Recycling: Coming to a Community Near You

Just a few years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a recycling bin around anywhere - maybe there was one on campus, or a few here and there, but today, they seem to be popping up in more and more locations, like in nearly all of the large student apartment complexes surrounding campus. Recycling is gaining more and more attention these days because it's an easy way to be environmentally conscious in everyday life. Recycling reduces waste, reducing the amount of potentially reusable goods that end up in landfills and promoting sustainability. If they end up in landfills, many recyclable items (such as plastic soda bottles and grocery bags) take over 100 years to biodegrade, and in doing so leach harmful chemicals into the soil and ground water. As the population of the Tampa Bay area continues to grow, it will become more and more important to recycle and reuse as much as possible, to avoid having to create new landfills that are unsightly and unhealthy for all of us. While we found this recycling dumpster at a local apartment complex, there are many others around, including many in the residential areas of USF. Recycling bins can also be found in nearly all the buildings on campus alongside the regular trash cans, to encourage the USF community to always recycle, not just at home. At USF, recycling is available for cans, bottles, paper, plastic bags, and even cardboard. Protecting the environment is an essential part of protecting public health in our communities - a small thing that has a huge impact.

Allison Castro

Marnisha James

Gus Melendez (photographing)

Set sail with public health!

We placed our public health sticker in the university mall in indoor kid play area on miniature pirate ship. We chose this location because it is a public play area and contains soft rubber material that is safe for children. The floor of the play area was made of shredded colored rubber to reduce the risk of injury from falls. Also the playground equipment was made of a soft material with the edges rounded off. The surfaces of all the equipment was glossy, making the equipment easier to sanitize. There were designated areas where shoes could be placed in cubby holes allowing a place for children to leave there shoes while they played to prevent injury from tripping. The area also provided soft cushioned places for the parents to sit and safely monitor their children while they played. In addition, hand sanitizer was also available for the children and parents to prevent germs from being spread.

This represents a public health issue because it promotes physical activity and provides a safe play area. Many children and parents do not want to sit outside in the Florida heat. This gives parents and children the choice of using an indoor playground while allowing the parents to safely monitor their children.

This is important for public health because it provides a safe indoor environment. Outdoor playground equipment can not only get extremely hot in the sun increasing the risk of burns but can also be difficult to properly clean. Having an indoor play area with soft glossy surfaces allows for the equipment to be sanitized easily and more often. The characteristic of the play area were designed to prevent injury and allows for easy sanitation.

Stephanie Hawks (photographer), Tiffany Parrish, Ivette Rodriguez, Blanca Baltazar

Pregnancy for Public Health

This photograph was taken in the public health building at USF of a graduate student. While talking to the lady, we discovered that she had gestational diabetes which caused an increase of sugar given to the baby which in return causes her fetus to grow abnormally large. There are many factors that can create a pregnancy to become dangerous and sometimes potentially fatal considering the circumstances. SIDS, a large contributor of the death rate of babies, is sometimes easily preventable when the right precautions are taken.

For our This Is Public Health picture, we chose to take a photograph of a pregnant woman’s belly. The pregnant woman ties into one of the topics we learned about in chapter 1, the top 10 public health achievements in the 20^th century, falling under the ‘healthier mothers and babies’ and ‘family planning’ categories. This is important pertaining to public health issues because healthier babies lead to a healthier upcoming because children are the future.

Pregnant women can be a public health issue considering the caution women need to take while carrying the child, proper prenatal care is very important in order to have happy and healthy babies. People may not be aware of the importance of prenatal vitamins; however, they do supply a fetus with the nutrients it needs to thrive. In order to receive such prenatal and postnatal care, people must plan and execute doctor’s visits and keep track of the baby’s health.

Group Members: Paula Saunders, Shanique Patterson, Samantha Zarate (photographer), and Margaret Shamblin

Bicycles are Public Health

What comes to mind when someone asks you what public health is? A lot of people are not sure what to say when asked maybe because they are not exactly sure or maybe because there are too many things to say as an answer. Truthfully, public health is absolutely everywhere. The example that our group picked is a bicycle rack in a park. Bicycles themselves are a huge part of public health. Many people might ask how this is public health; we came up with two very important examples of how they are public health. First, bicycles are great for promoting physical activity. America’s obesity epidemic is a very serious problem with rates of about 30% being obese in the United States. One of the number one reasons why obesity is such a problem is because many Americans lack physical activity. Riding a bicycle is a great way to exercise and it helps one in becoming more physically active. The second reason our group came up with is pollution. Motor vehicles are one of the greatest contributors to pollution. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, motor vehicles have a huge impact on global warming. In riding a bike people will use their vehicles less, therefore lowering the amount of pollution they are putting into our atmosphere. It’s obvious that bicycles do not emit pollution, so it would be beneficial to the environment if more people used a bicycle as a means of transportation instead of motor vehicles. It was important to us to include the bike rack in our picture because we believe having bike racks will only help to promote people in riding bicycles; people need to know they have a safe place where they can leave their bike, otherwise no one would ride their bike.

