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  • 9 sick including 3 HUS from E. coli O157; is Pennsylvania lake the source?

    Posted: August 9th, 2011 - 9:48pm by Doug Powell

    From the I-wish-I-hadn’t-said-that files, Terry Brady, a spokesperson with Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said Monday that the lake at Cowans Gap State Park remained open, despite links to three cases of E. coli O157. “The beaches are open and actually there was a good turnout today. A link to the park has not been established."

    The lake was closed Tuesday afternoon, as the number of people, primarily children, confirmed to have contracted E. coli O157:H7 rose to six, with an additional three suspect cases.

    At least three of the infected have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, including a 3-year-old Mercersburg girl who has been hospitalized since Wednesday, and a 12-year-old Chambersburg boy, who is now recovering after spending his birthday in the hospital.

    Spokesman Brady said in an email Tuesday night that the closing of the lake at Cowans Gap is a precautionary measure "to protect the public's health and safety until the investigation can be completed."

    He said the decision was made after interviews showed that swimming in the lake before becoming ill was a common factor between all individuals.

    Over the weekend, Nikki Gordon, a friend of the three-year-old’s family and another family friend, Amanda Stauffer, came up with the idea for a Facebook group to raise support. As of Friday evening, the group had 955 members, featuring hundreds of well wishes and regular updates on the girl's condition.

    Through her Facebook group, Stauffer has heard from several other people who say their children got sick after swimming in the lake at Cowans Gap, she said. They include a 6-year-old girl, a 15-month-old boy and several children who apparently suffered "mild symptoms" but did not require hospitalization.

    "All of these kids have one thing in common, and it's Cowans Gap. The only thing we do know is that they were all there," Stauffer said.
     

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    E. coli  |  1 Comment
    Children, Cowans Gap State Park, e. coli O157:H7, Facebook, Hus, Illness, jaws, Lake, Pennsylvania, Water
  • Burger King employee thinks management doesn’t check Facebook

    Posted: March 31st, 2010 - 4:38am by Doug Powell

    I try to tell my four daughters – five counting Sorenne but at 15-months-old she’s not on Facebook yet -- don’t put everything on Facebook, someone may actually read it.

    They ignore me, which is the bane of every parent, but I can at least blog about it and then be able to say, it's all fun and games until someone reads your Facebook page.

    A Burger King employee in the Detroit metro area likely regrets making his Facebook messages public after recently warning everyone to stay away from the store he works at because "we spit in your food for sh*ts and giggles."

    "I'm guessing it's cause he was really stressed out, having a bad day at work," said Nick Klingensmith, who works alongside his 21-year-old brother at Burger King.

    He said his brother was just joking.

    "I think he's more scared, he's worried about what's going to happen to him, he don't wanna lose his job," Klingensmith said.

    Customer Carolyn Stevens said,

    "Even if he's joking around if I'm eating something that someone spit in, even if they're joking, I don't want to take that chance."

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    Wacky and Weird  |  2 Comments
    Burger King, Facebook, Food, ridgemount high, spit
  • Social media spreads word on flu: CDC

    Posted: May 11th, 2009 - 2:44pm by Casey Jacob

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a modest 2,500 people followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Twitter feed, CDCEmergency, when it was launched during the outbreak of Salmonella linked to Peanut Corp. of America products earlier this year. Now that the CDC is tweeting about the H1N1 flu (aka swine flu), over 100,000 members of the interested public are following.

    In addition to the Twitter feed, CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing has responded to public demand for information with a Flickr photo stream, podcasts, videos and a Facebook page. These are the media familiar to today’s consumers.

    The director of the National Center for Health Marketing, Dr. Jay Bernhardt, explained that the effectiveness of the agency’s communications through these media is dependent upon public trust, which is developed by speaking the audience’s language.

    For example, Berhardt said of the CDC’s Tweets, “The social media team has learned to use a lot of exclamation points in these kinds of things.”

    This lit review that I’ve been working on is full of evidence of the effectiveness of communicators that target an audience and then reach out to them with relevant, reliable, rapid and repeated information through the media they use every day.

    The review also supports the evaluation of communication efforts to determine their effectiveness (and make changes, if necessary).

    Polls by the Harvard School of Public Health have attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of the CDC’s efforts. And while direct observation of actual consumer behaviors would provide a more accurate evaluation, results of the consumer polls have been promising:

    “[T]he poll shows that 67% of Americans are now washing their hands or using sanitizers more often, compared with 59% who said the same thing a week ago,” stated a report by MedPage.

    “61% of respondents said they were not concerned that they or a family member would get the H1N1 flu within the next year. That's up from 53% who weren't worried a week ago.”

    People can handle more information—not less—about the risks in their lives. Kudos to CDC.
     

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    Food Safety Policy  |  0 Comments
    Cdc, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter
  • Tweeting about Food Safety

    Posted: February 24th, 2009 - 1:14am by Michelle Mazur

    Do you remember how you first heard about the latest round of Salmonella in the peanut butter?  Was it on the evening news, in the paper, or did you hear about it through Facebook or Twitter?  If you’re in the under 30 crowd you might fit into the latter category.  Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are increasingly being utilized for up-to-the-minute recall information.

    During the recent Salmonella outbreak, the United States Department of Health and Human Services - specifically the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - engaged in a heavy social media push to inform citizens about the health risks and product recalls.  As a result, the CDC Social Media Center was created as a central hub for harnessing the power of social networking to spread recall information.

    Twitter is one of the sites currently used in the assortment of links.   Twitter allows users to “follow” one another’s “tweets” about what they do during the day.  The website is on the rise among medical professionals and there are accounts for all ranges of industry available.  Why not food safety?

    Federal health agencies have been experimenting with new Internet tools, dubbed Web 2.0, that make it easier to deliver information directly to the public. The "Health 2.0" movement got a big boost with the arrival of President Barack Obama, who is pushing federal agencies to use the tools to make the federal government more transparent and participatory.

    Current news about FDA recalls can be found @FDArecalls and public health updates from the CDC can be found @CDCemergency. The only snag is you have to sign up in order to receive tweets from the FDA, but hey, its free.  After all, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter.

     

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    Salmonella  |  2 Comments
    Cdc, Facebook, Fda, Food Recall, Recalls, Social Media, Twitter