Lindsay Hall- Health Trends in Davis County UT

For this assignment I looked into health trends from my hometown area, Davis County UT. I tried contacting the director of communicable disease and epidemiology, but I was referred to a county health officer Lewis Garrett. He told me that the latest trends have been measles, STDs, Legionellosis, enteric diseases, and streptococcal infections.

1. There was recent outbreak of measles. The county had 16 cases of suspected measles, in the end none of them were actually measles. But a lot of time and resources were spent on these cases. The county had to interview hundreds of people and even quarantine a few. The county spent a lot of time on these cases, because it was very important to be sure that the measles did not spread and were contained.

2. In Davis County sexually transmitted diseases is always of concern. Garrett told me that STDs are the largest burden in the county. He discussed with me how difficult it is to control because most cases are undiagnosed. And because most of them are undiagnosed it is difficult to accurately know how proficient the disease is. Currently Chlamydia takes the cake with 96% of all STD cases in my county.

3. Davis county recently had an outbreak of legionellosis in one building. Garret told me that it was a bacteria that caused disease. We had four cases in the county, but only three of them were actually legionellosis. The county found that the water system had the bacteria in it. The building was then monitored by the health department and cleaned very well, which ended up getting rid of the bacteria.

4. Garret said that the county has had a lot of enteric diseases. Again I didn’t know what that meant, he kindly told me that it was again a type of infection caused by bacteria that generally effects the intestines. And these infections are usually caused by eating or drinking food or drinks that have been contaminated. Davis county has specifically had a significant number of salmonella cases when there have been outbreaks. Davis has also had a small increasing trend in campylobacteriosis cases, which happened when raw milk was drank.

5. Garret lastly told me about streptococcal infections. He mentioned that they were ranked as one of the highest diseases in the county, I believe he said it was fourth highest. There were a few serious cases that resulted in death even. Strep can be caused by many different things. So it is hard for the county to take complete control of the infections.

Lindsay Hall