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Purpose To identify macro-level trends that are changing the needs of epidemiologic research and practice and to develop and disseminate a set of competencies and recommendations for epidemiologic training that will be responsive to these changing needs. Methods There were three stages to the project: (1) assembling of a working group of senior epidemiologists from multiple sectors, (2) identifying relevant literature, and (3) conducting key informant interviews with 15 experienced epidemiologists. Results Twelve macro trends were identified along with associated actions for the field and educational competencies. The macro trends include the following: (1) “Big Data” or informatics, (2) the changing health communication environment, (3) the Affordable Care Act or health care system reform, (4) shifting demographics, (5) globalization, (6) emerging high-throughput technologies (omics), (7) a greater focus on accountability, (8) privacy changes, (9) a greater focus on “upstream” causes of disease, (10) the emergence of translational sciences, (11) the growing centrality of team and transdisciplinary science, and (12) the evolving funding environment. Conclusions Addressing these issues through curricular change is needed to allow the field of epidemiology to more fully reach and sustain its full potential to benefit population health and remain a scientific discipline that makes critical contributions toward ensuring clinical, social, and population health.

CDC designed its Health Systems Integration Program to prepare leaders to function at the interface of public health and health care. Specific Health Systems Integration Program competencies in the areas of communication, analysis and assessment, and health systems were developed to nurture evidence-based decision-making and leadership skills crucial for future public health leaders. The program therefore designed an innovative journal club as part of its competency-based curriculum not only to meet the standard goals for a journal club—critical reading, interpretation, and acquiring content knowledge—but also to foster leadership development. This report describes the Health Systems Integration Program journal club format, its implementation, challenges, and key elements of success. Other programs using a journal club model as a learning format might consider using the Health Systems Integration Program’s innovative approach that focuses on leadership development.

Public health is what we do together as a society to ensure the conditions in which everyone can be healthy. Although many sectors play key roles, governmental public health is an essential component. Recent stressors on public health are driving many local governments to pioneer a new Public Health 3.0 model in which leaders serve as Chief Health Strategists, partnering across multiple sectors and leveraging data and resources to address social, environmental, and economic conditions that affect health and health equity. In 2016, the US Department of Health and Human Services launched the Public Health 3.0 initiative and hosted listening sessions across the country. Local leaders and community members shared successes and provided insight on actions that would ensure a more supportive policy and resource environment to spread and scale this model. This article summarizes the key findings from those listening sessions and recommendations to achieve Public Health 3.0.

CONTEXT: Studies characterizing the public health workforce are needed for providing the evidence on which to base planning and policy decision making both for workforce staffing and for addressing uncertainties regarding organizing, financing, and delivering effective public health strategies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is leading the enumeration of the US public health workforce with an initial focus on CDC as the leading federal public health agency. OBJECTIVE: To characterize CDC’s workforce, assess retirement eligibility and potential staff losses, and contribute these data as the federal component of national enumeration efforts. METHODS: Two sources containing data related to CDC employees were analyzed. CDC’s workforce was characterized by using data elements recommended for public health workforce enumeration and categorized the occupations of CDC staff into 15 standard occupational classifications by using position titles. Retirement eligibility and potential staffing losses were analyzed by using 1-, 3-, and 5-year increments and compared these data across occupational classifications to determine the future impact of potential loss of workforce. RESULTS: As of the first quarter of calendar year 2012, a total 11 223 persons were working at CDC; 10 316 were civil servants, and 907 were Commissioned Corps officers. Women accounted for 61%. Public health managers, laboratory workers, and administrative-clerical staff comprised the top 3 most common occupational classifications among CDC staff. Sixteen percent of the workforce was eligible to retire by December 2012, and more than 30% will be eligible to retire by December 2017. CONCLUSIONS: This study represents the first characterization of CDC’s workforce and provides an evidence base upon which to develop policies for ensuring an ongoing ability to fulfill the CDC mission of maintaining and strengthening the public’s health. Establishing a system for continually monitoring the public health workforce will support future efforts in understanding workforce shortages, capacity, and effectiveness; projecting trends; and initiating policies.

