Health Administration, Statistics Sections to celebrate 100 years: many sections gear up for anniversaries.
Congratulations will be in order in October when two APHA Sections celebrate 100-year anniversaries during APHA's 136th Annual Meeting in San Diego Oct. 25-29. The Health Administration Section and the Statistics Section--the first of APHA's 25 Sections to achieve the milestone--will celebrate with a range of events and activities....

An epidemic of meddling: the totalitarian implications of public health.
IN FEBRUARY, upon introducing the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said the legislation "would give FDA broad powers to regulate tobacco products and protect public health." In 2004 Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) urged us to think about children's entertainment "from a...

American Public Health Association 134th Annual Meeting & Exposition: November 4-8, 2006 * Boston, MA.
The APHA Annual Meeting & Exposition is the premier Public Health Educational Forum! Learn from the experts in the field, hear about cutting edge research and exceptional best practices, discover the latest public health products and services, and share your public health experience with your peers. The world of...

Health reform in Alberta: the introduction of health regions.
Abstract: In 1994, the Government of Alberta passed the Regional Health Authorities Act to abolish nearly 200 existing local hospital and public health boards and replace them with seventeen regional health authorities. Consistent with the larger fiscal agenda, the government's intention was to address health-care system efficiency through larger...

Veterinarians and environmental health practitioners: partners in prevention.
Editor's note: NEHA strives to provide up-to-date and relevant information on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profession. In pursuit of these goals, we will feature a column from the Environmental Health Services Branch (EHSB) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in every issue...

The Pennsylvania Health and Human Services Call Center: five Pennsylvania agencies and a private-sector partner collaborate on a high-technology, citizen-friendly call center.
This four-part article is a case study of the launch and operation of an integrated system of help-line information services: the Pennsylvania Health and Human Services Call Center (HHSCC).The HHSCC resulted from the collaboration of five Pennsylvania state executive agencies--the Departments of General Services (DGS), Aging (PDA), Health (DOH),...

Measuring contextual characteristics for community health.
Much has been accomplished to improve health and reduce disparities through understanding and intervening on individual-level risk factors for major causes of morbidity and mortality (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force 1996; Ketola, Sipila, and Makela 2000). However, far less attention has been paid to understanding the effect of community...

Challenges to institutionalizing sustainable total quality management programs in healthcare systems of post-Soviet countries.
Abstract Critical changes are occurring on a worldwide basis in the organization, financing, and delivery of healthcare services. A little over a decade after declaring their independence, the nations of the former Soviet Union continue to restructure their political and socioeconomic infrastructures as they move from centrally-planned...

Community Environmental Health Assessment.
The Delaware City-County Health Department Experience, Phase I-Issues Identification Introduction Environmental health traditionally has been a subject that fosters ironies. One of the paradoxes is that while nearly everyone agrees government must intervene, there is no consensus on the methodology of intervention. It is an...

Raising awareness of public health among Americans: new campaigns address the question: what is public health?
In New York City, red and white stickers plastered on everything from bike racks to trash cans to hybrid buses boldly declare: "This is Public Health." In Texas, employees of the San Patricio County Department of Public Health are sporting a logo on their shirts to tell...