Spotlight on Food Safety

Most people don't think about food safety until they or someone they know gets sick from eating contaminated food. Foodborne illness, sometimes called food poisoning, is a preventable and underreported public health problem. It presents a major challenge to both general and at-risk populations. Each year, about 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from food poisoning.

Symptoms of food poisoning can be as commonplace as diarrhea or as life-threatening as organ failure. These illnesses can even cause long-term health problems or death. CDC has identified reducing foodborne diseases as a winnable battle. With additional effort and support for evidence-based, cost-effective strategies that we can implement now, we will have a significant impact on our nation's health.

Everyone is at risk for food poisoning and education is critical to building expertise amongst the varied contributors to food safety systems, including consumers. To reduce your risk, be savvy about what you can do to protect yourself. Learn more about how you can prevent foodborne illness.

CDC TRAIN

The CDC TRAIN community offers more than 5,500 courses to over 62,000 registered learners. Visit CDC TRAIN to find courses to support your professional development needs.

Complimenting CDC Learning Connection’s focus on food safety this month, the courses listed below are available on CDC TRAIN and are highly rated by learners who completed them.

UNC Center for Public Health Preparedness: Anatomy of Foodborne Outbreaks

This presentation provides an introduction to epidemiological investigations of foodborne disease outbreaks.

National Pasteurized Eggs, Inc: Foodborne illness: The Fork Stops Here! [CE]

Trying to make sense of food recalls and foodborne illness outbreaks? This program gives you background on key trends in food safety.

CDC Stacks

CDC Stacks is a free digital repository of publications produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC Stacks is composed of curated collections of peer reviewed articles, CDC guidelines and recommendations as well as other publications on a broad range of public health topics. CDC Stacks provides the ability to search the full text of all documents, browse journal articles by public health subject, and explore the curated collections of over 10,000 publications. Articles stored and shared through CDC Stacks will help CDC to further its mission to save lives and protect the health of citizens of the U.S. and of international populations.

You can explore CDC stacks at http://stacks.cdc.gov. Check back often for new articles.

Free CE

Do you know that many CDC webcasts, journal articles, conferences, and other learning activities offer free continuing education (CE) to health professionals? CDC works with 6 accrediting organizations to certify continuing education (CE) for physicians, nurses, pharmacists, certified health education specialists, veterinarians and other health professionals. So far in 2013 over 41,000 learners have earned CE provided by CDC. Visit TCEOnline to locate courses that will support your continuing education requirements. If you are interested in finding out how to provide CE for your CDC-funded educational activities, contact CE@cdc.gov.

Webinar for Health Educators and Learning Professionals

Date: June 27

Time: 3-4 p.m. EST

Topic: Learner Assessment

The Health Educators and Learning Professionals Community of Practice (HELP CoP) hosts monthly webinars about instructional design, and is open to anyone in the field of health education or workforce development. Learn more about this month’s webinar and upcoming events by joining HELP CoP on phConnect.

Send Your Ideas

Let us know what topics or products you want CDC Learning Connection to feature or highlight in our monthly e-newsletter. Send your ideas to learning@cdc.gov