Daily Archives: February 11, 2019

The Changing Face of Public Health Emergency Response

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I attended the lecture “The Changing Face of Public Health Emergency Response” on January 28, 2019 in the new Rita Hollings Science Center. The speaker was Dr. Stephen Redd, deputy director of Public Health Service and Implementation Science and director of the Center for Preparedness Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He spoke about types of emergencies, how each is handled, and gave examples of two outbreaks that he has responded to as part of the CDC.

The types of response Dr. Redd discussed were predictable, predicated, and emerging. Predictable events are those that we know will happen but where, when, and how bad it will be are unknown. These are events like hurricanes, and the response is restoring infrastructure. Predicted events are those that we cannot predict how likely it is, but preparedness is expected. Bioterrorism is an example of a predicted event, and the response would be to deploy equipment and resources that are on hand. The final category was emerging events, or those that are almost completely unpredicted and unprecedented. The response to emerging issues like the opioid epidemic is trying to understand and adapt to what is happening.

Following this, Dr. Redd elaborated on specific responses the CDC enacted when outbreaks of H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola in 2014 occurred. After these two case studies, he gave an overall view of communicating with the public during emergencies. Among these strategies were listing the actions taken to address problem, employing empathy, setting expectations, and utilizing risk communication principles.

While these overall relate to sustainability in terms of resources and our consumption in times of emergency, the part of his talk that related most to class was when he discussed population changes. Globally, we know that population is steadily increasing. We also know that urban populations specifically are growing, through internal migration and immigration. In terms of numbers, Dr. Redd shared that there are currently thirty-three countries with populations over 10 million people.

With the rise in global population comes an increase in poverty levels, particularly in the areas of densest population. This tends to be concentrated in regions of South Asia and Africa especially. The combination of high population and high poverty rates feed off of each other, holding people stagnant in low qualities of life. Due to this, Dr. Redd stated that international border crossings are increasing on an exponential curve. The total number is doubling nearly every twenty years. Alternately, those who remain in the countries are exposed to growing numbers of domesticated animals used for food. These creatures can serve as hosts or reservoirs for certain diseases, which is one mechanism by which contagious diseases are spread. The proximity of people in crowded, urban areas also allows for easier transmission.

When listening to him speak, Dr. Redd’s brief but thorough commentary on increasing global population really stood out to me. Though this was a few weeks before we began discussing it in class, population growth is a wide-reaching issue. Not only does it have implications in public health and disease rates, but also in terms of resources. We need food, fuel, and land to support us, and eventually the Earth will not be able to support us. As population grows, so does the rate of resource consumption. The increase in disease rates that is expected will only require more resources to treat and prevent said diseases, further shortening the time in which we will have enough resources. As morbidity and mortality of diseases increases, people will be inclined to have more children in hopes of greater survival. This in turn will feed the population boom and the two will work in a cyclic system unless we are careful with our resource use now.

Sea Turtle Seminar: What have we learned and achieved?

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I attended the Sea Turtle Seminar on February 4th at the Rita Hollings building. The talk was held by Joe Pfaller who is apart of the Caretta Research Project also known as the CRP. The CRP is held in Wassaw Island in Georgia. Their primary focus is to conserve, research, and educate people about the loggerhead sea turtles that come ashore on Wassaw Island. They are a non-profit organization that has been the longest running project of 47 years! During the beginning of the talk, they discussed the tasks that they do at the CRP. Not only do they protect loggerheads, but they also sometimes help green sea turtles, leatherback sea turtles, and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. Then going onto what life is like to be a sea turtle and the patterns they have learned to help them better understand conservation both regionally and internationally. The CRP achievements began in the ’70s when they began protecting the nests and creating the T.E.D also know as the Turtle Excluder Device. This device helps sea turtles from drowning in shrimp traps. The CRP is also volunteer friendly, this helps bridge the gap to help sea turtles. Although achievements are good, there are more problems that seem to be according. Such as climate change is the main focal point. Climate change is affecting sea turtles in many ways. This brings us to what we have been talking about in our class, and how certain environmental problems are viewed. The two views are anthropocentric and ecocentric. Anthropocentric is the view that tends to focus on one main area and the ecocentric view is more holistic and looks at the bigger picture zoomed out. For the sea turtles, an anthropocentric view will not fix the problems that climate change is causing, but to increase more. Looking at an ecocentric view it will let us look at all areas being affected by climate change, for example, like; sea-level rising, change in currents, pollution, and beach armoring. All these needs to be taken into consideration to completely be able to conserve sea turtles, because it is more than just protecting their nest, is it to create a more sustainable outcome for these sea turtles. That is why the CRP is a very good organization because it allows volunteers from all over to educated and participates in sea turtle conservation. I think that is the first step in any conservation is to bring everyone together to make a better solution.