"Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis are major public health problems worldwide, affecting millions of peoples' quality of life, causing serious illness and sometimes death," Ian Askew, head of WHO's reproductive health and research division, said in a statement.Globally, more than one million people contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or infection (STI) every day, WHO said.

WHO estimates that each year, 131 million people are infected with chlamydia around the globe, 78 million with gonorrhoea and 5.6 million with syphilis.

More than one million people contract a sexually transmitted infection (STI) every single day, WHO medical officer Teodora Wi said.

Until recently, the three diseases, which are all caused by bacteria, had been fairly easy to treat using antibiotics, but increasingly those drugs are failing, WHO said.

"Resistance of these STIs to the effect of antibiotics has increased rapidly in recent years and has reduced treatment options," the UN agency said.

Resistance is caused, among other things, by doctors overprescribing antibiotics, and patients not taking the correct doses.

Injected into the buttock or thigh

Strains of multidrug resistant gonorrhoea that do not respond to any available antibiotics have already been detected, while antibiotic resistance also exists in chlamydia and syphilis, though it is less common, it said.

When left undiagnosed and untreated, the three diseases can have serious consequences, causing pelvic infamatory disease and ectopic pregnancy in women, and increasing the chances of miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death.

They can also greatly increase the risk of being infected with HIV, and untreated gonorrhoea and chlamydia can leave both men and women infertile.

To rein in resistance, WHO on Tuesday presented new guidelines aimed at ensuring that doctors prescribe the best antibiotics, and the right doses, for treating each specific disease.

To reduce the spread of the diseases, national health services will need to "monitor the patterns of antibiotic resistance in these infections within their countries," Askew said.

For gonorrhoea for instance, WHO recommends that health authorities study local resistance patterns and advise doctors to prescribe the most effective antibiotic with the least resistance.

For syphilis, meanwhile, WHO recommended a specific antibiotic—benzathine penicillin—that is injected into the buttock or thigh muscle.

It stressed that condom use was the most effective way to protect against STD infection.

Source: Medical Express

As the PA profession evolves, so does the language used to talk about it. The explosive growth of the profession, coupled with the continued modernization of PA laws, is rapidly changing the way PAs practice and the language we use to describe what they do. This is a reference guide for how to communicate about the profession in a way that reflects the realities of modern PA practice. If you have any questions, please contact Janette Rodrigues, Editorial Director, (571.319.4382, jrodrigues@aapa.org). 

The PA Abbreviation Use “PA” as the title of the profession in all copy, not “physician assistant.” We do not use “physician assistant” any longer to refer to the profession as the name does not adequately depict the medical services PAs provide to patients every day. If you must spell it out to aid in external audience awareness, only use “physician assistant” once in parentheses after the first PA reference, i.e., PA (physician assistant). Use PA for all subsequent references. The PA Honorific To promote uniformity of address in clinical and other settings, use PA as the honorific before the person’s name, i.e., PA Pam Smith or PA Smith. Encourage the adoption of PA [surname] as the recommended address for PAs among staff and external audiences, unless a more suitable formal address is appropriate, such as military rank or academic role. 

Who are PAs? 

PAs are nationally certified and state licensed to practice medicine and prescribe medication in every medical and surgical specialty and setting and in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories, with the exception of Puerto Rico. PAs are educated at the graduate level, with most PAs receiving a master’s degree or higher. In order to maintain national certification, PAs are required to complete 100 hours of continuing medical education every two years and to recertify as medical generalists every 10 years. 

What do PAs do? 

• PAs practice medicine. 

• PAs practice in every medical and surgical specialty and setting. 

• PAs manage the full scope of patient care, often handling patients with multiple comorbidities. 

• PAs conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, assist in surgery, coordinate care, counsel on preventive healthcare, prescribe medications and more. 

How do PAs work? 

PAs’ scope of practice is determined by their education and experience. Scope of practice is also subject to state laws and facility policy. In optimal settings, PAs practice at the top of their education, training and experience, and the scope is determined at the practice level. 

• PAs practice medicine in teams with physicians and other healthcare professionals. 

Why are PAs unique? 

• PAs increase access to healthcare. 

• PAs provide quality care and have been shown to positively impact patient outcomes. 

• PAs are educated, to seamlessly work in a team-based model of care. 

