Friday Foolery #55: Oink?

Getting my first-ever poster done (this is me with the proof) was a minor miracle because I have felt like utter crap for the majority of this week.

It kicked off with our son vomiting (an extreme rarity) after midnight on Monday. He had a high fever, worsened to the point where we had to carry him back & forth to the bathroom because he was too weak and dizzy to stand, but then he suddenly recovered. He was begging to go to school on Tuesday morning, able to do so on Wednesday, and you'd never know he was really ill this week by the rate he's playing kickball with his friends after school now.

On Tuesday the fever hit me and malingered around through Wednesday, and I still feel like I've been hit by a truck. Playing kickball is entirely out of the question. I'm still not all that sure how I'll haul myself out of here and go to work this morning!

I don't know if we have different bugs or if either is H1N1, but the fever is definitely gone and I'm not coughing at all so I promise I won't contaminate anyone at our meeting next week. I'll even bring my own personal hand sanitizer. Come say hi!

H1N1 Resources For Children

There is a wealth of information at flu.gov for parents about how to prevent H1N1 and other types of flu or take care of their children who are ill , but what about resources the children can actually read or watch themselves to understand just what this thing their parents and communities seem so freaked out about?

For the youngest children I love the Sesame Street public service announcements in English and Spanish. The old ones with Elmo and Gordon are ok, but he and Luis rock in Stay Home From School. Check them all out on PBS.

What so important about washing your hands when they look clean? Check out this video for Kindergarten- 3rd graders from BrainPopJr at Washing Hands.

The best video specifically about H1N1 for children I've found so far is appropriate for 2nd grade and older (I shared it with my 7 year old son) and includes... bacon! My assumption is the same age range applies to their H1N1 for children in Spanish video too but I don't know enough Spanish to know for certain.

This is the link to the embed code source for the English H1N1 for children:



Keep in mind normally BrainPop charges for access to their videos, but my understanding is these particular ones are free for everyone in the name of public education. Kids deserve their own information, please share with them and let me know about other resources to update the medical librarians H1N1 wiki page. Thank you!

Free Webinar: Social Media Communication for H1N1/Flu Outbreaks

What: FREE webinar from social media, technology, crisis communications and health experts on quick, proven and cost-effective ways to communicate with the public, your emergency response team and government officials for seasonal flu and a potential H1N1 outbreak.

When: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3-4pm Eastern Time (what time is that for me?)

Who for: Public health officials, healthcare practitioners (physicians, nurses, emergency medical services), public safety responders (fire and police), emergency managers, and government communicators.

Presented by: Dr. Marsha Vanderford, Director of Emergency Communication Systems, CDC; David Stephenson, Principal, Stephenson Strategies; Nigel Snoad, Lead Capabilities Researcher, Microsoft Humanitarian Systems; and Phil Dixon, Business Product Manager, Google.

Register here

Courtesy of In Case of Emergency, Read Blog

Librarians' H1N1 Resources Wiki and Business Plans

A long time ago (or at least that's how April 2009 seems) as I saw various listserv emails, tweets on Twitter, Facebook posts, blog entries & other disparate resources flying about, I launched what was then called the Swine Flu April 2009 medlibs wiki page. I want to thank those who have pitched in to help, particularly CJ Bryant.

The wiki has been revived as the Novel H1N1 Influenza page and there's certainly been an uptick of resources flying around again and added in the past few weeks. Do you want to help? Let me know, and please include a way for me to verify your identity as a librarian/information professional (URL to a staff page matching your email, Twitter/LinkedIn ID, etc.) in the message.



I may shout out various resources that I'm not already seeing well-covered in other blogs or listservs here in my blog, and today wanted to highlight Flu.gov's H1N1 Preparedness Guide for Small Businesses which the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Emergency Preparedness (NN/LM EP) blog led me to:

The “Small Business” information, however, can apply very well to libraries, which are anticipating staff shortages and some impact to their day-to-day operations. In the section on “How to Write Your Plan,” there is some excellent guidance to help prepare for personnel issues that may arise when staff are ill or are caring for family members who are ill. The CDC recommends that anyone who has had any type of flu stay home for at least 24 hours after body temperature has returned to normal without the aid of fever-reducing medications, and they are anticipating that most people who become ill will be absent from work or school for 7 to 10 days. Something to think about!

H1N1 Comic: Keeping Children & Teens Home With Flu

I have been a fan of my (King County) Public Health department for a while, but particularly enjoy their public education resources for H1N1 which are always in plain English, often multilingual, and usually include helpful illustration for those with low literacy. Even if you're a medical librarian, don't your eyes glaze over when reading yet another symptoms checklist full of bullet points? Mine do.

