Quiet Victories

On the evening of December 4 , 1966, Bill Foege, a young doctor and epidemiologist trained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was struggling to contain an outbreak of smallpox in Nigeria with insufficient amounts of vaccine.

“We went to a missionary’s house to take advantage of the fact that they got on the radio with each other at 7:00 p.m. each night to be sure no one was having a medical emergency. With maps in front of me, I was able to give each missionary a geographic area and ask if they could send runners to every village in that area to find out if there were any smallpox cases in any of the villages,” Foege recalls, in an interview on the Global Health Chronicles, an online archive hosted by Emory University Libraries that launched on October 26, the thirtieth anniversary of world- wide smallpox eradication.

The Chronicles promise an inside look at courageous public health battles to prevent, control, and eliminate infectious diseases around the world, past and present. Current offerings include an update on Guinea worm eradication, a look at how malaria led to the CDC’s disease prevention programs, and the interview with Foege about smallpox eradication.

“Eradicating a disease is the ultimate in disease prevention; as smallpox is the one human infectious disease that has been completely eradicated, there’s much to celebrate here,” said David Sencer, former director of the CDC, at the launch event. “The Global Health Chronicles site features oral histories of individuals who played a crucial role in that accomplishment. Today’s health professionals and students can hear and read of the passion these women and men brought to their work. This site also will be a valuable

W Inter 2010

Candler selects recipients of Distinguished Alumni Award kenneth marcus 92t (who along with wife Cassandra young marcus 93t leads Turner Chapel AME Church in Marietta); United Methodist minister Cecil mcfarland 55t, former executive director of Goodwill; and retired United Methodist pastor Carolyn morris 79t were honored for service to church, community, and Candler.

source of previously unknown material for historians.”

Institutions participating in the massive effort to collect and preserve the data in the Global Health Chronicles archive include not only Emory Libraries staff, but also that of Emory’s Global Health Institute and its Rollins School of Public Health, as well as colleagues at the CDC, says Rick Luce, vice provost and director of Emory Libraries.

“The Global Health Chronicles project is another important facet of Emory’s continuing mission to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity,” Luce says. “It’s also a great example of Emory collaboration across the campus and with partner institutions.”

Foege, still active as Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health, recently received the 2009 CDC Foundation Hero Award.—M.J.L.

To learn more about public health victories such as the actions that rid the world of smallpox, and to listen to interviews with those on the front lines, go to www.globalhealthchronicles.org.

Institute Of Medicine Elects Emory Pediatrician As Member

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has elected Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta pediatrician and neonatal researcher Barbara Stoll to its new class of sixty-five top health scientists, bringing Emory’s total IOM membership to twenty-six. Election to the IOM is one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health.

Stopping The Surge

A crowded hospital waiting room is not where anyone wants to be during a flu pandemic. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with others who are coughing, sneezing, and wheezing spreads the virus, and a surge of new patients could topple an already overloaded health care system.

Even before H1N1 hit, Emory researchers and clinicians, using the most current information from the fields of infectious disease, public health, emergency medicine, and nursing, were developing a screening tool called SORT (Strategy for OffSite Rapid Triage) that works outside the hospital setting.

“The goal of effective screening is to identify the most severely ill, while safely redirecting large numbers of symptomatic individuals away from crowded hospital and office waiting rooms without compromising their care,” says Alex Isakov, executive director of Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response.

SORT uses a three-stage process to determine if individuals are high, intermediate, or low risk, says emergency physician Arthur Kellermann, associate dean for health policy. In October 2009, the CDC adopted a modified version of SORT and posted it on its website: www.cdc.gov/ h1n1flu/guidance/.—M.J.L.