While at this point it does not appear that swine flu will have a major impact on the health of more than a handful of Kentuckians, the University of Louisville has received a $2.3 million federal grant to help the state be better prepared for the next pandemic outbreak.
The grant from the Homeland Security Department will help research teams focus on detection, preparedness, protection, response and recovery from any massive outbreak.
While the worst fears about the swine flu have yet to be realized, Paul McKinney, associate dean of U of L’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences, said concerns about a swine flu pandemic provided a “window of opportunity” to better prepare the state for more severe disease outbreaks in the future.
“This is preparation for us, sort of a dress rehearsal if you will, for what could be a major pandemic with a lot more severe impact in the future,” said McKinney, a co-leader of the research team. The work will enhance preparations in town halls, schools, health clinics and hospitals, he said.
The goal is to lessen any future pandemic’s severity by preventing and containing infectious disease and ensuring community services continue amid an outbreak, McKinney said. Preparedness guides will be crafted for small and mid-sized communities, now often overlooked since much of the national attention has gone to metropolitan areas in preparing for pandemics.
One hopes the type of pandemic that leads to illnesses and deaths throughout the state will never occur, and the skills community’s will learn through the grant will never be needed. But the motto of the Boy Scouts of America says it best: Be prepared. Thanks to the grant, if a pandemic does strike the state, Kentucky will be better able to handle it than it is today.
Editorials
Be prepared — 06/02/09
Grant will help communities plan for a pandemic outbreak
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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