Day 2 & So Much To Do!

We began day two by working on strategizing for our projects. There is so much information available so we must find an effective way to make relevant information easily accessible for people to utilize them.

Yen Luong, of the Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (OHPDP), informed us about a program their office created called Healthy People 2020. This list of objectives provides our US health care systems with goals that they should strive for throughout the years 2010-2020. Their goal is to create a supportive environment that engages individuals and informs them about a variety of health topics, known as leading health indicators (chronic conditions such as mental illness and diabetes). The Health Communication and eHealth Division uses Twitter, healthypeople.org and Facebook to try to develop engagement between people and the organization by providing information to the public about the Affordable Care Act and many other topics.

Health literacy was also addressed in our meeting because although information must be evidence-based, the findings must be explained to the community in ways they can understand to promote adherence and health among the population.

The Healthcare Quality Division discussed standards through the realm of National Action plans. Hospital associated infections, which are infections patients acquire while receiving healthcare, impact nearly 1.7 million people each year, lead to deaths in approximately 100,000 people, and costs Americans nearly $33 billion. We discussed the Healthcare Quality’s Health Adverse Drug Event Prevention which consisted of opioids, anticoagulants, and diabetic medications. Adverse drug effects of these medications are often preventable, yet still often lead to complications and death in America. Patients facing adverse drug reactions not only face health complications, but also a prolonging of their average hospital stay length by 1.7-4.6 days.

We also met the division of OHPDP that includes exercise physiologists, dieticians and PhD candidates who are responsible for developing the MyPlate campaign and MyPyramid nutritional guides.

The Office of Minority Health (OMH) spoke with us about their history and how they initiated after the 1985 release of the Heckler Report. This report looked at minority health and observed many health disparities based on social and economic factors. The OMH now works to raise awareness about health disparities while also providing research and accessibility to healthcare for our nation.

Captain Eric Shih, the Director of the Division of Integrated Systems, discussed the USPHS framework under the US Health and Human Services, as well as the hierarchy that has developed and shifted throughout the years. He also told us a little bit about the money and funding, and advised us to always know where money comes from within an organization!

After an event packed day at the Surgeon General’s Office, we ventured into a new territory and experienced a new culture of food by eating Ethiopian food! Yum! Then we took part in the OSG HOSA intern tradition; we took a beautiful twilight tour of the Washington D.C. monuments with CAPT Tosatto.

Everyone at the Ethiopian Restaurant!