Editors’ Note: We invited a sample of AJPM’s Editorial Board, supplement guest editors, and longtime colleagues and contributors to share their experiences and impressions of the impact of AJPM on their respective domains. We were particularly fond of Ken Powell’s analogy to being “tenders of the planted seed”—as planters, weeders, and harvesters—watching and nurturing the growth of AJPM, and have elected to lead with his commentary. In the mid-1940s my brothers and I helped our father tend our victory garden. We were suburbanites and our small garden shared a vacant lot with the concrete foundation of a home abandoned in mid-construction during the Depression. We helped plant, weed, and harvest the crops. I especially liked the tall stalks of sweet corn that grew taller than I was. Many years later, in the mid-1990s, I met a couple of other gardeners: Kevin Patrick and Doug Scutchfield visited the Centers for Disease Control (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to discuss their plans as the editors of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. I was working in a Branch that was trying to understand the public health importance of regular physical activity, and they had the foresight to know we were planting some seeds in an important new area. I’m not sure that I had even heard of AJPM before their visit. A few years later, while the field of physical activity and public health continued to grow, I shifted my focus to violence and injury prevention. Once again, the team of Patrick and Scutchfield recognized the importance of this topic to the field of preventive medicine. By the turn of the century my work had shifted from the national to the state level. I tried to keep up with the literature by reading or scanning articles as I rode the subway to and from work. The Georgia Division of Public Health had no access to a library so I circulated my personal copy of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine to my team in the Chronic Disease and Injury Epidemiology Section because it contained by far the most articles of interest and practical application for us. Isn’t it interesting to watch things grow. Gardens, journals, and the fields of public health and preventive medicine.

In 1994, the Core Public Health Functions Steering Committee, which was convened by the Assistant Secretary for Health and included representatives from U.S. Public Health Service agencies and other major public health organizations, was organized to clarify the public health functions of assessment, policy development, and assurance identified by the IOM Committee on Public Health. Among its other activities, the Steering Committee was charged with developing the framework for the Essential Public Health Services to categorize all public health activities.1 It also commissioned a subcommittee on public health workforce, training, and education to provide a profile of the public health workforce and make projections regarding the workforce of the 21st century.

Abraham Flexner's 1910 report is credited with promoting critical reforms in medical education. Because Flexner advocated scientific rigor and standardization in medical education, his report has been perceived to place little emphasis on the importance of public health in clinical education and training. However, a review of the report reveals that Flexner presciently identified at least three public-health-oriented principles that contributed to his arguments for medical education reform: (1) The training, quality, and quantity of physicians should meet the health needs of the public, (2) physicians have societal obligations to prevent disease and promote health, and medical training should include the breadth of knowledge necessary to meet these obligations, and (3) collaborations between the academic medicine and public health communities result in benefits to both parties. In this article, commemorating the Flexner Centenary, the authors review the progress of U.S. and Canadian medical schools in addressing these principles in the context of contemporary societal health needs, provide an update on recent efforts to address what has long been perceived as a deficit in medical education (inadequate grounding of medical students in public health), and provide new recommendations on how to create important linkages between medical education and public health. Contemporary health challenges that require a public health approach in addition to one-on-one clinical skills include containing epidemics of preventable chronic diseases, reforming the health care system to provide equitable high-quality care to populations, and responding to potential disasters in an increasingly interconnected world. The quantitative skills and contextual knowledge that will prepare physicians to address these and other population health problems constitute the basics of public health and should be included throughout the continuum of medical education.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers training in specific, critically needed disciplines such as epidemiology and laboratory sciences, frequently through experiential, on-the-job service and learning fellowships. The agency also provides a more general exposure to public health as a field, often for younger participants, through shorter-term internships. In addition, other programs provide opportunity for exposure to public health thinking and public health problems in an academic setting as early as elementary school. Although a primary purpose of these programs, especially the experiential fellowships and internships, is to attract young people to public health careers, a secondary goal, particularly for the younger students, is to foster an awareness and concern regarding their personal health. The Career Paths to Public Health Program focuses on students and teachers from elementary to undergraduate schools and builds on CDC's existing postgraduate training programs. The program enhances student interest in the practical uses of mathematics and science and introduces them to the exciting work of public health. These activities also provide a nexus for working with both traditional partners in academia and public health and new academic partners to foster programs of mutual interest.

