CDPH in the News
California health officials battle state’s largest hepatitis A outbreak in 2 decades
from Healio Infectious Disease News
The California Department of Public Health is working with local health officials in San Diego and Santa Cruz counties to contain the state’s largest hepatitis A outbreak in 2 decades. As of July 18, officials identified 251 cases and five deaths in San Diego, and 27 cases in Santa Cruz since the outbreak began in November, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency reported that 69% of cases in the county required hospitalization.
California Valley Fever Cases Highest On Record
from Kaiser Health News
The number of Valley Fever cases in California rose to a record level in 2016, with 5,372 reported – a jump of 71 percent from the previous year. Historically, about three-quarters of cases have been in the state’s heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley. The fungal infection, known as coccidioidomycosis, or “cocci,” is most common in the southern portion of the Valley and along the Central Coast of California. State health officials say they’re not sure what caused the recent increase, the largest since 2011, but “climatic and environmental factors” could have increased the risk of exposure to the airborne spores that cause the disease, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Study: Insurance Status Affects Cancer Outcomes
from Los Angeles Sentinal
Results from a recent study by the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, revealed that health insurance type at diagnosis greatly impacts cancer outcomes especially in adolescent and young adult patients. Published in the July 10, 2017 issue of Cancer Causes Control, researchers examined joint associations between sociodemographic factors – race/ethnicity, neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES), and health insurance – and cancer survival for the most frequent cancers among AYAs. The research was supported by the California Department of Public Health as part of the statewide cancer reporting program mandated by California Health and Safety Code Section 103885 and the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health
Record number of students vaccinated under stricter state law
from Santa Clarita Valley Signal
A record number of students in seventh grade and kindergarten were vaccinated during the 2016-17 school year, according to two executive summary reports from the California Department of Public Health. According to the reports, immunizations increased to 98.4 percent for seventh grade students and increased to 95.6 percent for kindergarten students in 2016-17. The increase in immunizations could be attributed to the state’s stricter vaccination law that went into effect July 1, 2016. Senate Bill 277 ended the exemption of vaccinations based on personal beliefs. Under the law, only students enrolled in independent study programs or homeschooled programs are not required to be vaccinated. Students can also still receive exemptions due to medical reasons.
Want To Know Your Hospital’s C-Section Rate? Yelp Is On The Way.
from California Healthline
You might check Yelp reviews before deciding where to go to dinner, or which plumber to hire. Now you can use the website to decide where to have a baby. San Francisco-based Yelp is now adding clinical data on cesarean sections, episiotomies and breastfeeding rates to consumer reviews of California hospitals, so women can make better-informed decisions about where they deliver. Yelp’s maternity data is drawn from self-reported information from California hospitals, the California Department of Public Health and the state’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
How you can blast your ashes into space for just £9,500 or book yourself a cemetery plot on the MOON
from The Sun (UK)
A FUNERAL director has come up with an out-of-this-world plan for a final send off – blasting your ashes into space for nearly £10,000. People who choose a space funeral can either have a gram of cremated remains launched to the moon, or a small amount sent into a low-Earth orbit. The ashes will then eventually make their way back into the atmosphere, where they burn up completely. Celestis became the first to get permission from the California Department of Public Health to send cremated remains to space on the first privately funded lunar mission led by Moon Express.