Their latest offering, Home With Flu, is a 2-page PDF comic aimed towards parents who are now facing a new school year with the likelihood that flu will be a part of it. It provides practical and helpful advice on planning for backup childcare in a responsible way, when exactly to keep kids home, and calling the doctor. Here's one of the panels:



I hope to see this translated in multiple languages soon although it is (mostly) helpful as is due to the graphic design.

Friday Foolery #33: Kiki wishes all safe travels to MLA '09

Kiki (short for Waikiki) is one of my childhood dolls. My grandma loved to travel and always brought me a 'native' doll from wherever she went. I kept every single one and they are on three shelves of a display case in our living room. I don't remember her giving Kiki to me so since she is soft with no pointy edges or detachable parts & named for where she's from (like Jamaica, another cloth doll) I'm going to guess I was about 3 years old.

Anyone recognize the MLA hand sanitizer? Who knew the swag bag goodies from the New Member's Breakfast at MLA '08 in Chicago could turn out to be so prophetic! The ring is from the Sisterhood of the Flowery Cupcake Rings. You had to be there to understand that one, and they claim they'll bring their rings to MLA '09 so if you spot one say hi! All of them will affirm I'm even more of a lunatic in person than I am online. I was the one who brought the cupcakes, after all.

I won't be going to MLA '09 this year by choice as I am actively researching and preparing for my time on the other side of the country at the bioinformatics fellowship in Woods Hole later this month. I also want to enjoy my husband's birthday, my birthday, and our son launching a rocket (not NIH-strength) as part of his very first Scouting graduation ceremony here at home.

I may be obsessed with health informatics (and bacon), but family is always my life.

Medlib's Round delay & near-pandemic social media progress

Due to a combination of people preparing for the Medical Library Association's upcoming conference in Hawaii and the global outbreak of H1N1 influenza, the Medlib's Round blog carnival is delayed until June 6th with publication on June 9th.

Many are, as usual, wondering if "the media" has overblown the H1N1 outbreak. I haven't watched any television news or talk shows recently (I rarely to never do anyway) so I can't comment there. However, when it comes to online and social media outlets, two things in particular impress me for signs of how the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are opening up to these tools as high quality information resources during a near-pandemic situation.

The first is MedlinePlus and PubMed with the placement of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) H1N1 widget on the front pages. In addition, the very first hyperlink offered for the H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) MedlinePlus page is @CDCemergency, an official Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) Twitter account. When I began writing this post the morning of May 6th, it had 104,266 followers. As of 10:25 that same evening the number had jumped up to 108,698! Others without Twitter accounts may be subscribing via RSS feed, those numbers are not included.

The second is the inclusion of Patricia Anderson's iGoogle H1N1 swine flu tab as an information resource within the NIH Library. To be clear, this is not NLM as NLM is the medical library for everyone and the NIH Library is for the 27 entities that make up the National Institutes of Health.

Are these uses of online & social media and the resources wiki I started all hype? Of course not. As is always the case for work and our own personal sanity, we must enable our own filters to narrow in on quality resources, share them, and tune out misinformation. A bit of humor now and then for you is good for you too.

This is a good opportunity to review your own emergency preparedness plans too... H1N1 isn't too severe now, but nobody can say that will continue to be the case during the flu season this fall. Will your library be prepared to still function if social distancing measures are enacted? Check out a pandemic planning exercise for more details.

I'm still hopeful for the day when we will see an NLM social media presence. CDC are truly the 2009 HHS social media pioneers who have had their hands full between the peanut recall and now H1N1. Hopefully things will settle down to allow for evaluation to determine some best practices to be shared by all, but in the meantime keep up the amazing work!

91 years: Reflections on Influenza & Information

Seattle Times, Dan Eskenazi

These post-Edwardian ladies (look carefully, also the two cats!) are wearing face masks by order of the Seattle mayor when the Spanish flu hit here in October 1918.

Our 6-year-old son came home from school today and informed me that his first grade classmate (the same one he got in trouble for kissing earlier this year) told him there's a very sad problem where people in Mexico have swine flu and some of them have even died. He confirmed that his teacher hasn't talked about the flu with the class and we've been trying to keep the panicky news headlines away from him.

I thought of the masked ladies (and cats) and wondered what my great-grandparents told my grandparents during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 since they were about the same age as our son is now. No family stories of that time have been passed down through the years.

What, then, can I tell him about now when we're one level away from a pandemic according to the World Health Organization? The same thing I always have since he was old enough to walk and talk: Wash your hands and keep them out of your eyes, nose & mouth!

That, and Mama's trying to help share accurate health information on a wiki, tweeting about it, and some people in Germany quickly noticed. Major kudos to EBSCO for DynaMed free swine flu resources.

Can you imagine what impact instant global health news and information sharing might have had in 1918?

What lies ahead for even better information sharing in the future that will make our current technology tools laughingly obsolete?

Edit: Within an hour after writing & posting this, the announcement that probable H1N1 is in Seattle was made!