Thursday, November 15, 2012

Russia: International Expo & Conference Homeland & Infrastructure Security Russia

TB HOMELAND INTERNATIONAL EXPO & CONFERENCE

For more information please contact:
Mike Rosenberg, Vice President Security | rosenberg@ejkrause.com | 301.493.5500 

Webinar: Nov 19, 2012. Grant Opportunity for 2013


Webinar on Upcoming 2013 Grant Opportunity

Campus safety and violence against women

What: A webinar to review a funding opportunity from the U.S. Department of Justice that addresses violence against women on campus.
When: Monday, November 19, 2012, 2:00-3:30pm, EST
Who Should Participate: University/college administrators, faculty interested in campus safety, staff who administer grants, sponsored program directors, and any other interested parties.
Registration: Contact Bernadette Hence by email at bernadette.hence@ed.gov or by phone (202) 453-6394 for registration information.

Summer 2012 Paid Research Internships in Brazil & Uganda


Application deadlines are Dec. 17 (earlybird) and Dec. 31 (final).

FULLY-FUNDED summer travel to Brazil or Uganda to conduct a 10 week research project on health and health disparities!

Paid international research training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students sponsored by the Minority Health International Research Training (MHIRT) Program at Christian Brothers University (CBU).

Students from all academic disciplines are encouraged to apply. Both qualitative and quantitative research opportunities are available



PROGRAM BENEFITS:
 Roundtrip Airfare
 Paid Living Expenses
 Monthly Stipend
 Life changing research and travel experience

WHO SHOULD APPLY:
 US Citizens and Permanent Residents
 Undergraduate and Graduate Students
(Note: priority is given to undergrads)
 Students with a minimum 3.0 GPA
 Students interested in pursuing a terminal degree (i.e. MD, PhD, etc.)
 Priority given to students from health disparate, financially disadvantaged, and/or minority populations.

HOW TO APPLY:
 Application information is available at:
WWW.CBU.EDU/MHIRT
 Priority deadline: Dec. 17th, 5:00pm CST
 Final deadline: Dec. 31st, 5:00pm CST




The Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training (MHIRT)program at CBU provides international research training opportunities to qualified undergraduate, graduate, and medical students from socially or economically disadvantaged groups who have been historically underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research careers.
  • This program offers research sites in Brazil and Uganda. Students spend 10 weeks during the summer at their designated international research site. CBU has partnered with leading scientists and universities in these countries who serve as research mentors for MHIRT students.
  • MHIRT students engage in research related to: biomedical science, behavioral science, environmental science, carnivore conservation, and/or public health.
  • MHIRT is a paid internship. All expenses relative to travel, room and board, preparation, and workshops are paid.  In addition, students receive a monthly stipend.
  • This program has been continuously funded since 2000 by the Fogarty International Center and the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.
  • The Mid-South Coalition For Minority International Research consists of the lead institution, Christian Brothers University, and the following participating universities: LeMoyne Owen College, Rhodes College, Tennessee State University, and  University of Memphis.
  • Preference is given to students from participating schools within the Coalition and from the Mid-South Region; however, any US citizen or permanent resident may apply.
All applications materials must be e-mailed to Julia Hanebrink (jhanebri@cbu.edu).


JEMS: Studies Show Dangers of Working in EMS

JEMS - Emergency Medical Services                                                                                   JEMS: Today in EMS

Studies Show Dangers of Working in EMS

Providers should raise awareness about the many hazards of EMS




Glossary
PEC: This journal is the official journal for the National Association of EMTs, National Association of EMS Educators, the National Association of State EMS officials and the National Association of EMS Physicians.
The Most Dangerous Job 
Many in our profession read Prehospital Emergency Care (PEC), a comprehensive EMS industry journal that is peer reviewed and devoted to prehospital research. In this column, I often assume we’re all already reading PEC and therefore try to find research in other venues that EMS would not typically stumble across. This month, however, two occupational health and safety studies in PEC should be given the national spotlight. For those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice and the many more of us who have been injured or disabled as a result of work injuries, I urge you to read these two PEC articles and help me alert the media and public about how dangerous our job really is.
Reichard A, Marsh S, Moore P. Fatal and nonfatal injuries among emergency medical technicians & paramedics. Prehosp Emerg Care. 2011;15(4):511–517.
Finally a formal study confirms what we knew in our heavy hearts: EMS has far too many line-of-duty deaths and work-related injuries. The data examined from 2003–2007 comes from a series of credible national sources: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the occupational supplement to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.

The researchers discovered a total of 65 EMS fatalities (13 per year). The EMS fatality rate was 7.0 per 100,000 full-time equivalents (FTE) EMS workers with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of 4.7–9.3.

By comparison, the average for all workers is 4.0 and 6.1 for firefighters in the same four-year period.

Forty-five percent (29) of EMS worker deaths resulted from highway incidents, mostly due to vehicle collisions, and an additional 12% (8) involved personnel being struck by vehicles. Thirty-one percent (20) of EMS fatalities involved air transportation incidents. It’s important to note that these statistics don’t take into account any civilian or patient deaths that may have occurred as a result of EMS crashes or other incidents.

It’s also possible that not all line-of-duty EMS deaths were reported as such due to lack of centralized tracking, or definition.

The majority of nonfatal injuries (84%) involved sprains and strains, mostly in the hands and fingers, and 42% affected the lower trunk. Approximately half of these incidents involved interaction with, or movement of, another person, often as a result of lifting or moving the patient.

