7, 2013 I didn’t grow up on a farm, but my dad did. He was the youngest of 13 kids, several of them who grew up to own farms of their own. As a kid, my family had almost an acre in the country, but the only animals we kept on it were stray cats and the…
Pig-to-monkey Ebola: is there something in the air?
Posted by Tara C. Smith on November 19, 2012 Ebola has long been known to be a zoonotic virus–one which jumps between species. Though it took several decades to find evidence of Ebola virus in bats, these animals had previously been associated with human index cases of Ebola disease have worked in bat-infested warehouses or traveled to caves where bats roost. Non-human primates have…
Eastern Equine Encephalitis: The Mosquito that bit the Snake
Posted by Tara C. Smith on October 17, 2012 Guest post by Hillary Craddock Last week a new study regarding Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) was published online (Bingham et.al.). EEE is a mosquito-borne virus that can cause serious, and sometimes deadly, disease in humans and equines. In warmer parts of North America, the virus is spread year-round, but in areas where mosquitoes get killed…