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness (Summit) con-vened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention, and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; and coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. This action agenda offers options for consideration by those responsible for or interested in ensuring that public health professionals, their legal counsels, and relevant partners understand the legal framework in which they operate and are competent in applying legal authorities to public health emergency preparedness. Competencies are critical to an individual’s ability to make effective legal response to all-hazards public emergencies. The accompanying assessment paper outlines the state of existing competencies in public health legal preparedness by discussing the develop-ment of public health emergency competencies and public health law competencies and identifies gaps in competencies that detract from attainment of the goal of full legal preparedness for public health emer-gencies.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies; the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community; signs that you are on the right track (or not); and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.

The authors reflect on public health in the U.S. and the need to upgrade it. They state the U.S. ranks 27th in the world in life expectancy despite spending almost three trillion dollars annually in health care, while life expectancy for the poor is declining. They describe what they call Public Health 1.0 and 2.0, and mention how the Affordable Care Act improved health care access for everyone and catalyzed the move toward value-based payments. They reflect on components for Public Health 3.0

Public health investigators have successfully carried out epidemiologic investigations of outbreaks of disease for many years. By far the majority of these outbreaks have occurred naturally. With the recent illnesses resulting from deliberate dissemination of B. anthracis on an unsuspecting population, public health investigation of diseases must now include consideration of bioterrorism as a potential cause of outbreaks of disease. The features of naturally occurring outbreaks have a certain amount of predictability in terms of consistency with previous occurrences, or at least biological plausibility. However, with a deliberately introduced outbreak or infection among a population, this predictability is minimized. In this paper, the authors propose some epidemiologic clues that highlight features of outbreaks that may be suggestive of bioterrorism. They also describe briefly the general process of involvement of agencies at various levels of government, public health and non-public health, depending on the extent of an outbreak or level of suspicion.

The public health workforce is vital to protecting the health and safety of the public, yet for years, state and local governmental public health agencies have reported substantial workforce losses and other challenges to the workforce that threaten the public's health. These challenges are complex, often involve multiple influencing or related causal factors, and demand comprehensive solutions. However, proposed solutions often focus on selected factors and might be fragmented rather than comprehensive. This paper describes approaches to characterizing the situation more comprehensively and includes two visual tools: (1) a fishbone, or Ishikawa, diagram that depicts multiple factors affecting the public health workforce; and (2) a roadmap that displays key elements-goals and strategies-to strengthen the public health workforce, thus moving from the problems depicted in the fishbone toward solutions. The visual tools aid thinking about ways to strengthen the public health workforce through collective solutions and to help leverage resources and build on each other's work. The strategic roadmap is intended to serve as a dynamic tool for partnership, prioritization, and gap assessment. These tools reflect and support CDC's commitment to working with partners on the highest priorities for strengthening the workforce to improve the public's health.

CDC designed its Health Systems Integration Program to prepare leaders to function at the interface of public health and health care. Specific Health Systems Integration Program competencies in the areas of communication, analysis and assessment, and health systems were developed to nurture evidence-based decision-making and leadership skills crucial for future public health leaders. The program therefore designed an innovative journal club as part of its competency-based curriculum not only to meet the standard goals for a journal club-critical reading, interpretation, and acquiring content knowledge-but also to foster leadership development. This report describes the Health Systems Integration Program journal club format, its implementation, challenges, and key elements of success. Other programs using a journal club model as a learning format might consider using the Health Systems Integration Program's innovative approach that focuses on leadership development.