• PAs are educated as medical generalists and recertify as medical generalists. 

• PAs are one of the most versatile healthcare providers; during the course of their career, most PAs will have worked in two to three specialties. 

• PAs manage patient care coordination and provide clinical preventive services. 

• Four out of five PAs report high job satisfaction. 

Phrases to Avoid 

• Inaccurate Terminology: 

“PAs are mid-level providers, physician extenders, non-physician providers, advanced practice providers or advanced practice clinicians.” 

• These terms are often misunderstood by consumers and do not accurately portray or describe how PAs practice medicine to other providers or patients. Nor do they reflect their license or legal title. 

If PAs need to be referenced as part of a larger group, use “healthcare provider”, “healthcare practitioner,” or “clinician” but the preferred reference would include simply the title name of each profession (e.g., “PAs and NPs”). 

• Inaccurate Terminology: “PAs work on physician-led teams.” or “PAs are supervised by a physician.” 

It is no longer the case that physicians have to be at the helm of the care team. Today’s PAs collaborate with physicians. Supervision should only be referenced when required by legal and regulatory documentation. For example, patient-centered medical homes allow for various health professionals to function as leaders of care teams, including PAs. In practice, a PA’s scope typically grows over time with clinical experience. It is common for a PA to serve as the lead on care coordination teams and see patients in all settings without a physician present. In fact, in many rural and underserved areas, a PA may be the only provider, with PA-physician collaboration occurring via telecommunication.

FRIDAY, Aug. 26, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health officials report that the Zika virus can be spread sexually even when a partner shows no signs of infection.

A Maryland woman who had not traveled to an active Zika area was diagnosed with the virus in June after having condomless sex with a man who had been to the Dominican Republic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The mosquito-borne virus is circulating in the Dominican Republic, but the man had experienced no Zika symptoms, such as fever, pink eye or rash. Although he had felt tired, he blamed that on traveling.

Testing, however, confirmed that he had been exposed to Zika, researchers said.

"As more is learned about the incidence and duration of seminal shedding of Zika virus in infected men, recommendations to prevent sexual transmission of Zika virus will be updated if needed," the CDC researchers said.

Zika can cause severe brain damage in babies whose mothers are exposed to it during pregnancy. It is also tied to a rare autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Only one other case of sexual transmission of Zika without symptoms is known to the CDC. But in that case a mosquito bite -- the usually source of Zika -- couldn't be ruled out because both partners had traveled to an active Zika region outside the United States.

This new twist in the myriad ways Zika can spread should strengthen warnings to couples hoping to start a family if either one plans to travel anywhere the virus is active, health officials said. Currently, it's circulating in South and Central American countries and the Caribbean. Parts of Florida have also experienced local Zika transmission.

Regardless of whether Zika symptoms surface, if one partner travels to a Zika region, couples should wait at least eight weeks before attempting to start a family, the CDC reiterated.

Also, men with a Zika diagnosis should wait at least six months before trying for pregnancy and women with Zika should wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive, the agency says.

Couples not trying to have children should use reliable birth control and condoms to help prevent transmission of the virus. They also might consider abstaining from sex, the CDC says.

A second CDC report adds to knowledge about the link between Zika and Guillain-Barre, which is characterized by weakness and paralysis.

Since Puerto Rico's first Zika diagnosis last December, cases of Guillain-Barre there have dramatically increased, the CDC reported. Fifty-six suspected cases of Guillain-Barre were reported the first seven months of 2016, of which 34 were linked to infection with Zika or an unspecified flavivirus. (Zika is the chief flavivirus now active in Puerto Rico.)

"Overall, the number of persons with suspected [Guillain-Barre] and evidence of Zika virus or flavivirus infection was 2.5 times greater than the number of persons with suspected [Guillain-Barre] and no evidence of Zika virus infection," the report says. Most of the Guillain-Barre patients were older than 50, and one died.

Both reports were published Aug. 26 in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

More information

The World Health Organization has more about Zika virus.

SOURCE: Aug. 26, 2016, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

-- Margaret Farley Steele

Last Updated: Aug 28, 2016

Copyright © 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Three already existing drugs may offer pregnant women and their developing fetuses protection against the damaging effects of Zika virus, a new multicenter study reports.

