Keturah Slaugh

Keturah Slaugh

November 12, 2012

Professor Fugal

Community Public Health Assignment

Health Professional:   Name:     Emily Simms                   Job Title:  Family Public Health Planner

1.       Tuberculosis

Renton and the greater Seattle area is one of the highest hotspots for tuberculosis in the nation.  Currently it is at a thirty-year low due to efforts to keep it down but it is still a major problem.  This is because a lot of the new strains of tuberculosis are resistant to antibiotics.  One in six people with tuberculosis had strains that were resistant to at least one form of antibiotics and there was one patient who was resistant to all forms.  The health officials are still working to find new cures and just received a grant to help them do that.

2.       Immunizations

Right now Renton is currently stressing the need for the whooping cough and flu vaccinations, particularly in children.  Recently they did a small campaign where the mascots of the Washington schools and sports teams announced they had flu shots and thus all other people should as well.  This was mainly directed at children but the problem includes adults as well.  They also emphasize that pregnant women need to get vaccinated to insure the health safety of her baby.  There have been problems in the past with infants and children getting whooping cough and the flu because their mother did not get a vaccination shot for these diseases.  This campaign is meant to help reduce this trend.  There also has been trouble with the measles so efforts to increase awareness for that have been raised as well.

3.       Heroin Overdose

An alarming trend of overdoses on Heroin has arisen in Renton and the surrounding area.  Efforts to reduce this problem have been made including campaigns to increase awareness for both those who use heroin and those who know people who use heroin.  They are not yet sure the reason for this sudden rise in deaths, but they are still trying to figure out where the problem is coming from and why.   They have made efforts to stop people from hesitating to call 911 for an overdose by taking away the risk of arrest for drug possession as long as you are the one who called it in or overdosed.

4.       Environmental Health

The Renton-Seattle area is also looking into the relationships between transportation and health.  Recent renovations have made it easier for people to bike or walk instead of drive.  A lot of the work has been done in the poorer sections to make it safer to commute and for children to walk to school.  This also is an effort to decrease the health disparities in the area among the poor and the rich by equalizing the chance for safe transportation and exercise methods. 

5.       AIDS

In the Renton area there seems to be a trend where a greater portion of the Latino population has AIDS or other sexually transmitted disease in comparison to other races in the population.  October 15^th was an set aside as an awareness day to help inform people about this trend and encourage everybody, particularly Latinos, to go get checked for HIV.  The goal is to reduce this disparity between races and raise awareness of HIV/AIDS.