CONTEXT Health professionals who can bridge the gap between public health and clinical medicine are needed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemiology Elective Program (EEP) offers a rotation in public health for medical and veterinary students that provides an introduction to public health, preventive medicine, and the principles of applied epidemiology through real-world, hands-on experiential learning. OBJECTIVE To describe EEP, including its role in the integration of medicine and public health, and career paths for those who subsequently have enrolled in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). DESIGN A review of files of EEP students participating June 1975 to May 2012 and EIS files to determine which EEP participants subsequently enrolled in EIS and their current employment. RESULTS During January 1975 to May 2012, a total of 1548 students participated in EEP. Six hundred thirty-eight (41.2%) EEP students participated in field-based epidemic-assistance investigations. Among 187 students completing an exit survey implemented during 2007, a total of 175 (93.6%) indicated an increased understanding or competence in applied epidemiology and public health, and 98 (52.4%) indicated that they would apply to EIS. Among the 165 (10.7%) who enrolled in and completed EIS by July 2012, 106 (64.2%) are currently employed in public health and 65 (39.4%) are board-certified in preventive medicine, board eligible, or currently enrolled in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Preventive Medicine Residency or Fellowship. CONCLUSIONS The CDC Epidemiology Elective Program offers opportunities for medical and veterinary students to participate in real-world public health learning activities. The Epidemiology Elective Program provides increased understanding and competence in applied epidemiology, provides students with opportunities to learn about population health and health care problems and the tools to help them bridge the gap between clinical medicine and public health, and serves as a source for EIS and other public health-related training and careers.

Development of effective public health information systems requires understanding public health informatics (PHI), the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research, and learning. PHI is distinguished from other informatics specialties by its focus on prevention in populations, use of a wide range of interventions to achieve its goals, and the constraints of operating in a governmental context. The current need for PHI arises from dramatic improvements in information technology, new pressures on the public health system, and changes in medical care delivery. Application of PHI principles provides unprecedented opportunities to build healthier communities.

If there were any doubts that injuries, in general, and firearm-related injuries, in particular, represent a health problem to be addressed in a public health framework in the United States, the articles in the current supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine should put them to rest. These articles describe the efforts of public health professionals to conduct and evaluate public health surveillance for firearm-related injuries. By adopting the rubric of surveillance, the cornerstone of public health practice, and thereby moving away from simply conducting studies of firearm injuries,1–11 the authors place prevention of firearm-related injuries squarely in the mainstream of traditional public health efforts. The traditional public health approach has its foundation in public health surveillance. Surveillance implies far more than gathering data for study purposes. The first definition of public health surveillance offered by Langmuir still serves to highlight the fundamental aspects of surveillance.12 Surveillance is characterized by the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data regarding conditions of public health interest. It is an ongoing, not a one-time, activity. And, importantly, the results and interpretation of surveillance data are disseminated to those who need to know: public health practitioners, decision and policy makers, and the general public. It is this dissemination feedback loop and the ongoing nature of surveillance that are its sine qua non and that distinguish it from other data-gathering activities. A decade ago, Graitcer described the rationale and attributes of systems for injury surveillance, including potential sources of data.13 Several of the studies cited above calculated incidence rates of firearm-related injuries, and explored the usefulness and accessibility of the data sources needed to study the problem.9–11 However, these reports encompassed data collected under the more “ideal” circumstances of a one-time study, and they did not address the issues of the feasibility of ongoing data collection by a health department. The pilot surveillance projects described in this supplement to the Journal encompass the various elements of surveillance and show that it is possible to successfully conduct surveillance for firearm-related injuries.14–22 These papers use the approach of systematically applying CDC’s Guidelines for Evaluating Surveillance Systems23 to describe the following components of each surveillance system and project: defining the conditions under surveillance, data sources, information flow, the effort required to collect data, and surveillance system attributes (e.g., simplicity, flexibility, and acceptability). Since their publication, these guidelines have been applied to describing and improving surveillance systems across the spectrum of public health. However, although the results from these projects clearly indicate that surveillance for firearm-related injury is achievable and can meet many of the benchmarks of surveillance systems for infectious, chronic, and environmentally related public health problems, they also underscore the challenges of initiating and conducting surveillance in the current environment of limited public health resources and proliferation of electronic data systems designed for other purposes.24 In this sense, firearmrelated injury surveillance is facing similar challenges to surveillance in other areas of public health.