Researchers identified these three potential Zika treatments in the laboratory by screening 6,000 different compounds that included already-approved drugs and clinical trial drug candidates.

"We specifically in this screen tried to take advantage of compounds that are already FDA-approved or in some stage of clinical development," said study co-author Emily Lee. She's a graduate student of molecular biology at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

One of the drugs, sold as Niclosamide, is already on the market as a treatment for tapeworm. But it appears to also have antiviral properties that inhibit Zika from replicating, the researchers reported.

Another antiviral drug potentially effective against Zika is PHA-690509. This is a medication that is currently in development that works by interfering with gene expression, the study authors said.

And finally, investigators identified a third medication awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval that doesn't directly act against Zika, but may be able to protect the brain cells of developing fetuses against viral damage. The drug, Emricasan, inhibits a natural process that causes programmed cell death.

"This compound wouldn't necessarily be good for treating infections by itself, because it can't stop the infection, but maybe we can use it to buy time and protect the cells against the infection," Lee said.

Zika virus is mainly spread via mosquito bites. Infection poses significant risks to pregnant women, because it can cause a birth defect called microcephaly, which results in babies born with undersized heads and underdeveloped brains.

The virus is currently being actively transmitted in two areas of metropolitan Miami, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Zika has achieved epidemic status in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and is widespread throughout Central and South America.

The new drug research moved at breakneck pace, identifying the three compounds in a couple of months thanks to a large-scale collaboration between the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Florida State University, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, Emory University in Atlanta, and Zhejiang University in China, Lee said.

Researchers already have started testing the drugs in mice, but much work needs to be done before they'll be available to humans, Lee noted.

For example, researchers have to test in mice and primates whether the drugs are effective at all against Zika in living creatures, and whether they are safe to take during pregnancy, she explained.

"It could be very fast, or it could take a long time," Lee said of the process. "If that works really well in mice, with no problems, it would be much easier to move it into primates right away and then into clinical trials right away. But if there are any problems, it could extend the process out."

For women who are not pregnant and males, testing the compounds in clinical trials will take a minimum of 1 to 2 years, said study co-author Dr. Wei Zheng.

"However, for the pregnant women, the timeline will be much longer because we need additional preclinical toxicology studies to make sure the drugs are safe," added Zheng, who is a researcher at National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja said the "possible repurposing of existing compounds that may be already in use for another indication is an important part of developing a rapid response to an emerging infectious disease outbreak such as Zika."

According to Adalja, a senior associate with the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore, "This new data is very promising and may lead to effective antiviral therapies against Zika. However, it will be equally important to develop a concept for how these drugs could be used."

Most people with Zika don't have any symptoms ("asymptomatic") and are unlikely to realize they're infected, according to the CDC.

"It is extremely difficult to effectively intervene on asymptomatic patients given that they have no symptoms and thus no signal that they are harboring the virus," Adalja said.

Lee suggested that if the antiviral drugs prove effective, public health officials might choose to deploy them in areas with active Zika infection.

"If people are being used as reservoirs for the virus, we might want to start proactively treating populations where Zika is in circulation, to stop the circulation," she said.

However, she warned people against buying Niclosamide, the only one of the three drugs already on the market, for off-label use against Zika at this point.

"Even if we think it's going to work, we don't want to take a chance with people," Lee said. "We just don't know enough about it yet. Wait and see what our groups come up with."

The study was published Aug. 29 in Nature Medicine.

More information

For more on the Zika virus, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This Q & A will tell you what you need to know about Zika.

To see the CDC list of sites where Zika virus is active and may pose a threat to pregnant women, click here.

SOURCES: Emily Lee, graduate student, molecular biology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla.; Amesh Adalja, M.D., senior associate, UPMC Center for Health Security, Baltimore; Wei Zheng, Ph.D., researcher, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, U.S. National Institutes of Health; Aug. 29, 2016, Nature Medicine

Last Updated: Aug 29, 2016

Copyright © 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

When Delaware Gov. Jack Markell took office in 2009, he vowed to bring more opportunities to residents of his state. What was standing in their way, the governor found, was a higher rate of unintended pregnancy than anywhere else in the U.S. So he took actions to reduce unintended pregnancies in the state.

Delaware is making long-acting reversible contraception available at low or no cost to women of childbearing age, thanks in part to a partnership with the nonprofit organization Upstream USA, which trains health care providers and health centers to offer intrauterine devices and birth control implants.

