In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

MercuryNews.com has an article, “Got Swine Flu? Tweet It?”, about Santa Clara (California) County’s Public Health Department’s H1N1 flu prevention campaign which will aggressively utilize social media tools to focus on young people:

When students return to school this fall, school nurses will once again chase after them with hand sanitizer. Familiar posters about sneezing into elbows will plaster the hallways. But when it comes to managing a potential swine flu outbreak in high schools, county health officials are going beyond cartoon admonitions.

“We’re going to start the ‘Don’t Let the Flu Get You’ page on Facebook,” said Joy Alexiou, head of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department’s flu prevention campaign. “Students know best how to talk to each other. We just want to give them the tools and information so they’re communicating the correct information.” The county will use the Facebook page, as well as posts to MySpace and Twitter, to get health updates out as quickly as possible. It will also equip students with T-shirts and details about a swine flu prevention video contest, counting on the wisdom that knowledge sinks deeper into students’ heads if it comes from their peers.

The teen-centered strategy responds to one of swine flu’s quirks: Unlike the seasonal flu, which mostly affects the elderly, this strain primarily befalls the young. To date, the county has 120 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, with 75 percent of those cases occurring in people under 24 years old. At least 32 of those cases resulted in hospitalizations; one 44-year-old Santa Clara County woman with a history of medical problems died from swine flu complications three weeks.

Thanks to Twitterers JGarrow and Nedra for bringing this article to my attention.

Another good H1N1 article was in today’s New York Times, “Lessons Learned, New York City Braces For Swine Flu’s Resurgence.” Key citizen preparedness angle focused on in the intake of the sick and the “worried well”:

As New York City braces for a second wave of swine flu this fall, health officials are making plans to carve space out of hospitals, clinics and other buildings to screen people before they can overwhelm emergency rooms.

Hospital and city officials said in interviews that the biggest surprise from the swine flu that swept the city last spring was the surge of visits to emergency rooms by people, especially children, sick with the flu and by a far larger number of people fearing they had it.

A major focus of planning for the fall, officials say, is to avoid being swamped by a similar, possibly bigger, demand for emergency room services. Some hospital officials are advocating putting out daily swine flu bulletins – modeled after announcements on alternate-side parking or lottery numbers – about issues like when to seek treatment.