WIC Program Promotes Public Health

We chose to take our This is Public Health picture at the WIC office. The office is located within the University Community Resource Center off of Fletcher Ave and 22nd Ave in Tampa. We chose this location because it is set in the perfect environment, in the center of a poverty stricken neighborhood and close to the university. The WIC program (Women Infants and Children) is a very important program from a public health stand point. WIC provides food and nutritional education, breast feeding support and health care referrals for eligible women, new mothers, infants and children under 5 years old. Eligibility depends on income level and nutritional need. The main goal of WIC is to improve health and educate people about nutrition and eating properly for growth. The purpose of this education is to establish constructive habits that can be followed once the WIC services expire. WIC provides free classes on nutrition and one on one counseling about personal nutrition. It is a preventative step that starts pregnant mothers eating healthy and receiving a good education about nutrition before they hace a baby. Having proper nutrition while pregnant can help to prevent medical problems which in turn reduces the amount of medical care each mother and baby require. The program also offers immunizations to prevent diseases among new born babaies. WIC is important because they aim to prevent malnutrition and starvation among families who cannot afford to eat nutritiously. While precenting these serious issues they also aim to promote a sense of how to spend money on food that people will take with them and continue to follow after they leave the program. By providing people with the necessary tools, WIC contributes to the overall well-being of the community.

Jessica Kelso

Allie Lovelace

Kaitly Erickson

Sara Lopez

You could be eating someone else's boogers and not even know it!

Our group chose the local Marathon gas station right across from the USF campus because it is a very high traffic gas station due to it's location. Everyone touches either a gas pump or a door at the gas station, which are both easy venues for transmitting bacteria. We saw dirty gas pumps as a Public Health Issue because they are something almost everyone cannot avoid, unless you're an avid bike rider! By increasing awareness of how easy it is to come in contact with others' germs we thought it would instill a little fear (or disgust!) to our readers and convince them to wash their hands ASAP after filling their tank.

Ever wonder what people were doing before they got out of their car to pump their gas? A trip to our local Marathon on Fletcher sparked our interest! One thing that came to mind when looking around at other drivers is nose picking! The probability that a nose-picker has sanitized their hands post-pick is slim-to-none, which increases the chances that you've grabbed a gas pump full of infectious bacteria such as Staphylococcus Aureus, the main pathogen of "Staph Infections", or even worse, Streptococcus Pyogenes which will give you a nasty case of "Strep Throat". Don't think you're that unlucky? How many times have you been rushing to class or work, grabbed some delicious Wendy's chicken nuggets on the go, and then "beep!", your gas light comes on? Naturally, you stop and pump gas, hop back into your car and dig into those tasty nuggets. Well, you just got a side of Strep and didn't even have to pay for it!

After only being at the Marathon for a few minutes, we counted about 22 cars in the parking lot. Assuming most of those cars had just filled up we estimated that's about 2 people touching each pump per 10 minutes. Multiply that by 24 hours and you've touched the same gas pumps as well over 1,000 other strangers! Just think about the mom who just changed her baby's diaper, the little boy who just got sent home from kindergarten for having a snotty nose, or the fisherman coming back from the Bay who's just had his hands in smelly bait all day! It's pretty gross when you stop and think about it.

Considering there are no wipes or hand sanitizer stations near the gas pumps, if you want to keep driving your car you're going to have to be more mindful of what you do with your hands after you pump gas. Some may say you could go as far as wearing gloves, but the more realistic solutions might be: washing your hands, using sanitizing gel or wipes as soon as possible after pumping gas, or holding the pump with a Clorox or baby wipe while filling up. And of course you could avoid picking your nose for the sake of other's health too! ;)

Eating in a Smoke-Free Environment!!

Our blog group decided to place our public health sticker in Panera Bread located on Bruce B Downs. The reason why we chose this location is not only because it is close to the University of South Florida campus but it is also an eco-friendly environment, healthy and nutritious food is served, it is very student oriented and provides the ability to meet with other classmates to accomplish schoolwork and other activities. We chose the non-smoking sign because it is the first thing you see when you open the door to the restaurant, which lets the customers know that it is a clean and non-smoking environment. This sign also shows the customers that Panera Bread as a company is concerned about their customers’ health and well being while dining in their restaurant. This place is safe for families to bring their children as well because the risk of having second hand smoke is not a factor when finding a place to dine. Smoking in restaurants represents a public health issue because nicotine is toxic to the air, harmful to the lungs of the smokers and the people around them and it is also a major contributing factor to second hand smoking. Not only does smoking cause heart disease, lung disease and lung cancer, but it is a major cause of death that kills thousands a year. This issue is important because with the reduction of smoking, it promotes a healthier environment for people and their families and reduces health problems that could eventually kill you in the future if not taken care of sooner than later.

Group Members:

Chadia Ramirez, Marie Macean,

Tamarah Louis-Jean, Jasmyn Sewell