Markell told The Nation’s Health that in his eyes, all other types of opportunities — such as pursuing education, building a career, saving money to buy a home and having healthy birth outcomes — were influenced by whether or not people were able to decide when and how to build their families. A March Guttmacher Institute fact sheet showed that in 2010, Delaware had 62 unintended pregnancies for every 1,000 women ages 15-44 in 2010. The rate was the highest in the nation and accounted for 57 percent of all births in the state.

“I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that this is the most important thing that we can do to help more Delawareans reach their potential,” Markell said.

So with the help of Upstream, Delaware invested $1.75 million in state funding, as well as $13 million in philanthropic giving, to reshape the way Delaware residents access family planning. The initiative, called Delaware Contraceptive Access Now, started not with community education, but with billing.

For many women, one of the best and easiest times to insert an intrauterine device is right after delivering a baby. However, in Delaware, as with many states, the medical reimbursement system did not cover IUD insertion after delivery. Instead, providers had to schedule insertion for their patients’ follow-up well-woman visits, four to six weeks after delivery. The drop-off in seeing patients was substantial, as it cost more money for the women seeking care and there was no medical reason for it.

“These are barriers we find in health care all around the entire country,” Mark Edwards, co-founder of Upstream, told The Nation’s Health. “Health centers were worried about losing money. When you help them understand how to bill and code properly, they break even at a minimum, maybe even make a little money.”

In the last two years or so, Upstream staff have been training Delaware health care workers in all aspects of providing IUDs and implants. Licensed medical providers are taught proper insertion and removal of the devices. Front-of-office staff and health care providers learn best practices on how to counsel patients about their birth control options. And billing staff are advised on coding and billing in order to keep the devices affordable. The coverage is not limited to Medicaid patients or certain insurance providers; all providers in the state are covered, from community health centers to private practice and hospitals. As of late July, Edwards said more than 550 Delaware health care staff had received Upstream training.

Staff at Nemours Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, were trained by Upstream staff in February. Krishna White, MD, MPH, chief of the hospital’s division of adolescent medicine and pediatric gynecology, said that the hospital has already seen the positive effects of offering LARC to its adolescent patients.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends LARC as a first line of defense for teens looking to prevent pregnancy. IUDs and implants are the most effective forms of reversible birth control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, short-acting contraceptives such as condoms and birth control pills are both more popular with teens and less effective.

An April 2015 study from CDC found that less than 5 percent of teens using birth control choose LARC, and many of them know little about the option.

“The majority of patients we see are young women coming in for reproductive concerns,” White told The Nation’s Health. “It’s critically important for teens, who may not be able to make it into another office, or might change their mind. It’s best to provide it for them at the moment they want it.”

While Delaware is working to make LARC available to residents, it is not alone. Colorado’s Family Planning Initiative, which helps Title X clinics offer low- to no-cost IUDs to teens and women who want them, helped lower the state’s teen birth and abortion rates by 48 percent each from 2009 to 2014, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The program has also been associated with better birth outcomes, according to a study published in the September 2015 issue of APHA’s American Journal of Public Health.

Thanks to the program, one in three patients of Title X clinics, which are federally funded to provide family planning options, now uses long-acting reversible contraceptives for their family planning methods, said Jody Camp, MPH, family planning section manager at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Along with state support and funding from both state and philanthropic donations, Camp said the media helped in making the program successful in Colorado.

“It’s been so helpful in normalizing our work,” Camp told The Nation’s Health.“They can speak to people on both sides of the aisle. It’s really helped to gain a better understanding about LARC, not necessarily as a tool for birth control, but a tool for economic self-sufficiency. I do believe that’s what (worked) in our favor when we asked the legislature for additional funding.”

Another contributing factor to success, however, is the financial payoff for states. Colorado estimated that its LARC program saved the state $49 million to $111 million in Medicaid birth-related costs. While Delaware’s program is still new, Markell noted that healthy Medicaid births cost the state approximately $12,000, and unhealthy births cost even more.

Upstream’s Edwards said he hopes that more states, cities and clinics will enact programs to make LARC more accessible to those who want it.

“This is really an opportunity to demonstrate that this kind of investment can reduce unintended pregnancies and improve birth outcomes…improve opportunities and also save a lot of money,” he said.

