Category Archives: Backstories in Epidemiology

New Video: Mystery in the Pines

The week of July 4, 1989, had been hot but quiet in upstate New York. Marty Toly, the regional epidemiologist, was looking forward to the weekend when he received a call from the Onondaga County Health Department. A local doctor had just reported that a patient had tested positive for typhoid fever. Read the full story of the “Mystery in the Pines” at the Journal of Public Health

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Clam Aches

by Cynthia B. Morrow, MD, MPH As was fairly typical, late on a Friday afternoon in mid-September, 2008, as she was getting ready to go home, one of the communicable disease nurses with the Onondaga County Health Department (OCHD) reviewed laboratory reports that had just been received from the New York State Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System (ECLRS). While ECLRS

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Bad Air, Bad Blood: A Homeric Admonition

by John S. Marr, MD, MPH, and Robert M. Maulitz, MD Dr. John Marr had been the New York City health department’s principal epidemiologist for four months when in early October 1974 he received an unusual telephone call from the Brooklyn-Cumberland Medical Center. The physician caller reported a case of malaria, which by itself was neither urgent — the patient

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Introducing Backstories in Epidemiology: True Medical Mysteries

by Lloyd F. Novick, MD, MPH Introducing Backstories in Epidemiology The September-October 2018 issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice includes an article entitled “Mystery in the Pines.” It recounts a large typhoid epidemic in the Catskill Mountains written by editorial board member and former New York State health official, Gus Birkhead. This article is the first in

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Introducing a New Series of Epidemiologic Case Studies: Podcast with Dr. John Marr

Welcome to another episode of JPHMP Direct TALK. Today, Elena Vidrascu speaks with Dr. John Marr, former director of the New York City Bureau of Communicable Diseases, about a new collection of case studies called Backstories in Epidemiology: True Medical Mysteries, which he co-edits with Carole Novick and JPHMP Editor-in-Chief Dr. Lloyd Novick. The first story in the collection, “Mystery in the

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