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Heidi Hedberg on preparing for COVID-19Health Sense
Prevention, preparedness are critical tools to combat the novel coronavirus
By Heidi Hedberg T he novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is dominating the media because it’s new, which can create uncertainty and make you feel vulnerable. The number of cases, the areas affected by outbreaks, even what we know scientifically about this virus — all of this information is changing rapidly as we learn more about this novel virus. What is timeless, though, is the importance of preparing, remaining calm, and taking care of yourself and others.
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It is easy to feel overwhelmed or powerless when confronted with the uncertainties that come with a new disease like COVID-19, first discovered in China in December 2019 and now spreading rapidly across the globe. The good news, however, is we do know quite a bit already about this disease and are learning more every day.
COVID-19 is a respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. Patients with the disease have mild to severe illness with symptoms of fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Many patients recover on their own while others require hospitalization and some die. There is currently no vaccine for this disease, so the best way to prevent infection is to limit your exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Some actions that we know help — and are easy to do — are the same simple, everyday preventive measures that prevent other respiratory illnesses like the flu and the common cold.
• Wash your hands. We think of handwashing as an infection prevention tool that’s been around forever, but it was actually first pioneered by doctors in the mid-1800s. Today, it remains one of our simplest and most powerful defenses against germs. Wash frequently with soap and warm water for 20 seconds, or use alcoholbased hand sanitizer if you don’t have soap and warm water. • Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue and throw away the tissue after use. If you don’t have a tissue, cough and sneeze into the inside of your elbow. • Try to avoid touching your face, mouth, nose and eyes, especially with unwashed hands.
• Routinely clean frequently touched objects and surfaces, including toys, doorknobs, keyboards and phones with normal household cleaners.
• Get a flu shot every year. Flu vaccine doesn’t protect against COVID-19, but keeping current with an annual flu shot and other routine vaccinations helps keep you and your family well. Ensuring that most Alaskans are vaccinated against the flu also helps protect our health care facilities from becoming overwhelmed as they respond to other health issues and emerging diseases like COVID-19.
• Eat nutritious food, drink water, get enough sleep and physical exercise. • If you begin to feel ill, stay home, and call your health care provider.
Here are some other key strategies that can help you prevent the spread of disease and prepare for public health emergencies:
• If you’re sick and you need to see Whether preparing for a pandemic, an earthquake, wildfire or other disaster, Alaskans should have an emergency kit. Remember to include supplies like soap, hand sanitizer, and tissues.
a health care provider, call ahead and make an appointment.
This is especially important if you have a cough and fever. This will help the health care provider’s office take steps to keep other people from getting infected or exposed.
• Whether preparing for a pandemic, an earthquake, wildfire or other disaster, Alaskans should have an emergency kit. Remember to include supplies like soap, hand sanitizer, and tissues. If you or a family member regularly take a prescription medication, talk to your health care provider and pharmacist about what is an appropriate amount to have in your emergency kit.
Remember to include an appropriate amount of nonprescription drugs and other health supplies on hand, including fluids with electrolytes, cough and cold medicines, stomach remedies, pain relievers and vitamins.
• For more information about emergency kits, please see this information from CDC — www.cdc.gov/cpr/prepareyourhealth/PersonalNeeds.htm — and this information from the Department
Tribune News Service
of Homeland Security — www.ready. gov/pandemic
• When preparing your family for the possibility of COVID-19 cases in Alaska, consider the following:
1. If you have children, begin planning for the possibility of school dismissals. If you can’t stay home with your children, could a neighbor or friend look after them? Ideally, children should be cared for in small groups. For more information visit the CDC website.
2. Talk with your employer about tele-working options and business continuity of operations plans
3. Get to know your neighbors and include their contact information in your plan. Public health officials may recommend that everyone in the household of an ill person stay home, not just the person who is sick. If this happens, can your neighbors shop for you and leave items you might need on your doorstep?
4. Identify a room in your house to separate ill people from those who are healthy. Ideally, identify a bathroom that would only be used by those who are ill.
5. Especially if you live alone, talk to your friends and family about what you might need. If you do fall ill, keep in touch by phone with a friend or family member.
• Stay informed. Follow updates from public health officials.
• Do your part to fight fear, stigma and misinformation that can surface when people are anxious about a new disease and ensure you are getting and sharing verified information and doing your part to prepare your family and community for this new virus.
Heidi Hedberg is the director of the Division of Public Health, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
There is currently no vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to this virus. Coronavirus prevention
For confirmed coronavirus cases, reported illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms to severe illness and death. Symptoms can include: Symptoms:
• Fever • Cough • Shortness of breath • Headache
• Avoid close contact with people who are sick. • Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth. • Stay home when you are sick. • Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash. Prevention:
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
• Facemasks should be used by people who show symptoms of COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others. The use of facemasks is also crucial for health workers and people who are taking care of someone in close settings (at home or in a health care facility).
