by Lloyd F. Novick, MD, MPH

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The Editor’s Podcast with Dr. Lloyd F. Novick appears with each new issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice and offers a closer look at the articles published in the latest issues with guest appearances by authors, guest editors, and others.

The November-December issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice focuses on surveillance of infectious disease attention to COVID-19. Gould and co-authors write of the many policies enacted or proposed by the Trump administration with adverse public health consequences. Poirot and co-authors examine food-induced anaphylaxis, potentially fatal but preventable by allergy avoidance and immediate treatment. Sakamoto describes using liaison public health nurses in Los Angeles hospitals to combat infectious disease. Other articles demonstrate improvements in surveillance, including one from Arizona and another from New York City, that focus on the advantages of utilizing electronic reporting of laboratory results. Other public health interventions address chlamydia; HIV/STD prevention among gay, bisexual men and trans- gender persons; and the 2015 West Ebola outbreak. Lenaway and Beitsch assert that strengthening public health infrastructure is an essential prerequisite for improved public health outcomes, particularly during the current COVID-19 pandemic when basic public health functions such as surveillance, laboratory testing, and contact tracing have been overwhelmed. Gracia points to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. Volkin looks at maternal mortality and COVID-19, noting there is no national standard for collecting data on pregnancy status during disease outbreaks, a serious flaw in public health surveillance systems. Duber describes case identification, community testing, and efforts to prevent disease transmission among homeless individuals in King County, Washington. Gigliotti and Martin evaluated political versus public health predictors of stay-at-home order adoption among US states.

The January-February issue of JPHMP will be accompanied by a special supp-lemental issue on COVID-19. This supplement is sponsored by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC), and the de Beaumont Foundation. Articles will be included on racial and ethnic disparities, epidemiology, contact tracing, homelessness, and LBGTQ communities. 

Learn more about these and other articles in this issue in our podcast below.

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Lloyd F. Novick, MD, MPH is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Public Health at the Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University. Previously, he was chair of this Department. He has served as the Commissioner of Health and Secretary for Human Services of Vermont, Director of Health Services for Arizona, and Director of the Office of Public Health for New York State. Previous academic positions include Professor and Director of the Preventive Medicine Program for SUNY Upstate Medical University, Professor and Chair of Epidemiology at the University of Albany School of Public Health, and Clinical Professor and Director of the Teaching Program in Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Vermont, College of Medicine. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. [Full bio]