Background: On 29 April 2015, the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County (DOH Miami-Dade) was notified by a local dermatologist of 3 patients with suspected nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infection after receiving tattoos at a local tattoo studio.
Methods: DOH Miami-Dade conducted interviews and offered testing, described below, to tattoo studio clients reporting rashes. Culture of clinical isolates and identification were performed at the Florida Bureau of Public Health Laboratories.
The Florida Department of Health in Orange County (DOH-Orange) was notified by a child care facility on January 11, 2013, that a parent had reported that an attendee and three siblings were ill with measles. All four siblings were unvaccinated for measles and had no travel history outside of Orange County during the periods when they likely had been exposed. A fifth, possibly associated case was later reported in a Brazilian citizen who had become ill while vacationing in Florida.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study evaluated the impact of a novel multimethod curricular intervention using a train-the-trainer model: the Public Health Infrastructure Training (PHIT). PHIT was designed to 1) modify perceptions of self-efficacy, response efficacy, and threat related to specific hazards and 2) improve the willingness of local health department (LHD) workers to report to duty when called upon.
Methods: Between June 2009 and October 2010, eight clusters of US LHDs (n = 49) received PHIT.
This study examines the attitudinal impact of an Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM)-based training curriculum on local public health department (LHD) workers' willingness to respond to representative public health emergency scenarios. Data are from 71 U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The all-hazards willingness to respond (WTR) of local public health personnel is critical to emergency preparedness. This study applied a threat-and efficacy-centered framework to characterize these workers' scenario and jurisdictional response willingness patterns toward a range of naturally-occurring and terrorism-related emergency scenarios.
Methods: Eight geographically diverse local health department (LHD) clusters (four urban and four rural) across the U.
Recently, 14 persons in southeastern Florida were identified with Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W135 invasive infections. All isolates tested had matching or near-matching pulsed-field gel electrophoresis patterns and belonged to the multilocus sequence type 11 clonal complex. The epidemiologic investigation suggested recent endemic transmission of this clonal complex in southeastern Florida.
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