The second most common injury was exposure to a harmful substance or environment (21%), including exposure to bodily fluids.

For comparison again, the corresponding rate for sprains/strains for EMS workers was 217.8 per 10,000 FTE, much higher than the rate of 47.3 per 10,000 FTEs reported for all private industry workers.

I recommend that you read the full paper in PEC. The authors do a great job of referencing their work and outlining more details than I can report here, including interesting gender differences. EMS managers should put this important information in their portfolios for use in reports, at public hearings and during interviews with the media. After we all take a moment of silence, we should put EMS worker safety on the top of the 2012 priority list.
Occupational Exposures
Mazen ES, Kue R, McNeil C, et al. A descriptive analysis of occupational health exposures in an urban emergency medical services system: 2007–2009. Prehosp Emerg Care.2011;15(4):506–510.
This is a small retrospective review of reported exposures by Boston EMS workers experienced over a three-year period. A total of 397 exposures were reported, the bulk of which were to meningitis (33%), tuberculosis (17%), viral respiratory infections (15%) and body fluid splashes (14%). I was encouraged by the low number of needle sticks reported (6) and the overall fact that only 18% of all exposures required follow-up treatment.

Kudos to Boston EMS for putting together this report and keeping their sharps tucked away. Of course we can’t know how many exposures may not have been reported or missed in the documentation and review process. Nevertheless, it points to the need for a high index of suspicion for airborne infectious diseases. JEMS

Spotlight: LifeStraw Personal Water Filter System


The LifeStraw® Concept

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) call for a reduction of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by half between 1990 and 2015. Yet, an estimated 884 million people in the world, 37% of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa, still use unimproved sources of drinking water1.
Image of child drinking water from bowl through LifeStrawLack of access to safe drinking water contributes to the staggering burden of diarrhoeal diseases worldwide, particularly affecting the young, the immunocompromised and the poor. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhoea. Diarrhoea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined2. Drinking contaminated water also leads to reduced personal productive time, with widespread economic effects.
Approximately 43% of the global population, especially the lower-income populace in the remote and rural parts of the developing world, is deprived of household safe piped water. Thus, there is a pressing need for effective and affordable options for obtaining safe drinking water at home. Point-of-use (POU) treatment is an alternative approach, which can accelerate the health gains associated with the provision of safe drinking water to the at-risk populations. It empowers people to control the quality of their drinking water. Treating water at the household level or other point of use also reduces the risk of waterborne disease arising from recontamination during collection, transport, and use in the home, a well-known cause of water-quality degradation3. In many rural and urban areas of the developing world, household water-quality interventions can reduce diarrhoea morbidity by more than 40%4,5. Treating water in the home offers the opportunity for significant health gains at potentially dramatic cost savings over conventional improvements in water supplies, such as piped water connections to households6.
Water filters have been shown to be the most effective interventions amongst all point-of-use water treatment methods for reducing diarrhoeal diseases7. The Cochrane review demonstrates that it is not enough to treat water at the point-of-source; it must also be made safe at the point-of-consumption.
LifeStraw® and LifeStraw® Family are both point-of-use water interventions – truly unique offerings from Vestergaard Frandsen that address the concern for affordably obtaining safe drinking water at home and outside. These complementary safe water tools have the potential to accelerate progress towards the MDG target of providing access to safe drinking water, which would yield health and economic benefits; thus contributing to the achievement of other MDGs like poverty reduction, childhood survival, school attendance, gender equality and environment sustainability.


 References
1. WHO and UNICEF. 2008. Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation
2. UNICEF and WHO. 2009. Diarrhoea: Why children are still dying and what can be done
3. Wright, J. et al. 2003. Household drinking water in developing countries: a systematic review of microbiological contamination between source and point-of-use. Trop Med Int Health 9: 106 – 117
4. Ghislaine, R and Clasen, T. 2010. Estimating the Scope of Household Water Treatment in Low- and Medium-Income Countries. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 82(2), pp. 289–300
5. Fewtrell, L. et al. 2005. Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhea in less developed countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Infectious Diseases (5): 42–52
6. International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). Safe Water for All: Harnessing the Private Sector to Reach the Underserved
7. Clasen, T. et al. 2006. Interventions to improve water quality for preventing diarrhoea (Review). The Cochrane Collaboration

Lessons Learned Information Sharing. Nov 8-15, 2012

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Below you'll find a list of new documents posted on LLIS.gov between 11/08/2012 and 11/15/2012 in your particular areas of interest. We continually add information that is relevant and interesting to you, so please login often to LLIS.gov and explore, share, and connect.
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    Wednesday, November 14, 2012

    November 22012: Diabetes Awareness Month


    Diabetes: Risk Factors, Prevention, and Free Toolkit
    Did you know that more than 8 percent of Americans have diabetes? November is Diabetes Awareness Month, making it a good opportunity to learn about this increasingly prevalent disease. 

    Risk Factors - Family history, blood pressure, weight, and activity level are a few of the factors that can affect your chances of developing diabetes.

    Prevention - The onset of Type 2 diabetes can sometimes be prevented or delayed through moderate weight loss and exercise.

    FREE Toolkit for Managing Diabetes - Get practical advice about medications, insulin, and glucose meters to help you manage your diabetes.

    Statistics - Get some basic facts, including the number of Americans with diabetes; the prevalence of Type 1 versus Type 2 diabetes; deaths linked to diabetes; and more.

     


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