Source: CDC Graphic: Staff, TNS
Using the land to fight diabetes
Flora Deacon teaches Alaskans to cook with what nature gives
By Kris Capps Alaska Pulse Monthly F lora Deacon has been cooking her entire life. Now, she teaches others how to cook for themselves using traditional foods to stay healthy and prevent the onset of diabetes.
“I started believing that food is medicine,” she said. “As a Native person, we grew up with our traditional food. The store is outside your door.” “You know what’s in your food,” she added. “You know the moose you harvested only ate plants from the area. The black bear only ate food from the same area.”
In 2018, Flora began traveling to remote Alaska villages under the umbrella of the Bristol Bay Area Health Corp. in Dillingham. Her goal has always been to visit villages and teach her healthy style of cooking.
“With teaching, you get to see students making life changes and becoming more interested in their food,” she said. “They start thinking about where their food comes from.”
Ingredients from the land Flora brings everything she needs for the class — pots, pans, food. The community gets notified ahead of time, and sometimes villagers provide traditional food. But it’s not unusual for Flora to be outside picking many jars of berries to bring with her. show up, and they’re each set up at a station with a cutting board, knives and a recipe,” she said. “I go over the recipe with everyone before the cooking starts. I talk about why I chose that certain recipe and how important traditional food is.”
Opposite page, on a recent trip to Dillingham, Flora Deacon helped Annie Andrew and John Wonhola learn healthy cooking. Above left, villagers learn to cook in a healthy way and then enjoy results of the class. Above, Flora became chef of the nutrition services department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and designed her own interdisciplinary degree in rural nutrition. Photo courtesy Flora Deacon
“Anywhere from eight to 15 people show up, and they’re each set up at a station with a cutting board, knives and a recipe,” she said. “I go over the recipe with everyone before the cooking starts. I talk about why I chose that certain recipe and how important traditional food is.”
The younger generation is accustomed to food that is highly seasoned, often with strong flavors, she said. The elders usually opt for a plain menu. Flora tries to accommodate both palates.
“I make high bush cranberry ketchup, high-bush cranberry barbecue sauce,” Flora said. “Then I make my own taco seasoning.”
She adapts every recipe, reducing the amount of sugar, salt and oil that gets used. Then she shows the class photos of ingredient labels on commercial products.
“For the most part, the No. 1 ingredient in barbecue sauce is high fructose corn syrup,” she said. “After that, you get tomato paste and probably like 20 ingredients. The list is pretty long.”
Her homemade barbecue sauce includes high bush cranberries, a bit of sugar, five or six different spices, and apple cider vinegar.
She tries to make cooking as simple as possible, and the reactions are now predictable: “This is really good!” and “I’m really surprised.”
Flora remembers a couple who took the class with their 7-year-old son in Pilot Point. They made meat loaf. When it was time to eat, the youngster ate that meat loaf without hesitation.
“His mom pulled me to the side and whispered, ‘He never eats. He really likes the meat loaf because he knew what was going in it.’ “
Another villager took the class in Western Alaska and later ran into Flora in Anchorage and told her, “Ever since you came, I only fix brown rice.”
“After she said that, I wanted to jump up and down,” Flora said.
Healthy eating can help prevent diabetes, Flora said. But getting people to try cooking in new ways is not always easy.
“They’ve never really thought about cooking with the berries or going back to traditional food,” she said. “So we push both those things.”
It can be daunting to change their way of cooking. People diagnosed with diabetes often have a hard time letting go of their routine diet.
“It’s really scary when they’re told you can’t eat the way you’ve eaten the last 10 to 20 years,” she said. “So I’m there to hold their hand and say, ‘just try this.’” She starts with the essentials, teaching basic knife skills, like how to cut the vegetables.
Alaska Pulse is a monthly magazine focusing on health in the Far North and distributed around Fairbanks and Anchorage. We’ll share stories from around the state about how people stay healthy. Learn from experts in different medical fields on ways to improve, or maybe just maintain your health. We’ll hear personal stories about people’s triumphs over different health adversities. Alaska Pulse is a community publication, so every issue is sure to hold a variety of different perspectives.
Contact editor Rod Boyce at editor@AlaskaPulse.com or 907-459-7585 to talk about it.
“It’s different from the way they’ve always cut them,” she said. “It just makes it safer, more efficient and makes better use of the vegetable.”
Always cooking Flora lived in the remote village of Shageluk in Western Alaska until she was 9 years old, then moved 20 miles away to Grayling. She began high school at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Salem, Oregon. And that is where she discovered a
whole new world of foods — along with other things. “I’d never seen a television before. I had never driven a car before,” she said. “I was 13. They sent us from Grayling to Aniak to Anchorage to Seattle, then bused us from Seattle to Salem, Oregon. It was like a five-hour drive.” To Flora, the campus with close to 900 students was overwhelming.
