Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Examiner - August 29, 2006
Karl B. Hille, khille@baltimoreexaminer.com
The Prevention Wednesday program - focusing on just those sorts of low-cost moves to prevent "all kinds of horrible diseases" according to Health Commissioner Dr. Josh Sharfstein - will join a growing list of low- or no-cost health promotions he initiated since he took the helm last year.
Paying to have a handful of trinkets tested for lead, Sharfstein got Claire's Accessories and Wal-Mart stores nationwide to remove children's jewelry that tested high for lead content, after a lead-laced shoe-bauble swallowed by an Illinois girl turned fatal. "That was really minor in terms of the amount of effort it took us to do," he told The Examiner.
Spokespeople from both companies said it was better to take the items off the shelves while they carried out their own investigations into purchasing and testing policies.
Sharfstein reorganized some of his existing staff, incorporating asthma risk-screening into lead paint intervention visits, and moved the city to the forefront of state-of-the-art HIV testing.
Now it's time to go back to school, and Sharfstein has cooked up a series of public service announcements designed to draw attention to the often unsung powerhouse of public health - disease prevention.
"We're starting up with the bread and butter in public health with hand washing," Sharfstein said. "And we're starting in a school because typically schools are where you get the flu outbreaks. ... When parents, teachers and kids really wash their hands a lot, you can really see the difference in disease prevention."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified hand washing as the single most important method of preventing infection.
"It is not easy to remove germs. It is necessary to use both soap and water, to wash hands for at least 20 seconds, and to rub vigorously," reads the text of a CDC-approved science exercise on hand-washing practices. The full exercise, geared toward school teachers, uses a black light to detect germs, and can be found on the CDC's Body And Mind Web site at www.bam.gov/teachers.
The Baltimore City Health Department's hand-washing challenge will kick off a series of promotions designed to get people thinking of prevention more often. Sharfstein said the demonstrations will continue throughout the year addressing issues such as safe sleep, smoking cessation and lead-poisoning prevention, to name a few.
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