Mehner_Week 3 Ann. 2

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  • Full citation and abstract?
  • Where do the authors work, and what are their areas of expertise? Note any other publications by the authors with relevance to the 6Cities project.
    • The Albany County DOH specializes in governmental health activities. Compiling health data, which can come from a variety of sources such as hospitals, surveys, interviews etc., is one of their primary purposes. They use this information to help shape public policy and help protect it’s citizens.
    • One of their more note worthy publications is the moratoria placed on any new oil heating facilities in Albany’s South End. This was put into place by Albany County DOH Commissioner James Crucetti in March of 2014. It will be important to see how this shapes out in the future.
  • What are the main findings or arguments presented in the article or report?
    • This document is essentially a report on all the activities that the Albany County DOH undertook for 2013. This includes everything from in school presentations on the dangers of obesity, to lyme disease tabling events at community health meetings.
    • I think it would be a stretch to call it a report, since it seems like the only research they actually did was compiling data for various communicable diseases like chlamydia, lyme disease, and the flu. It seems like a waste to compile this data, but not include other important health statistics like asthma and obesity diagnoses. Everything else just stated certain programs that fall under the Albany County DOH and what they aim to do.
  • Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
    • “Participated in the Asthma Coalition of the Capital Region, whose goal is to decrease asthma morbidity and mortality, in low-income Capital Region residents ages 0-40.”
    • “Worked with the Capital District YMCA and other community-based organizations in the City of Albany to address health disparities among African American/Black and/or Hispanic/Latino individuals and families. Activities included enhancing opportunities for healthy eating and coordinating healthcare provider - communitybased organization linkages.”
    • “These programs provide regulatory oversight of hotels and/or motels and migrant farm worker housing camps (including fire safety, water quality, sewer/septic, food service and/or pools). In 2013, 82 hotels and motels and 2 migrant farm worker housing camps were inspected.”
  • What three (or more) quotes capture the message of the article or report?
    • The Albany County Department of Health (ACDOH) actively engaged in the delivery of essential public health services in the areas of family health, disease control, health education, environmental health and emergency preparedness in 2013.
    • The public health services and activities, as outlined in this report, helped to prevent diseases, promote healthy behaviors, and protect residents from hazards that could affect their health and safety.
    • Lyme disease continues to be endemic throughout Albany County. Anaplasmosis cases nearly quadrupled with 42 lab-confirmed cases in 2013, compared to 11 cases in 2012. In addition, there were six lab-confirmed cases of babesiosis in Albany County in 2013, compared to one case in 2012.
  • What were the methods, tools and/or data used to produce the claims or arguments made in the article or report?
    • Their data on lyme disease, communicable diseases, the flu etc. all comes from reporting of cases by various health practices. I’m sure this is data that needs to be reported (probably in the interest of the general public) and is not voluntarily given or rounded up by DOH people.
  • How (if at all) are health disparities or other equity issues addressed in the article or report?
    • The only time health disparities are really mentioned in the document is when they are describing the “Sam’s Club Healthier Community Initiative” which pulls the YMCA and other community organizations together to help address health disparities between blacks/latinos in the Albany area. Not really sure what they do, but should look for areas they are involved in the community.
  • Where has this article or report been referenced or discussed? (In some journals, you can see this in a sidebar.)
    • As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been referenced in any scholarly articles/journals. It has been referenced in some other Albany County DOH documents, but only to point out that the DOH has compiled some report of what they did for a given year.
  • Can you learn anything from the article or report’s bibliography that tells us something about how the article or report was produced?
    • There is no bibliography for this document. Given that most of the data shown in the document was collected by members of their own department, this can be expected. At the same time, I think it shows a lack of following through on certain issues that are a problem in the county. For example, they know the number of confirmed cases for a number of diseases, yet they don’t compare it to any counties in the region that might give it some context. Also, Albany the city is very different from other parts of the County, which can be quite rural. The document doesn’t seem to to make any attempt to differentiate the two.
  • What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your understanding of how air pollution science has been produced and used in governance and education in different settings?
    • The whole document seems to take the tone of “Here is what we did this year, we hope it will have this effect in coming years”. For example, they made more parks “smoke free zones” and added signs warning people not to. The DOH hopes it will cut down on second hand smoke exposure. What I’m interested in is seeing if they do any sort of follow up on this. It could be difficult to measure the exact effect this might have on a community, but I would think a survey asking frequent park visitors if they’ve encountered people smoking there or perhaps looking at the number of police citations for smoking in these areas given in following years, could give some insight as to whether or not their program was a success. So I tried to find a 2012 or 2014 commissioners report and found one for 2012 (link is here).
    • o What I found was that there seems to be little to no follow up between 2012 and 2013. A lot of the parts actually look identical, except they would contain statistics for what they did in 2012 instead of 2013. In both reports, they described current programs within/associated with the AC DOH, but gave little update on any progress. One thing that I found odd was that both years stated they “increased physical activity in some schools for around 500 students”. It was literally copy and pasted into the 2013 report even though nothing had changed about it over the past year.
    • o What I have concluded is that this document must be targeted for the general public, to just see what is going on. I’m not sure how many people would actually visit their county DOH website, but this report just seems too unprofessional to be an actual part of intra-governmental communication.