By 1990, all 50 states were using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Electronic Telecommunications System for Surveillance to report individual case data that included demographic information (without personal identifiers) about most notifiable diseases. This analysis of National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) data is useful for evaluating the distribution of reported notifiable infectious diseases among adult women by age and race. The number of cases of the 48 nationally notifiable infectious diseases reported among adult women (i.e., womenor = 15 years of age) were compiled for 1992-1994. These data were then analyzed by age and race, and rates per 100,000 adult women were calculated. During 1992-1994, the 10 most commonly reported nationally notifiable diseases among adult women in the United States were, in descending order of frequency, gonorrhea, primary/secondary syphilis, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), salmonellosis, tuberculosis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, shigellosis, Lyme disease, and hepatitis C/non-A non-B. Gonorrhea was the most commonly reported notifiable infectious disease for women of all ages, except those agesor = 55 years, and for women of all races, except Asian/Pacific Islanders. Tuberculosis was the most commonly reported infectious disease among women of Asian/Pacific Island descent. Analysis of NNDSS data provides information about the relative reported burden of diseases among women of all ages and different races. This information may be used for targeting research, prevention, and control efforts.

En este informe se presentan las diversas definiciones de casos de cólera usadas en los países de América Latina que se han visto afectados por la epidemia; se da el número de casos de cólera y de las defunciones por la enfermedad (según datos notificados a la OPS por los países latinoamericanos en 1993), y se describen algunas tendencias regionales de la incidencia de cólera. La información relacionada con la forma en que se definieron los casos de la enfermedad se obtuvo por medio de un cuestionario administrado por la OPS en octubre de 1993. En total, 948 429 casos de cólera fueron notificados a la OPS entre enero de 1991 y diciembre de 1993 por los países latinoamericanos afectados por la epidemia y las incidencias anuales más altas se registraron en el Perú (1991 y 1992) y Guatemala (1993). La tasa de letalidad para todo el trienio, y también para 1993, fue de 0,8%. La incidencia de cólera mostró una tendencia descendente general en la mayor parte de los países sudamericanos pero aumentó en casi todos los países de Centroamérica. Se observó gran variabilidad en las definiciones aplicadas para notificar casos de cólera, casos de cólera hospitalizados y defunciones atribuibles al cólera. Esta variabilidad dificulta cualquier comparación global entre países (y hasta estimar la carga de morbilidad y evaluar la calidad de la atención sobre la base de las tasas de letalidad), y aun las tendencias notificadas dentro de un mismo país deben evaluarse con cuidado. Es muy probable que en un futuro la situación se complique por la llegada de la cepa Vibrio cholerae 0139 a América Latina, situación que genera la necesidad de distinguir entre ella y la cepa 01, que es la predominante. Para efectos de simplificación y para lograr la amplia aceptación y extensa divulgación de la información sobre los casos, se recomiendan las siguientes definiciones: caso confirmado de cólera 01: infección por V. cholerae 01 toxígeno, confirmada por métodos de laboratorio, en cualquier persona con diarrea. Caso confirmado de cólera 0139: infección confirmada por V. cholerae 0139 toxígeno, confirmada por un laboratorio, en cualquier persona con diarrea. Caso clínico de cólera: diarrea acuosa de carácter agudo en una persona mayor de 5 años que busca tratamiento. Defunción atribuible al cólera: defunción durante la semana inmediatamente posterior al comienzo de la diarrea en una persona con cólera confirmado o diagnosticado según la definición clínica. Paciente hospitalizado con cólera: persona con cólera confirmado o diagnosticado según la definición clínica que pasa un mínimo de 12 horas en un centro de atención para el tratamiento de la enfermedad.This report presents the various cholera case definitions used by the affected countries of Latin America, shows the numbers of cholera cases and deaths attributable to cholera (as reported by Latin American countries to PAHO through 1993), and describes some regional trends in cholera incidence. The information