| Helping You Stay on Top of Respiratory Illnesses This Fall and Winter It’s respiratory illness season. You know the common culprits: flu, RSV, and COVID-19. And this year we also have pertussis. We’ve recently released a few blog posts to help sort out who should get vaccinated and where to find vaccines, and what you need to know about our ongoing pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak and how to protect yourself. We’ve also freshened up our respiratory illness data dashboard to optimize its usefulness! We’ve updated the levels of illness, added a race/ethnicity snapshot to hospitalization data, showing more detected viruses in air sampling, and changed our first alert system a little. Too busy to check all that on the regular? We’ve got you! Just scroll down below the dashboard and read our short “key takeaways,” summarized for you each Thursday! |
| Understanding Data to Address Drug Overdose Deaths In May, we published our updated Summary of Drug Overdose Deaths. It’s an overview of information about people who died of a drug overdose in Dane County from 2000-2022. These data represent real people. They are our families, our friends, our neighbors, and they were loved. Here are the main takeaways: Overdose deaths in Dane County are decreasing, but they’re still unacceptably high, affecting people of all ages. The data also shows that not everyone is impacted equally by overdose deaths, with Black people more likely to die of an overdose compared with Dane County as a whole. Changes in the types of substances being used are impacting overdose rates. There’s rarely a single substance that causes an overdose death, they tend to be caused by the interactions of multiple substances in someone’s system. Synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, have replaced heroin and prescription drugs as the main contributor to overdose deaths and xylazine is an emerging substance of concern. Learn more, including how we’re working to reduce overdose deaths in Dane County by reading our blog post and Summary of Drug Overdose Deaths. |
| Building Community Relations Within Our Retail Food Program Part of our work in inspecting and licensing food establishments in Dane County is building relationships in the community. Following retail food program standards, we aim to reduce foodborne illness risk factors through education and cooperative efforts with food establishments. To meet these goals, we’ve begun holding presentations in Spanish about starting a food business for prospective food business owners who speak Spanish as a first language. So far, we’ve had 60 prospective new food operators attend, with several more presentations scheduled for later this fall. These presentations have been well received and provide valuable guidance on navigating the licensing process for potential owners. Do you have a group of folks interested in opening a food establishment? Contact our team to learn more! |
| Centering the Voices of People With Lived Experiences is Crucial to Improving Birth Outcomes Our Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) team has been doing some innovative work to incorporate the voices of people with lived experience in their review process. FIMR works to find ways to prevent fetal and infant deaths. It’s an evidence-based, community-level prevention strategy that helps maintain a sense of urgency, while also being a foundation for action. The goal is to improve the wellbeing of birthing people and families in Dane County. Historically, nationwide, the FIMR process has involved mostly medical providers and hasn’t been representative of the racial makeup of the community. With Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) families seeing poorer birth outcomes than their white counterparts in Dane County, last year our team started shifting the way the FIMR process is conducted by partnering with people with lived experience of infant loss to join the FIMR process, to work towards true community-driven change. This is an innovative model that is not being done anywhere else in the country. Here are the policy and program changes they’ve already made, based on what they’ve learned so far: Centering voices of people with lived experience is essential to be truly community-driven. People with lived experience need to be paid for their partnership and recognized as valuable members of the FIMR team. Including people with lived experience deepened their learning and encouraged more inclusive, collaborative work. One FIMR participant had this to say about this important work: “The opportunity to be compensated for my involvement has made a significant difference for me as a Black woman with lived experience…It reinforces the importance of diverse representation and ensures that individuals from all backgrounds can actively contribute to improving maternal and infant health outcomes.” To learn more about the FIMR process and how it works, visit our website. |
| Have You Seen Our Events Calendar? Wondering when our next mobile vaccination clinic is, if we’re holding any upcoming trainings, or whether we’ll be open on specific holidays? Find it all on the home page of our website or by visiting publichealthmdc.com/events! It’s continually updated, so check back often to see what’s on our horizon! |
