What interests you: Disease sleuthing? Global bioethics? Protecting the food supply? Protecting yourself when you travel?

A new ranking of the top 30 public health blogs places The Public's Health at No. 14. The complete list is below. Lots of interesting stuff.

And if you want to go beyond reading about public health, join us at 6 p.m. Friday for “Blogging and Beer: Public Health in Philadelphia.” Also with us will be our editor at the Inquirer, public health writer Don Sapatkin, and some of our regular contributors. There is no cover charge for what we hope will be a lively discussion at Rembrandt’s Restaurant in Fairmount, one of several health offerings at the Philadelphia Science Festival that we mentioned last week.

Best Public Health Blogs

1. The CDC Public Health Blogs are the primary blogs of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC blog serves the same purpose as the organization, to help keep people safe by educating them on potential risks and risk management not only to do with disease, but many other issues related to public health.
Highlight: Special Needs and Tornados, a Joplin Story

Janet Golden, a Rutgers University history professor, specializes in the histories of medicine, childhood and women. Jeffrey Anderson has been researching blues lyrics relating to disease, and has written about the 1918 flu pandemic's impact on Philadelphia.

By Janet Golden and Jeffrey Anderson

Blues music, a soulful and powerful American art form, includes a number of songs about disease in history and about diseases still with us today. Here are some of our favorites.

1. “TB Blues / Jimmie Rogers

Jimmie Rogers knew of what he sang; he died of tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of 35. This one-time railroad worker became a southern country music star, famous for his yodeling. He wrote enduring songs that have been covered by many artists.

Kristen A. Feemster, M.D.,M.P.H., is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she sees patients and conducts research on infectious disease epidemiology and vaccine policy.

By Kristen A. Feemster

An old disease is back. Cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, have more than tripled in the past five years, with 2012 on track to be the most severe in over a half-century. More than 37,000 cases have been reported so far – 37 times the number in 1976, which was the lowest since the introduction of vaccines dramatically reduced prevalence of the disease.

Philadelphia is one of the communities that have been hit particularly hard. At my home institution in West Philadelphia, we have had 346 confirmed cases diagnosed since July 2011, compared to the usual average of one to two a month. Anyone can be infected but infants are most likely to develop severe illness. Two out of three infected infants will need to be hospitalized, and 1 in 100 infants with whooping cough will die from it – this is a disease to take seriously.

Before pertussis vaccine was introduced in the 1940’s, there were an average of 115,000-270,000 cases  per year in the United States, and 5,000-10,000 deaths. Disease rates have dropped significantly since then. So what is happening now? The alarming increase in pertussis cases is the result of a combination of factors: the challenge of controlling a highly contagious – and often under-recognized – disease, and the reality of an imperfect vaccine in an era of increasing public distrust of vaccines.

By Michael Yudell

Here at The Public’s Health last week, Nan Feyler discussed the underused human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and asked whether we should, like many other vaccines, mandate it for school entry. Some critics of the vaccine have expressed concern that its use will cause girls to “treat sex more loosely.” A new study goes a long way toward putting these concerns to rest.

The study, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics, found that “receipt of HPV vaccine by 11- to 12- year-old girls was not associated with clinical markers of increased sexual activity-related outcomes, such as sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy.” By following these young girls for three years, the researchers found no statistically significant difference between the groups as they came of age sexually — no difference in having taken a pregnancy test, been tested for STDs, or been counseled for the use of contraceptives.

Other studies have made similar findings, though this is the first to rigorously examine actual outcomes that would be associated with unsafe sex, rather than the less reliable method of asking girls — or anyone else, for that matter — to self-report changes in their sexual behavior following immunization.

Nan Feyler, chief of staff for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, is a member of an expert panel intended to expand the breadth of The Public’s Health.

By Nan Feyler

A vaccine against cancer? You would think people would be kicking down the doctor’s door to get it. In fact, the existing HPV vaccine protects against cancer – and immunization rates are disappointing.

HPV, short for human papillomavirus, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. Each year about 12,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 4,000 will die of it. An additional 330,000 women annually undergo surgery to remove pre-cancerous lesions of the cervix, almost all of which are caused by HPV. Since 2006, an HPV vaccine has been available to prevent almost all cervical cancers, as well as vaginal and vulvar cancer in females and genital warts and anal cancer in both males and females, diseases also caused by HPV.