about how cholera cases were defined was obtained from an October 1993 PAHO questionnaire. In all, 948 429 cholera cases were reported to PAHO by affected Latin American countries from January 1991 through December 1993, the highest annual incidences being registered in Peru (1991 and 1992) and Guatemala (1993). The case-fatality rate over the three-year period, and also in 1993, was 0.8%. A general downward trend in the incidence of cholera was observed in most South American countries, while the incidence increased in most Central American countries. A good deal of variation was noted in the definitions used for reporting cholera cases, hospitalized cholera cases, and cholera-attributable deaths. Because of these variations, broad intercountry comparisons (including disease burden calculations and care quality assessments based on case-fatality rates) are difficult to make, and even reported trends within a single country need to be evaluated with care. The situation is likely to be complicated in the future by the arrival of V. cholerae 0139 in Latin America, creating a need to distinguish between it and the prevailing 01 strain. For purposes of simplicity, wide acceptance, and broad dissemination of case data, the following definitions are recommended: Confirmed case of 01 cholera: laboratory-confirmed infection with toxigenic V. cholerae 01 in any person who has diarrhea. Confirmed case of 0139 cholera: laboratory-confirmed infection with toxigenic V. cholerae 0139 in any person who has diarrhea. Clinical case of cholera: acute watery diarrhea in a person over 5 years old who is seeking treatment. Death attributable to cholera: death within one week of the onset of diarrhea in a person with confirmed or clinically defined cholera. Hospitalized patient with cholera: a person who has confirmed or clinically defined cholera and who remains at least 12 hours in a health care facility for treatment of the disease.

En este informe se presentan las diversas definiciones de casos de colera usadas en los paises de America Latina que se han visto afectados por la epidemia; se da el numero de casos de colera y de las defunciones por la enfermedad (segun datos notificados a la OPS por los paises latinoamericanos en 1993), y se describen algunas tendencias regionales de la incidencia de colera. La informacion relacionada con la forma en que se definieron los casos de la enfermedad se obtuvo por medio de un cuestionario administrado por la OPS en octubre de 1993. En total, 948 429 casos de colera fueron notificados a la OPS entre enero de 1991 y diciembre de 1993 por los paises latinoamericanos afectados por la epidemia y las incidencias anuales mas altas se registraron en el Peru (1991 y 1992) y Guatemala (1993). La tasa de letalidad para todo el trienio, y tambien para 1993, fue de 0,8%. La incidencia de colera mostro una tendencia descendente general en la mayor parte de los paises sudamericanos pero aumento en casi todos los paises de Centroamerica. Se observo gran variabilidad en las definiciones aplicadas para notificar casos de colera, casos de colera hospitalizados y defunciones atribuibles al colera. Esta variabilidad dificulta cualquier comparacion global entre paises (y hasta estimar la carga de morbilidad y evaluar la calidad de la atencion sobre la base de las tasas de letalidad), y aun las tendencias notificadas dentro de un mismo pais deben evaluarse con cuidado. Es muy probable que en un futuro la situacion se complique por la llegada de la cepa Vibrio cholerae 0139 a America Latina, situacion que genera la necesidad de distinguir entre ella y la cepa 01, que es la predominante. Para efectos de simplificacion y para lograr la amplia aceptacion y extensa divulgacion de la informacion sobre los casos, se recomiendan las siguientes definiciones: caso confirmado de colera 01: infeccion por V. cholerae 01 toxigeno, confirmada por metodos de laboratorio, en cualquier persona con diarrea. Caso confirmado de colera 0139: infeccion confirmada por V. cholerae 0139 toxigeno, confirmada por un laboratorio, en cualquier persona con diarrea. Caso clinico de colera: diarrea acuosa de caracter agudo en una persona mayor de 5 anos que busca tratamiento. Defuncion atribuible al colera: defuncion durante la semana inmediatamente posterior al comienzo de la diarrea en una persona con colera confirmado o diagnosticado segun la definicion clinica. Paciente hospitalizado con colera: persona con colera confirmado o diagnosticado segun la definicion clinica que pasa un minimo de 12 horas en un centro de atencion para el tratamiento de la enfermedad.