To learn more about the Delaware program, visit www.upstream.org/delawarecan.

• Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association

Why Talk to My Family?

Your family members can benefit from knowing about your BRCA1or BRCA2 mutation.  Talk to your family members about your mutation, so they will know that

• BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are passed through families.
• A person with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation is more likely to get breast, ovarian, and other cancers.
• Genetic counseling and testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations can provide information about their risk.
• If they choose to be tested, they should be tested for the same mutation that you have.
• Steps can be taken to prevent breast and ovarian cancer or find it earlier.

View the full resource here.

Carrie K. Shapiro-Mendoza, PhD1; Wanda D. Barfield, MD1; Zsakeba Henderson, MD1; Arthur James, MD2; Jennifer L. Howse, PhD3; John Iskander, MD4; Phoebe G. Thorpe, MD4 (View author affiliations)

Preterm birth (delivery before 37 weeks and 0/7 days of gestation) is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality in the United States. In 2013, 11.4% of the nearly 4 million U.S. live births were preterm; however, 36% of the 8,470 infant deaths were attributed to preterm birth (1). Infants born at earlier gestational ages, especially <32 0/7 weeks, have the highest mortality ( Figure) and morbidity rates. Morbidity associated with preterm birth includes respiratory distress syndrome, necrotizing enterocolitis, and intraventricular hemorrhage; longer-term consequences include developmental delay and decreased school performance. Risk factors for preterm delivery include social, behavioral, clinical, and biologic characteristics ( Box). Despite advances in medical care, racial and ethnic disparities associated with preterm birth persist. Reducing preterm birth, a national public health priority (2), can be accomplished by implementing and monitoring strategies that target modifiable risk factors and populations at highest risk, and by providing improved quality and access to preconception, prenatal, and interconception care through implementation of strategies with potentially high impact.

Most preterm births are spontaneous and can occur with intact membranes (40%–45% of preterm births) or after preterm premature rupture of membranes (25%–30% of preterm births) (3). The etiology of preterm labor is poorly understood; prevailing theories include infectious and inflammatory processes. Intrauterine infection and inflammation might account for up to 40% of preterm births, but in many instances, the cause might be subclinical and difficult to detect (3,4). Maternal or fetal complications can often result in preterm birth because of medically indicated induction of labor or cesarean delivery (30%–35% of preterm births) (3). Growing awareness of the complications of prematurity has prompted careful evaluation of the indications for and timing of delivery (5).

For more accurate estimates of the preterm birth rate, CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics transitioned from using the date of last normal menstrual period to the obstetric estimate of gestation at delivery, starting with 2014 births and revising data back to 2007 (6).* Based on the historical last normal menstrual period measure, the U.S. preterm birth rate increased 21%, from 10.6% in 1990 to 12.8% in 2006 (7). Since 2007, the first year that data using the obstetric estimate of gestation at delivery were available, the overall rate declined, from 10.4% in 2007 to 9.6% in 2014. However, declines have been disproportionate across racial and ethnic groups (6). In 2014, non-Hispanic black (black) women had the highest preterm birth rate (13.2%), followed by American Indians or Alaska Natives (AI/AN) (10.2%), Hispanics (9.4%), non-Hispanic whites (whites) (8.9%), and Asian/Pacific Islanders (API) (8.5%). Compared with the preterm birth rate among whites, the rates of preterm birth among blacks and AI/AN were 1.5 and 1.1, respectively (6).

Declines in infant mortality (53%) since the 1980s have been largely attributed to increasing preterm survival, owing to improvements in neonatal intensive care and treatments for lung immaturity. Infant mortality rates (deaths in children aged <12 months per 1,000 live births) declined from 12.6 in 1980 (8) to 5.96 in 2013 (1).† Despite these declines, racial and ethnic disparities persist. In 2013, the infant mortality rate among black infants (11.2) was 2.2 times higher than that among white infants (5.1). Rates of preterm-related infant mortality§ (per 1,000 live births) provide further evidence of racial and ethnic disparities and highlight the importance of reducing preterm births. Black women have the highest rates of preterm-related infant mortality (4.9), followed by AI/AN women (2.0), Hispanic women (1.8), white women (1.6), and API women (1.5) (1).

Read the full article here.

