OBJECTIVES Each of the nuclear power plants in the US is encircled by an Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Within each EPZ, government officials, utility professionals, emergency managers, and public health practitioners collectively conduct extensive planning, exercises, and outreach to better protect their communities in the event of a nuclear accident. Our objective was to conduct a cross-secti...

To combat disease outbreaks, public health officials often use painstaking fieldwork to try to stay one step ahead of the infectious bugs, linking patients’ symptoms to a source of infection to quickly identify the common culprit in related cases. Now, a new field called genomic epidemiology is taking advantage of the rapidly reduced costs of next-generation DNA sequencing to better inform publ...

Public health officials frequently face ethical tensions and conflicting obligations when making decisions and managing health departments. Leadership requires an ongoing approach to ethics that focuses on two dimensions of practice: the professional relationships of officials developed over time with their communities and the ethical aspects of day-to-day public health activities. Education an...

Background. Limited physical activity (PA) is a risk factor for childhood obesity. In Netherlands, as in many other countries worldwide, local policy officials bear responsibility for integrated PA policies, involving both health and nonhealth domains. In practice, its development seems hampered. We explore which obstacles local policy officials perceive in their effort. Methods. Fifteen semist...

Activists opposed to the use of animals in scientific research are increasingly dominating the public discourse and pressuring government officials to severely limit the scope of the work. Polls show that public support for animal research is in decline. Scientists must respond by engaging with the public and policymakers to explain their research and its importance and by addressing moral conc...

In 1849, John Snow pioneered the application of mapping to public health by producing a map depicting locations of cholera cases around the Broad Street pump in London (1). Thus, any book describing recent advances in mapping infectious disease is potentially of interest to practicing public health officials. The topics covered in the 11 chapters in this book range from the very technical, such...

We present a model where groups attempt to exert influence on policies using both bribes (plata, Spanish for silver) and the threat of punishment (plomo, Spanish for lead). We then use it to make predictions about the quality of a country’s public officials and to understand the role of institutions granting politicians with immunity from legal prosecution. The use of punishment lowers the retu...

In 1849, John Snow pioneered the application of mapping to public health by producing a map depicting locations of cholera cases around the Broad Street pump in London (1). Thus, any book describing recent advances in mapping infectious disease is potentially of interest to practicing public health officials. The topics covered in the 11 chapters in this book range from the very technical, such...