Sing Along with Margaret!

Help us bring music therapy to people with Alzheimer’s disease!

We are half way to our project goal! Can you help us with a small pledge for our project? Mom and I want to provide free music to those who do music therapy with people with Alzheimer’s disease and advanced dementia. With your help we can do it! Please click the link below to read more about our project.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/25581242/sing-along-with-margaret

• Margaret is 84 years old and she has Alzheimer’s disease. While she has lost almost all her ability to talk, she can still sing! And music has become one of the main ways she communicates. The “Sing Along with Margaret” project is unique because this music is not only for people with Alzheimer’s disease, it is sung by a special lady with the disease, and she wants to share her joy with others.

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Text4baby Launches a Free App!

Text4baby is a free mobile information service designed to promote maternal and child health. An educational program of the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB), text4baby provides pregnant women and new moms with information they need to take care of their health and give their babies the best possible start in life. Women who sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411 will receive free SMS text messages each week, timed to their due date or baby’s date of birth.

More information at https://text4baby.org/index.php/component/content/article/54-partners-get-involved/partners/468-text4baby-launches-app

New app provides restaurant inspection scores

A new smartphone app from HDScores can tell you the health department inspection scores for more than 490,000 restaurants and other establishments across 886 jurisdictions in 27 states. HDScores has compiled more than 3 million inspection reports and 9 million violations. The reports come directly from health department inspectors and/or their registered sanitarians/health officials. The app is designed for both iPhone and iPad. HDScores website is http://hdscores.com/

Great American Smokeout coming up

The annual Great American Smokeout is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 20. The American Cancer Society encourages smokers to use the date to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking that day. By quitting – even for one day – smokers will be taking an important step toward a healthier life. Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the U.S., yet about 42 million Americans still smoke cigarettes.

Get more information here: http://www.cancer.org/healthy/stayawayfromtobacco/greatamericansmokeout/index

Do online health campaigns impact off-line behavior?

American Institutes for Research is hosting a webinar on Thursday, Nov. 13, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Eastern on how to evaluate digital communication’s impact of off-line health behavior. What can such measures as page views, likes and other digital analytics tell us about online behavior, and how does that relate to off-line behavior? Once people put their phones down and their laptops away, how can communicators know if Twitter campaigns, Facebook posts or YouTube videos actually influence whether people get tested for HIV or stop smoking? Panelists will discuss these questions and share groundbreaking private-sector work on understanding the relationship between digital communication and off-line behavior. Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/power-or-promise-do-online-health-campaigns-impact-offline-behavior-registration-13558063533?utm_source=newsletter_336&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nphic-news-highlights

Help me bring music therapy to people with Alzheimer’s Disease and advanced dementia

Off to a good start. We have raised just over 30% of our goal so far, with 28 days left in the campaign. Can you make a small pledge to help me bring music therapy to people with Alzheimer’s Disease and advanced dementia? Please check out our project: https://www.kickstarter.com/…/255…/sing-along-with-margaret/

CDC’s Grand Rounds Presents “Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for Prevention of HIV Infection,” today, May 20, at 1 p.m. (EDT).‏

Join us today for the May session of CDC’s Public Health Grand Rounds, “Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for Prevention of HIV Infection.” This session will be available via live webcast from CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, May 20, at 1 p.m. (EDT) at http://www.cdc.gov/cdcgrandrounds/. The webcast link is only active during the date and time of the session, but all sessions are archived for future viewing.

Each year, an estimated 50,000 individuals become infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United States. A new prevention strategy, Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), is intended for high-risk populations to reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV. PrEP includes daily medication and routine follow-up. When used consistently, PrEP is shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection. If delivered effectively and used in combination with other proven prevention methods, PrEP may help address the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Please join us as we explore the opportunities for using PrEP as another tool to prevent the transmission of HIV and discuss the challenges to effective implementation that must be addressed.

http://www.cdc.gov/cdcgrandrounds/

If you are interested in health education and promotion, check out the free trail to these SOPHE publications …

Free Online Journal Trial Through May 31st

Sign up for a free trial to Health Education & Behavior and Health Promotion Practice, the official journals of the Society for Public Health Education. By registering for this trial, you will have access to the cutting-edge research published in HEB and HPP through May 31, 2014.

Health Education & Behavior (HEB) is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly journal that provides empirical research, case studies, program evaluations, literature reviews, and discussions of theories of health behavior and health status, as well as strategies to improve social and behavioral health. HEB also examines the processes of planning, implementing, managing, and assessing health education and social-behavioral interventions.

Health Promotion Practice (HPP) is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly journal devoted to the practical application of health promotion and education. HPP focuses on critical and strategic information for professionals engaged in the practice of developing, implementing, and evaluating health promotion and disease prevention programs.

https://online.sagepub.com/cgi/register?registration=SOPHE2014

Wisconsin gets recognized!

Wisconsin gets a shout out in an APHA video interview with the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. We’re a shining example of using leading health indicators at the state level. 

Watch the new video: Howard Koh, MD, MPH, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, sat down with APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, MD, to talk about the Leading Health Indicators and how communities can use them to improve health.

More “leading health indicators” resources: http://action.apha.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=52401&em_id=47561.0

African American Health Disparities Compared to Non-Hispanic Whites (with a special focus on infant mortality)

This infographic from Families USA shows some of the more prevalent health disparities that afflict African Americans in the United States (compared to non-Hispanic whites). http://familiesusa.org/product/african-american-health-disparities-compared-to-non-hispanic-whites

One health outcome I am particularly interested in is the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR). Wisconsin has a much greater disparity than the rest of the nation. I used data from WISH to calculate relative risks regarding IMR in Wisconsin.

Black/African American women in Wisconsin:

• have a relative risk 5.2 times greater than white women to experience an infant death as a result of short gestation or low birth weight;
• have a relative risk 1.7 times greater than white women to experience an infant death as a result of congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal anomalies;
• have a relative risk 5.0 times greater than white women to experience an infant death as a result of SIDS;
• have a relative risk 3 times greater than white women to experience an infant death as a result of an accident (including falls, suffocation, and drowning).

Does anyone have any information about what is being done to reduce disparities in the IMR in Wisconsin (or anywhere else for that matter)?