Savannah Martin - Public Health Trends in Eastern Idaho

For this assignment because my hometown is in Utah County, I chose to look at Idaho. I talked to Geri Rackow, who is the Public Information Officer at Eastern Idaho Public Health District. I asked her to talk specifically about the top 5 Public Health trends of mothers, infants and children. She said, Breast feeding rates, Women’s health screenings, Pertussis outbreaks, childcare immunizations and child care facility inspections are the things that they are trying to improve.

1.       Breast feeding rates: Geri explained that breastfeeding is something they promote very heavily. Their WIC (Women, infant, and children) Program started the Breastfeeding peer counseling program. She told me that Idaho was one of three states recognized for having one of the top three breastfeeding rates in the nation.  She followed that with the statement that they are still doing these programs to make sure to keep their rates high and their mothers and babies healthy.

2.       Women’s health screenings: Idaho started a program giving out free breast and cervical cancer screenings to women which especially benefits uninsured women.  She explained that it is more cost effective to detect possible breast and cervical cancers early so that treatment can be successful. Because of this she says they are seeing more and more women coming in to be tested.

3.       Pertussis outbreak: She told me that they are responding to the whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak, which has been closing in on Idaho since surrounding, Washington and California started reporting thousands of cases of the disease in the last year.  But Geri said they are doing their best and that they started a pertussis vaccination campaign.  This has so far resulted in 700 doses of the vaccine being administered to adults, which is 500 more than in 2011.

4.       Childcare Immunizations:  They have made some changes in Idaho’s rules governing immunizations for attending child care. She told me they increased the number of immunizations they need because diseases like measles and whooping cough (like we talked about before) spread quickly in these care facilities, so children need to be better protected before attending.

5.       Child care facility inspections:  Geri told me their new rule to make sure children are getting all of their immunizations before entering a childcare facility is the 100% rule. She said, 100% of the children attending must be 100% up to date in their immunizations. She said though it may sound strict, the childcare provider signs a document agreeing to not accept any children who are not up to date.

Savannah Martin