In the Lao PDR (Laos), urban dengue is an increasingly recognised public health problem. We describe a dengue-1 virus outbreak in a rural northwestern Lao forest village during the cool season of 2008. The isolated strain was genotypically “endemic” and not “sylvatic,” belonging to the genotype 1, Asia 3 clade. Phylogenetic analyses of 37 other dengue-1 sequences from diverse areas of Laos between 2007 and 2010 showed that the geographic distribution of some strains remained focal overtime while others were dispersed throughout the country. Evidence that dengue viruses have broad circulation in the region, crossing country borders, was also obtained. Whether the outbreak arose from dengue importation from an urban centre into a dengue-naïve community or crossed into the village from a forest cycle is unknown. More epidemiological and entomological investigations are required to understand dengue epidemiology and the importance of rural and forest dengue dynamics in Laos.

In late 2005, health officials in Clark County, Washington noted a higher than expected number of Escherichia coli cases among residents and sought to identify a possible common source for infection. In order to identify risk factors, health officials conducted a retrospective cohort study and an environmental site investigation using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to identify and prevent future cases from occurring. Several lines of evidence supported raw milk as the cause of infections: 1) all ill persons drank raw milk from the same cow share; 2) illness was associated with an increasing amount of milk consumed; 3) E. coli O157:H7 was isolated from raw milk samples and environmental samples collected from the floor of the milking parlour; and 4) PFGE patterns were indistinguishable between case-patients, raw milk samples, and environmental samples. Together, these findings made clear the health risks associated with the consumption of raw milk. The high amount of media interest in this investigation empowered public health officials to work with state legislators to pass State Senate Bill 6377 in Washington State which clarified that state licensing requirements apply to all milk production facilities including cow-share programs.

COVID-19 has altered public health higher education and its impact on pedagogy will be felt long into the future. In response to social distancing measures, teaching academics implemented a number of changes to curricula. It is important to better understand and begin to evaluate these changes, as well as set a course for future changes to public health curricula both during and after the pandemic to best enable transformative learning. Teaching academics have an understanding of academic hierarchies and student perceptions and are well placed to provide insights into current and future changes to pedagogy in response to the pandemic. A survey was developed to examine changes that academics had made to their teaching in response to COVID-19. Responses were received from 63 public health teaching academics from five universities in Australia, the United States, and Canada. Public health teaching academics rapidly implemented a number of changes to their teaching, including alterations that enabled online teaching. The great majority of changes to teaching were related to tools or techniques, such as synchronous tutorials delivered in a video meeting room. There remains further work for the public health pedagogy community in reevaluating teaching aims and teaching philosophies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This could include examination of the weighting of different topics, including communicable diseases, in curricula. A series of questions to assist academics reformulating their curricula is provided. Public health teaching evolved rapidly to meet the challenges of COVID-19; however, ongoing adaptation is necessary to further enhance pedagogy.

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women and women whose pregnancy status was unknown (n = 161), as well as respondents with unreliable dietary recalls (n = 11), yielding 14,728 respondents eligible for analysis. Normal blood pressure was defined as a mean systolic blood pressure <120 mm Hg and mean diastolic blood pressure <80 mm Hg. Hypertension was defined as mean systolic blood pressure ≥140 mm Hg, mean diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mm Hg, or self-reported use of antihypertensive medication. Among persons who did not meet this definition of hypertension, prehypertension was defined as a mean systolic blood pressure of 120-139 mm Hg or a mean diastolic blood pressure of 80-89 mm Hg. An average of up to three brachial systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings was used for determination of blood pressure values. The majority of study participants had at least two complete blood pressure measurements, but for participants with only one, the single measurement was used. Race/ethnicity was categorized as non-Hispanic white (white), non-Hispanic black (black), and Hispanic. In sensitivity analyses, respondents who selfidentified as Mexican-Americans were analyzed separately, and Continuing Education examination available at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/cme/conted_info.html#weekly.