Shapiro-Mendoza CK, Barfield WD, Henderson Z, et al. CDC Grand Rounds: Public Health Strategies to Prevent Preterm Birth. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65:826–830. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6532a4

Only you can give your baby protection against whooping cough before your little one is even born. Talk to your doctor or midwife about getting the Tdap vaccine during your third trimester.

Whooping cough is a serious disease that can be deadly for babies. Unfortunately, babies can't get vaccinated and start building protection against whooping cough until they are two months old. The good news is that you can avoid this gap in protection by getting the whooping cough vaccine (called Tdap) during the third trimester of your pregnancy. By doing so, you pass antibodies to your baby before birth. These antibodies help protect your baby in the first few months of life.

You Need a Whooping Cough Vaccine during Each Pregnancy

Learn why Laura decided to get the whooping cough vaccine in her 3rd trimester and how her baby girl was born with some protection against the disease.
Also available on YouTube.

CDC recommends pregnant women get the whooping cough vaccine between 27 and 36 weeks of each pregnancy. This recommendation is supported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists  and the American College of Nurse-Midwives, healthcare professionals who specialize in caring for pregnant women. The goal is to give babies some short-term protection against whooping cough in early life.

The amount of antibodies you have from the whooping cough vaccine will decrease over time. That is why it's important for pregnant women to get a whooping cough vaccine during each pregnancy so that each baby has the benefit of getting the greatest number of protective antibodies. Getting the whooping cough vaccine while pregnant is the best way to help protect your baby from whooping cough in the first few months of life.

Whooping Cough Vaccine during Pregnancy Is Safe for Your Baby

Getting the whooping cough vaccine while you are pregnant is very safe for you and your baby. The most common side effects include redness, swelling, pain, and tenderness where the shot is given, body-ache, fatigue, or fever. Severe side effects are extremely rare. You cannot get whooping cough from the whooping cough vaccine. Learn more about safety and side effects.

Whooping Cough Is Making a Comeback

Whooping cough is a very contagious illness that is on the rise.

There are many factors contributing to this increase, but one key reason is that today's vaccines, while safe and effective, do not last as long as we would like. However, getting vaccinated is still the best way to prevent whooping cough and its complications.

View the latest U.S. whooping cough numbers.

Young Babies Are at Highest Risk

When babies—even healthy babies—catch whooping cough, the symptoms can be very serious because their immune systems are still developing. They can get pneumonia (a lung infection), and many have trouble breathing.

About half of babies who get whooping cough end up in the hospital. The younger the baby is when he gets whooping cough, the more likely it is that he will need to be treated in the hospital. Every year in the United States, up to 20 babies die from whooping cough, with most deaths in those too young to be protected by their own whooping cough vaccine.

More Information 

E-Cigarettes and Pregnancy is a free, online interactive presentation on electronic nicotine delivery systems and their potential health effects during and after pregnancy, and discusses effective tobacco cessation treatments.

The training is eligible for continuing education and Maintenance of Certification Part IV credit.

Learn more about continuing education.

The ABOG MOC standards now allow participation in ABOG-approved Simulation Courses to meet the annual Improvement in Medical Practice (Part IV) MOC requirement. This course has been approved to meet ABOG Improvement in Medical Practice requirements for 2016. Please review the 2016 MOC Bulletin for further information.

This computer program is protected by copyright law and international treaties. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this program or any portion of it may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law. This is subject to license agreements with Dartmouth College, and is not to be copied or used except as specified in such agreement. Some materials in this program are from copyrighted publications and products owned by others. Refer to the publication data included in bibliographic citations, and the copyright notices in the original published form of the contained publications, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.

The Inside Knowledge campaign raises awareness of the five main types of gynecologic cancer: cervical, ovarian, uterine, vaginal, and vulvar. Inside Knowledge encourages women to pay attention to their bodies, so they can recognize any warning signs and seek medical care.

New television and radio public service announcements in English and Spanish feature actress Cote de Pablo, talking about her own cervical cancer scare, and sharing advice for other women. And check out the new posters telling Cote’s story, as well as our Behind-the-Scenes videos from filming!

Inside Knowledge also has new TV and radio PSAs that highlight gynecologic cancer symptoms. The PSAs encourage women to learn the symptoms, and pay attention to what their bodies are telling them.