A 2012 Institute of Medicine report is the latest in the growing number of calls to incorporate a population health approach in health professionals' training. Over the last decade, Duke University, particularly its Department of Community and Family Medicine, has been heavily involved with community partners in Durham, North Carolina, to improve the local community's health. On the basis of these initiatives, a group of interprofessional faculty began tackling the need to fill the curriculum gap to train future health professionals in public health practice, community engagement, critical thinking, and team skills to improve population health effectively in Durham and elsewhere. The Department of Community and Family Medicine has spent years in care delivery redesign and curriculum experimentation, design, and evaluation to distinguish the skills trainees and faculty need for population health improvement and to integrate them into educational programs. These clinical and educational experiences have led to a set of competencies that form an organizational framework for curricular planning and training. This framework delineates which learning objectives are appropriate and necessary for each learning level, from novice through expert, across multiple disciplines and domains. The resulting competency map has guided Duke's efforts to develop, implement, and assess training in population health for learners and faculty. In this article, the authors describe the competency map development process as well as examples of its application and evaluation at Duke and limitations to its use with the hope that other institutions will apply it in different settings.

An outbreak of dermatitis occurred among county jail inmates who removed dead fish from the Sacramento River in California after a spill of metam sodium. The spilled chemical decomposes to methylisothiocyanate (MITC), a known skin irritant. A retrospective cohort study was conducted among the inmates and their crew leaders. Among 42 jail group members, 27 had dermatitis involving the feet and ankles; dermatitis was associated with lower extremity water contact (RR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.0-11.8); the attack rate increased with length of time spent in the water. For comparison, other state and federal employees who worked in the river at the same time were also interviewed. None reported dermatitis. Over three-quarters (24/31) of these other clean-up workers whose feet became wet changed to dry clothing immediately; none of the jail group changed immediately. The river concentration of MITC measured 20-40 ppb at the time of exposure. We speculate that prolonged wetness, occlusive boots, friction, and heat contributed to chemical irritation at this low concentration; the experience of the other clean-up workers suggests that this outbreak could have been prevented.

Although electronic data systems that monitor for health threats are becoming increasingly automated, human expertise is, and always will be, critical to recognizing potential cases of disease, diagnosing disease, reporting diseases or conditions, analyzing and interpreting data, and communicating results to all stakeholders. For this reason, the nation's health professionals from all disciplines and at all levels are fundamental to sustaining and enhancing public health surveillance capacity.

An editorial is presented on the issue of integrating public health and primary medical care. It discusses the report issued by the Institute of Medicine on principles to establish programs that achieve such integration, the challenges such as limited resources that can impede integration, and the organizations involved in assisting programs.