HPV is common, and it is easily spread during sexual activity. About 20 million Americans are infected, with an additional 6.2 million new infections each year. It is so common that at least 50 percent of sexually active men and women get it at some point. 

By Michael Yudell

Autism, the lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder marked by a range of social and communication impairments, has seen its share of reckless claims about causes and cures.

From the belief that the emotional coldness of the so-called refrigerator mother caused her child’s autism to the fabricated science that vaccines were a trigger, such misbegotten ideas have, at best, offered only temporary hope to affected families, and, at worst, done incalculable harm to the public’s health. Because scientists still know so little about autism’s causes – almost certainly a complex combination of multiple factors – it should come as no surprise that claims based loosely or not at all on science continue to attract public attention.

At quick glance, a recent opinion article in the New York Times by writer Moises Velasquez-Manoff, claiming that “perhaps one-third, and very likely more” of autism cases look like a brain-damaging inflammatory disease caused by a parasite deficiency that “begins in the womb,” offers interesting insight into the science of autism causation. Researchers around the world are hard at work trying to decipher the puzzle that is autism, and Velasquez-Manoff draws attention to some of their work.

Geisinger Health, the major health care system of central and northeastern Pennsylvania, recently joined Abington Memorial Hospital, the World Health Organization and other tobacco-conscience health care organizations by announcing that it will screen prospective employees for nicotine before hiring—those whose urine tests positive for nicotine will not be hired.  Along with smoke-free air policies, cigarette taxes, and graphic warning labels, pre-employment nicotine screenings are yet another arrow in the public health quiver of efforts aimed at getting people not to smoke.

Given that we’re so serious about cracking down on smoking, one might wonder if we should consider a more efficient approach—one that completely stops people from smoking in the first place.  This is the goal of NicVAX—a conjugate vaccine being developed to prevent and treat nicotine addiction.

According to Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, the company developing NicVAX with aid from a $4.1 million National Institute on Drug Abuse grant, the vaccine is intended to work by getting the body’s immune system to produce antibodies, which bind to molecules of nicotine in the blood stream, which in turn block the nicotine reaching the brain and prevent the release of feel-good chemicals, like dopamine, which make cigarettes addictive.  If it works as intended, NicVAX will prevent smoking and help people quit by making the experience less pleasurable—not an outright adverse experience as Antabuse (Disulfiram) does with alcohol. 

Here at The Public’s Health we have not hidden the fact that we see vaccination as one of the great public health success stories of the 20^th century, and hope that vaccines continue to have a similar benefit in the 21^st. The effectiveness and safety of vaccination is well documented: many vaccine-preventable diseases from polio to measles to mumps have either largely been controlled or, in the case of smallpox, eradicated from planet earth. Risks from immunization are generally minor, but in very rare cases can be serious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides a detailed explanation of vaccine-related risks on its website for all vaccines licensed for use in the United States. Your doctor or pediatrician should discuss these risks with you.

Even if you have doubts about vaccination, however, we hope that you continue to read and engage in dialog with us on vaccine-related issues. While our opinions are strong, we are sensitive to the myriad historical and personal reasons why different people come to oppose vaccination.

A post on this blog a few weeks back helped to expose a subtle but powerful anti-flu vaccine ad sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center, an advocacy group, that was running on the in-flight entertainment system at Delta Airlines. (The link has been taken down, but NVIC is still featuring the video, which doesn't so much criticize vaccines as overemphasize every other conceivable form of protection.) The Public’s Health was one of the first news sources to cover the story. As coverage expanded - and criticism from the medical community grew - Delta issued a half-hearted apology for the fiasco. The airline claimed that while “the views represented in the PSA do not necessarily match those of Delta, we recognize that we have a responsibility to our customers to ensure all programming is relevant, accurate and does not lend itself to interpretation.”

The H1N1 pandemic of 2009-10 may be fading from memory for most. But for the public health community, swine flu provided a critical case study in how well-prepared we are for a widespread outbreak of novel communicable disease. The pandemic also offers important lessons on the persistence of health disparities and on the importance of public trust in public health emergencies.

So with flu season upon us, it seems a fitting time to review a June 2011 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office summarizing what worked and what didn’t with the federal government’s $4.1 billion H1N1 response effort.

Key findings:

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