Yet Another Salute
This was published in yesterday's Star Tribune newspaper about the folks I work with on Team Diarrhea:
Columbos of bug hunters
A salute is long overdue to the Minnesota Department of Health's crack team of disease detectives. Scientific superstars, they work on the front lines of public health, tracking outbreaks and combining brainpower with cutting-edge technology to find the source of sickness. Not surprisingly, it took them two weeks to figure out what the feds could not for two months: finding the source of a salmonella outbreak that so far has made more than 1,200 people ill across the nation and in Canada.
The peppers were the culprit.
Too often this distinguished group's work goes unheralded in the state they serve. To Dr. Ruth Lynfield, Rich Danila, Dr. Kirk Smith and their Acute Disease Investigation colleagues, nice job. Bravo also to Ben Miller and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture for their valuable work in this investigation. We look forward to reading the medical journal article sure to result from the salmonella investigation -- yet another in the long list of prestigious papers published by the state's world-class public health professionals.
Too often this distinguished group's work goes unheralded in the state they serve. To Dr. Ruth Lynfield, Rich Danila, Dr. Kirk Smith and their Acute Disease Investigation colleagues, nice job. Bravo also to Ben Miller and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture for their valuable work in this investigation. We look forward to reading the medical journal article sure to result from the salmonella investigation -- yet another in the long list of prestigious papers published by the state's world-class public health professionals.
Make no mistake about it, I'm proud of our public health labs here in Minnesota. Rumor has it that we're ranked in the top three public health labs in the country. The other two "top dogs" (so I've heard) are California and the state of Washington. However, I have to give a salute here to the public health team that this article did not mention: the technologists/clinical laboratory scientists who handled these specimens and generated accurate and timely results so that the epidemiologists had the data to work with.
It's not easy sometimes being the "forgotten bunch," the ones who work behind the scenes and put in long hours at often onerous tasks so that the job gets done and gets done correctly. I've learned the job skill of patting myself on the back when needed to keep up my morale and that of our hard-working team. Good work, team!