foodborne illness
kkrisberg | March 18, 2016In another example of the value of investing in public health, a recent study finds that PulseNet, a national foodborne illness outbreak network, prevents about 276,000 illnesses every year, which translates into savings of $507 million in medical costs and lost productivity. That’s a pretty big return on investment for a system that costs just $7.3 million annually to operate.
Created 20 years ago and coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PulseNet includes 83 state and federal laboratories and identifies about 1,750 disease clusters every year. It works by linking…
lborkowski | November 9, 2015Last week, the CDC published a report on multistate foodborne illness outbreaks that occurred in the US from 2010 – 2014, and the news is sobering. During that five-year period CDC received reports of 120 multistate foodborne disease outbreaks with an identified pathogen and food or common setting. While these outbreaks accounted for only 3% of the 4,163 foodborne outbreaks during that time period, they were responsible for 34% of hospitalizations and 56% of deaths associated with these outbreaks.
Salmonella bacteria were responsible for the majority of hospitalizations in multistate…
kkrisberg | February 17, 2015In 2010, New York City health officials launched a new food safety tactic that assigned restaurants an inspection-based letter grade and required that the grade be posted where passersby could easily see it. So, did this grading make a difference? A new study finds that it has, with the probability of restaurants scoring in the A-range up by 35 percent.
To conduct the study, researchers with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene examined data from more than 43,400 restaurants inspected between 2007 and 2013. A restaurant’s score is based on how well it complies with local…
kkrisberg | March 12, 2014When President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law in 2011, it was described as the most sweeping reform of the nation’s food safety laws in nearly a century. Public health advocates hailed the law for shifting regulatory authority from reaction to prevention. What received less attention was a first-of-its-kind provision that protects workers who expose food safety lawbreakers.
The law’s whistleblower provision, also known as Section 402, amends the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to provide “protection to employees against retaliation by an entity engaged in…
lborkowski | October 14, 2013by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
A recent editorial in the New York Times, "Rolling the dice on food-borne illnesses," focused on just one of the many health dangers related to the federal government shutdown. The editorial reminded me of developments in Vermont almost forty years ago, when I was the State Health Commissioner.
Vermont's House Appropriations Committee was threatening to cut the Health Department's budget. After telling the Committee members that they would be hurting the Department’s ability to protect the public, including from foodborne and waterborne illness, I suggested…