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April-June
2007
This past quarter,
NCCPHP staff worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from
a field epidemiology training program in the South Pacific to
a pre-hurricane assessment in Carteret County, North Carolina.
Particular highlights include successful implementation of another
training module in the Field Epidemiology Training Program in
Guatemala and this year's NC Epi Teams Conference, which was attended
by more than 200 state and local health professionals.
We also began
work on two new projects. The first project is a partnership with
the General Communicable Disease Control Branch in the NC Division
of Public Health to train local health department staff on North
Carolina's new centralized system for disease reporting. The system,
the NC Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NC EDSS), will
significantly improve the timeliness, reliability, and accuracy
of reportable disease in North Carolina. The second project involves
working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Sustainable Management Development Program (SMDP) to support distance
learning and collaboration among participants in their Management
for International Public Health Course.
---Pia
MacDonald, NCCPHP Director
Surveillance
& Epidemiology
Team
Epi-Aid (SPH student volunteers to assist urgent public health
response)
In early April,
10 Team Epi-Aid volunteers participated in a pre-hurricane assessment
in Carteret County. Over the course of 3 days, student volunteers
and local health department staff completed 251 interviews designed
to assess county residents' readiness in the event of a major
storm. Other activities this past quarter included a community
health assessment in Orange County and an investigation of an
E. Coli outbreak in Rowan County.
Technical
Assistance to North Carolina
NCCPHP continued
working with state partners to meet the training needs of public
health epidemiology teams across the state. The 4th Annual NC
Epi Teams Training Conference held on May 17 was attended by 215
local and state public health workers. NCCPHP helped develop the
agenda for the conference and also provided a pre-conference Epi
Info training. Feedback from the conference has provided useful
input for an ongoing project to develop a uniform statewide NC
Epi Teams training curriculum.
NCCPHP also
worked at the local county level this past quarter. We provided
Epi Info technical support to Gaston County, conducted an Epi
Info training in New Hanover County, and led a training on using
GIS to conduct community assessments for participants from several
Northeastern counties.
In another project
with state partners, NCCPHP staff have begun working on a curriculum
to help train local health department staff on the state's new
centralized system for disease reporting. The NC Electronic Disease
Surveillance System (NC EDSS) will replace the previous paper-based
reporting system.
Our pandemic
influenza preparedness project staff continued to review pandemic
flu plans submitted by local health departments. Feedback and
comments were provided to 5 local health departments and another
5 health departments received final approval of their plans this
quarter.
Training
& Education
Training
Web Site
In the 2nd quarter
of 2007, the NCCPHP Training Web Site had 2,809 newly completed
trainings and 1,644 new registered users, for a total of 19,596
users. There were 11 new NCCPHP-developed trainings added to the
site, for a total of 178 available NCCPHP trainings.
FOCUS
on Field Epidemiology
Two issues of
FOCUS on Field Epidemiology were published this quarter: Volume
4 Issue 2 Collecting Specimens in Outbreak Investigations
and Volume
4 Issue 3 Laboratory Diagnosis: An Overview. These issues
are available on our FOCUS
web page.
A new issue
of FOCUS on Field Epidemiology was translated and published in
Spanish. The newly-available Spanish issue is Volume
2, Issue 3: Técnicas de Entrevista (Interviewing Techniques).
Field
Epidemiology Training Program, Guatemala
NCCPHP continued
its partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) Field Epidemiology Training Program in Central America and
Panama. The goal is to develop curriculum for a 2-year training
program for public health practitioners in Central America.
Module 2 of
the 8-module course was held June 25-29, 2007, at the University
de Valle in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Clinicians and epidemiologists
from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa
Rica, and the Dominican Republic met to participate in a training
on topics including evaluation of surveillance systems, outbreak
investigations, and writing outbreak reports for publication in
public health bulletins.
Participants
will return to Guatemala City for further training 3 times per
year, with the remainder of their training occurring in their
home countries with the help of local tutors who have graduated
from the program.
Field
Epidemiology Training, Fiji
NCCPHP is working
with the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western
Pacific to provide basic field epidemiology training for public
health practitioners in Fiji. Curriculum development is currently
underway on topics that include basic surveillance and outbreak
investigation. Training materials are being developed to cover
regionally-important diseases such as dengue, cholera, typhoid,
and measles.
CDC
Sustainable Management Development Program Project
In June NCCPHP
began working with the CDC's Sustainable Management Development
Program (SMDP) to support distance-based training and collaboration
networks for graduates of their Management for International Public
Health (MIPH) Course. The project objective is to develop a training
Web site to allow MIPH course participants and graduates to continue
to communicate and collaborate on key management, capacity building,
course curriculum, and teaching tools after they have returned
to their home countries.
Symposium
Series on Public Health Preparedness
NCCPHP continued
its 2006-07 Symposium Series on Public Health Preparedness by
hosting 3 online symposia, titled "Preparedness for Vulnerable
Populations," "Pandemic Influenza: Preparing Your Outpatient
Center and Staff," and "Community and Public Health
Response to an Influenza Outbreak Involving School Closure."
Each symposium
is broadcast in a "webinar" presentation format with
audiovisuals delivered via a combination of phone and computer
technology. Archived versions of these presentations and information
about upcoming events in the series are available on the NCCPHP
Symposium Series page.
NACCHO
Advanced Practice Centers
In April and
May, NCCPHP staff hosted a series of 4 webinars that provided
a brief overview of each of the 8 trainings that were presented
by the NACCHO Advanced Practice Centers (APCs) at the annual training
conference in February. Topics included community preparedness
strategies, regional collaboration approaches, workforce preparedness
resources, and urban and rural disaster planning tools. A total
of 189 persons attended the live and archived sessions.
PETS
Act Training for NC Department of Agriculture
NCCPHP worked
with the NC Department of Agriculture to host a series of 4 training
webinars on the issue of managing pets during emergency situations.
A federal law now requires counties to have plans in place to
help pets and their owners during emergency evacuations. Almost
100 people attended the live sessions, and an additional 56 people
listened to the archived versions. Participants were from community-based
organizations, local health departments, private businesses, and
emergency management agencies.
Lifelong
Learning
NCCPHP staff
provided training and assistance to Cleveland, Harnett, Davidson,
and New Hanover counties on various issues related to lifelong
learning and the online workforce development system.
Back
to Top
Work
with Partner States
This
quarter, assistance to partner states included the following
activities:
Virginia:
NCCPHP staff conducted 4 Epi Info trainings for the Virginia
Department of Public Health in May and June.
West
Virginia:
NCCPHP continued our efforts to assist the WV Bureau for Public
Health in planning a statewide conference for physicians serving
as local health officers.
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