The term shoe-leather epidemiology is often synonymous with field epidemiology or intervention epidemiology. All 3 terms imply investigations initiated in response to urgent public health problems and for which the investigative team does much of its work in the field (i.e., outside the office or laboratory). Alexander D. Langmuir is credited with articulating the concept of disease surveillance as it is applied to populations rather than individuals. He also founded the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Program in 1951, a 2-year training experience in applied epidemiology that places professionals in the field, domestically and internationally, in real-life situations. Today, 70-90 EIS officers are assigned each year to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention programs and to state and local health departments to meet the broad spectrum of challenges in chronic disease, injury prevention, violence, environmental health, occupational safety and health, and maternal and child health, as well as infectious diseases. Throughout their assignments, EIS officers are encouraged to strive for analytic rigor as well as public health consequence, which requires technical competence blended with good judgment and awareness of context. Effective applied epidemiologists must have skills beyond just epidemiology to improve a population's health; the field of applied epidemiology requires multiple team members, all having different but complementary skills, to be effective.

The broad scope of the public health mission leads to an increasingly diverse workforce. Given the range of feeder disciplines and the reality that much of the workforce does not have formal training in public health science and practice, a pressing need exists for training and education throughout the workforce. Just as we in public health take a rigorous approach to our science, so too should we take a rigorous, evidence-driven approach to workforce development. In this review, we recommend a framework for workforce education in public health, integrating three critical conceptual approaches: (a) adult learning theory; (b) competency-based education; and (c) the expanded Dreyfus model in public health, an addition to the Dreyfus model of professional skills progression. We illustrate the application of this framework in practice, using the field of applied epidemiology. This framework provides a context for designing and developing high-quality, outcome-based workforce development efforts and evaluating their impact, with implications for academic and public health practice efforts to educate the public health workforce.

Objectives.We developed competencies for applied epidemiologic practice by using a process that is based on existing competency frameworks, that engages professionals in academic and applied epidemiology at all governmental levels (local, state, and federal), and that provides ample opportunity for input from practicing epidemiologists throughout the U.S.Methods.The model set of core public health competencies, consisting of eight core domains of public health practice, developed in 2001 by the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice, were adopted as the foundation of the Competencies for Applied Epidemiologists in Governmental Public Health Agencies (AECs). A panel of experts was convened and met over a period of 20 months to develop a draft set of AECs. Drafts were presented at the annual meetings of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the American Public Health Association. Input and comments were also solicited from practicing epidemiologists and 14 national organizations representing epidemiology and public health.Results.In all, we developed 149 competency statements across the eight domains of public health practice and four tiers of applied epidemiologic practice. In addition, sub- and sub-subcompetency statements were developed to increase the document's specificity. During the process, >800 comments from all governmental and academic levels and tiers of epidemiology practice were considered for the final statements.Conclusions.The AECs are available for use in improving the training for and skill levels of practicing applied epidemiologists and should also be useful for educators, employers, and supervisors. Both CDC and CSTE plan to evaluate their implementation and usefulness in providing information for future competency development.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strongly supports integrating population health perspectives into the education of physicians. Physicians with critical-thinking skills, a commitment to the health of a community, and a systems-based approach are critical partners for the agency in its mission to protect and promote the public's health. To cultivate such physicians, integrating population health concepts solely into undergraduate medical education would be inadequate. A multipronged approach that establishes and maintains population health concepts with physicians at all stages of their education is needed: before medical school, during medical school, during residency and fellowship, and in research and practice (particularly for faculty who train the next generation). The authors describe relevant, CDC-conducted or CDC-supported activities that support such physician education during all these stages. Based in part on recent, cutting-edge trends assimilating community health particularly into primary care residencies, the authors also offer ideas for new ways that CDC can participate in the development of physicians who are truly competent at both medicine and population health in an integrated fashion -- physicians who focus on and care for individual patients but who also take a broader population or community perspective and can act effectively in either arena. Physicians who take such a systems approach -- who view and understand medicine and public health as a continuum rather than as distinct arenas -- are sorely needed to help solve the current health system crisis and to contribute to improving health in other ways.