2016 OPHA Annual Conference & Meeting
October 10 & 11, 2016
Oregon State University - Corvallis, OR
2016 Keynote Presentations:
Under the Weather? The Health Consequences of a Changing Climate
Monday, October 10th from 9:30-10:30 am (LaSells, Austin Auditorium)
Presented by:
George Luber, PhD
Chief
Climate and Health Program
National Center for Environmental Health
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
The scientific evidence that that the earth’s climate system is changing is unequivocal. Moreover, the health consequences of this warming are already being felt in our communities. Climate change poses a threat to human health in a variety of ways: injury and death from heat waves, extreme storms, and reduced air quality from increasing ozone, aeroallergens, and drought-related wildfire smoke; illnesses transmitted by food, water, and vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks; and mental health impacts subsequent to disasters. More importantly, climate change will threaten the critical systems and infrastructure we rely on to keep us safe and healthy: communication and transportation during emergencies, food and water systems during drought, the energy grid during prolonged heat waves. As the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events increases, the resilience of these systems will be tested, and vulnerabilities will become more exposed. This presentation will review the evidence on the health impacts of climate change and discuss current approaches to climate and health risk management including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Building Resilience Against Climate Effects adaptation framework (BRACE).
Sandwiches or Space Shuttles: Public health and CCOs working together for better health in our communities
Tuesday, October 11th from 9:30-10:30 am (LaSells, Austin Auditorium)
Presented by:
Helen K. Bellanca, MD, MPH
Associate Medical Director
Health Share of Oregon
Public health is about the community – focusing on a population level to achieve optimum health for everyone. The principles of surveillance, prevention, equity, social determinants and environmental health have always been core to the role of public health. As CCOs have become established in our state, they are using these same principles to try to transform the health care delivery system. Health care must embrace a population-level view and prioritize prevention if we are to achieve the outcomes we want. Public health and CCOs have many opportunities to work together with a common purpose and to teach each other from our respective areas of strength. We have some great examples in our state of where this partnership between public health and CCOs has been particularly effective, and this talk will explore a few of those examples.
Featured Presentation:
Epigenetics and Public Health: an Introduction
Tuesday, October 11 from 10:45 am – 12:00 pm (LaSells, Agriculture Leaders)
Presented by:
E. Andres Houseman, ScD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
College of Public Health and Human Sciences
Oregon State University
In this talk we introduce epigenetics and discuss its relevance to public health. Epigenetics concerns the molecular mechanisms that control the expression of genes and are thought to mediate the interactions between environment and genome. In particular, epigenetic variation across cells within a single organism is the principal means by which cells differentiate and acquire their specific identities. Consequently, epigenetics has relevance to public health in two important ways. The first is that environmental conditions in-utero can give rise to subtle cellular alterations that affect an individual well into adulthood, the subject of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis, and these alterations can be studied at the molecular level by interrogating the epigenome. The other is that epigenomic technologies can be used as DNA-based biomarkers for health effects, e.g. for studying immune/inflammation processes (mediated by alterations in counts of specific types of white blood cells) or for studying accelerated aging. In this introductory talk, we discuss these concepts in detail.
Closing Plenary:
21st Century Public Health – Progress Update on Oregon Modernization
Tuesday, October 11 from 3:15 – 4:30 pm (LaSells, Construction & Engineering)
This panel will provide an update and provide an opportunity for audience discussion of Oregon’s Public Health Modernization project. Panelists will present updates on progress and next steps from the perspectives of the Conference of Local Health Officials (CLHO), Oregon Health Authority (OHA), and the Public Health National Center for Innovations (PHNCI). Brief presentations by panelists will be followed by an opportunity for Q&A from the general audience.
Oregon is one of three states piloting a national “learning community” aimed at implementing the transformations required to provide the foundational public health services and ensure health equity to help meet the public health challenges of the 21st century. This project is partially supported through PHNCI and funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
MODERATOR:
Dr. Jeff Luck
Associate Professor
College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University
Panel focus: Background on Oregon Public Health Modernization and a description of the Foundational Elements model.
PANELISTS:
Kaye Bender, PhD, RN, FAAN
President/CEO
Public Health Accreditation Board
Panel focus: How Oregon’s modernization efforts fit into national learning community strategies and PHNCI objectives.
Sara Beaudrault, MPH
Policy Analyst
Oregon Health Authority
Panel focus: Results of the recently completed statewide PH system assessments.
Morgan Cowling, MPA
Executive Director
Coalition of Local Health Officials
Panel focus: Legislation & advocacy activities to fund Oregon public health modernization.
Charlie Fautin, RN, MPH
Chair
Conference of Local Health Officials
Panel focus: Modernization implementation by local health departments.
Book Discussion:
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond (2016)
Monday, October 10 from 5:00 - 6:30pm (OSU Alumni Center, Johnson Library)
Facilitated by: Ken Rosenberg & Kathleen Anger
Housing is an important Social Determinant of Health especially for low-income Americans. The aim of this discussion is to explore collaborations between public health and housing advocates. Conference attendees are welcome to participate in the discussion even if they have not read the book - Please refer to the Jason Parle NYRB review for a summary of the book.
Introduction below provided by Jason DeParle, New York Review of Books, March 10, 2016 Issue. Read the full review HERE.
“Seeking distraction one winter afternoon, a Milwaukee boy takes to some old-fashioned mischief and hurls snowballs at passing cars. A driver gives chase and kicks in the door of the house where the boy lives with his mother and younger brother. The landlord puts the family out. Thus begins an odyssey that in Matthew Desmond’s gripping and important book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, exposes the harrowing world of the ten million or so low-income households that pay half or more of their income for rent and utilities, a long-overlooked population whose numbers have recently soared.
Evicted tells this and other disturbing stories in spellbinding detail in service of two main points. One is that growing numbers of low-income households pay crushing shares of their incomes for shelter—50 percent, 60 percent, 70 percent, and more—leaving inadequate sums for items as basic as medicine and food. Their numbers were rising for decades but soared to record levels during the Great Recession. The book’s second point is that the evictions aren’t just a consequence of poverty but also a cause. Evictions make kids change schools and cost adults their jobs. They undermine neighborhoods, force desperate families into worse housing, and leave lasting emotional scars. Yet they have been an afterthought, if that, in discussions of poverty.
Desmond, a Harvard sociologist, cites plenty of statistics but it’s his ethnographic gift that lends the work such force. He’s one of a rare academic breed: a poverty expert who engages with the poor. His portraits are vivid and unsettling. Crystal, who takes in Arleen, had parents on crack and got passed around to two dozen foster homes. She ends up homeless and prostituting herself, but never misses church. Pam has “a midwestern twang and a face cut from a high school yearbook photo.” But she is so desperate for housing that she tolerates a racist boyfriend who makes her biracial daughters chant “White power!” It’s not easy to show desperate people using drugs or selling sex and still convey their courage and dignity. Evicted pulls it off.”
Download event flyer here.
Questions? Contact Ken Rosenberg: [email protected]
|