For the first two weeks, she was homesick and cried every day. But she stuck it out, coming home every summer, then back to school every fall.
“I never really went back to Grayling to live after that,” she said. She settled in Anchorage and now lives in Wasilla.
It was when she was living in Dutch Harbor that her husband at the time saw an advertisement for the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont.
She applied but was rejected because she had no professional experience. So she went to work as part-time baker at the Grand Aleutian Hotel in Dutch Harbor. The next time she applied to the New England Culinary Institute, she was accepted. That’s also where she met Laura Cole, owner/chef of 229 Parks Restaurant at Denali Park. Flora worked at 229 Parks Restaurant for several summers.
Flora worked part of her internship at the Point Hope Senior Center, where her family lived. She also worked at the Kantishna Roadhouse during a busy summer season.
— Flora Deacon
Serving up a healthy life From that point on, she worked primarily to save money so she could return to culinary school. Her life became a series of seasonal jobs until she stumbled upon the nutrition services department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The program was based on Alaska food and nutrition for Alaska Natives. She became its chef.
Every week, she created a daily menu that provided healthy food — less fat, salt and sugar. It was a menu filed with vegetables, grains and traditional foods.
She received a culinary certificate from that program, which
opened the door to designing her own interdisciplinary degree in rural nutrition. “I never knew you could do such a thing,” she said. Plugging away at this new pursuit, she helped created a wellness calendar for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. She began traveling to villages to teach healthy cooking. She said she is living her dream. “I don’t feel like I’m working when I’m out there,” she said. “It just feels like I’m sort of on vacation, meeting new people every day.”
It’s been a long road, but well worth the journey.
“Time and time again, I would tell people what I want to do,” Flora said. She is now 61 years old and continues to get offers to work as a cook.
“I know I can cook,” she said. “That’s not what I want to do.”
As she tells students in the villages who show up for her culinary classes: “I don’t cook. You will.”
Contact Alaska Pulse Monthly staff writer Kris Capps at 459-7546. Email her at kcapps@AlaskaPulse.com
Flora Deacon seasons salmon while on a visit to a village.
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Above, before and after of veteran Lisa Scroggs after losing 33 pounds using the VA’s MOVE program. At right, Lourdes Rivera lost 30 pounds.
Military veterans get on the MOVE to weight loss
By Katie Yearley Alaska Veterans Affairs Healthcare System L ourdes Rivera smiles brightly as she walks into the office, excited for the interview. She has come to talk about VA Healthcare’s MOVE program, a weight management program that has helped her significantly over the past year.
“I’ve lost 30 pounds, my next goal… is to go down 35 more pounds, which would put me at my Air Force weight,” she says.
Going through the program, Rivera says accountability was the most important factor for her weight loss in the MOVE program. She joined the program with a friend who is a veteran in February 2019. They kept each other accountable as they made changes to their diet and exercise. After a while, the changes became evident in her health care visits. Rivera shows me a copy of her weight chart during the program. A strong dip appears as the months go on, showcasing her weight loss.
“The provider started noticing the charts and was like, ‘What are you doing?’” she says.
The MOVE program as a weight management program is individualized for each participant so results can be achieved at a rate that is healthy and attainable. The program encourages veterans to set realistic goals for themselves and to create plans to reach them.
Deedee Brandeberry, dietitian, says the MOVE program relies on veterans planning their own health goals and how they can achieve them. She agrees that it’s the accountability that works so well with weight loss. The MOVE program can be approached in several ways, including a group setting and telephone lifestyle coaching. Veterans can even do a one-onone in person with a provider or through secure messaging. Another veteran, Lisa Scroggs, loves the MOVE program and what it has helped her achieve. When she started the program, she had no idea she was in danger of becoming diabetic because of her weight. Through the MOVE program, she was able to go from 188 pounds to 150 pounds.
As we talk, Scroggs shows the worn notebook in which she has tracked her exercise and nutrition as well as the phone apps she uses with her Fitbit. Despite a back surgery, she stays active. She makes sure to find exercise time when she travels, using elliptical machines and walking 3 to 4 miles in a day to stay healthy.
“It’s good, it’s great, but you’ve got to stay consistent with it,” she says.
As the lead person on the MOVE program, Brandeberry says the best way to check out the program’s options is by coming to the free MOVE intro class on Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 1A-221 at Anchorage’s VA Healthcare Clinic.
If you have questions about the MOVE program, you can call 907-257-4720 or find more information at www.move. va.gov.
Katie Yearley is a public affairs specialist at the Alaska Veterans Affairs Healthcare System office in Anchorage.
