Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Story Archives

Health Officials Advise Radon Testing For Homes

During National Radon Action Month, state officials advise the public to test their homes and workplaces for radon.

Gov. Jim Justice also proclaimed January as National Radon Action Month in West Virginia.

“Radon is a problem you can’t see, taste, or smell, but that doesn’t mean the poisonous gas isn’t there,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, state health officer and commissioner of the Department of Health’s Bureau for Public Health. “The cancer-causing, radioactive gas comes from the natural breakdown of uranium in soil, rock, and water, and can get into the air we breathe.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the greatest risk of radon exposure comes from homes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates radon to be a cause of many cancer cases each year and the leading cause of cancer among non-smokers.

CDC reports people who smoke and are exposed to radon have a 10 times higher risk of developing lung cancer from exposure compared with people who do not smoke and are exposed to the same radon levels.

The Office of Environmental Health Services’ radon program monitors levels across the state, reporting results on the Public Radon Dashboard. Residents may request a free radon testing kit by emailing radon@wv.gov or by calling 304-352-5039.

According to CDC, radon reduction systems can reduce home radon levels by up to 99 percent. Click here to learn more about West Virginia’s Radon Program.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

CDC Begins Appalachian Fact Finding Mission In West Virginia

Public and private health care leaders and community stakeholders gathered at the Cabell Huntington Health Department on Tuesday to meet with leaders from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The session was intended to showcase what’s working locally and address the challenges of rural health care delivery.

Public and private health care leaders and community stakeholders gathered at the Cabell Huntington Health Department on Tuesday to meet with leaders from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The session was intended to showcase what’s working locally and to address the challenges of rural health care delivery.

CDC Health Care visit the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.

***Randy Yohe/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting***

Dr. Leslie Dauphin, CDC Director of Public Health Infrastructure, said this mission started here after learning about the successes of local community based partnerships.

“This was recommended as a place to start because of their accredited health departments,” Dauphin said. “That, and the way that the public-private partnerships work together with the health system to protect people.”

Dauphin said that due to a federal flexible funding program, the Cabell-Huntington Health Department has been able to hire staff. She said her concern was what will they do when that funding runs out.

“In order to get the work done to protect the health of communities, we must have a sustained growth,” Dauphin said. “We know that with their workforce, we’re here to learn what’s working, how they’re using the funding that they’ve received, to hire, recruit, retain a workforce, and what we can do to help them sustain.”

Cabell-Huntington Health Department CEO Dr. Michael Kilkenny said the CDC infrastructure director needed to know the state’s continuing broadband access challenges relate directly to health care.

“Telemedicine is showing a growing importance, Kilkenny said.” One of the ways to break down some of the transportation difficulties that we hear time and time again from the public is being able to come into your living room no matter where you’re at.”

Dauphin said the CDC is here to learn more about infrastructure, workforce issues, community partnerships and data modernization. She said the results must be federal health care policies made to bring the most benefits to those with the greatest need.

Fauci Weighs In On W.Va.’s HIV Rate

HIV Aids is on the rise in Monongalia County as a group of WVU Medical students learned recently on a Zoom call with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Since January 2018, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health has been monitoring increased diagnoses of HIV across the state, especially among people who inject drugs.

According to the CDC, 210 new HIV infections occurred in West Virginia in 2022, the most recent federal data. In 2021, 149 people were newly diagnosed with HIV.

According to AIDSVu, an interactive online mapping tool that visualizes the impact of the HIV epidemic on communities across the country, in 2021, there were 2,196 people living with HIV in West Virginia.

According to the Bureau for Public Health, preliminary reporting shows 83 cases of HIV diagnosed in West Virginia so far in 2023.

In a Zoom call with West Virginia University (WVU) medical students, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, voiced his concern about the number of HIV diagnoses in Morgantown and West Virginia as a whole.

In 2019, Cabell County was the epicenter of a large HIV cluster, however, since then, HIV cases have been increasing in other areas of the state. Currently, this increase is still most significant in Cabell County with a total of 21 positive cases so far in 2023, with Kanawha County at 18 infections so far this year.

Fauci and Dr. Stef Shuster, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University, visited West Virginia University virtually in a conversation on the history of LGBTQ+ health care in the United States. The conversation was facilitated by Ellen Rodrigues, director of WVU’s LGBTQ+ Center.

While Fauci is known nationally for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has spent 40 years on the forefront of HIV and AIDS research and treatment.

“Many of us across the country think of HIV and AIDS as a disease that is manageable and perhaps in our rearview mirror, right? But we have unfortunately, reliable data showing that right here, in Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of our university, we’ve had, we have now a substantial uptick in cases of HIV AIDS,” Rodrigues said.

Fauci responded that an uptick in HIV cases “surprises and dismays” him.

“The fact that you have an increase probably reflects two things,” Fauci said. “It’s the lack of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) accessibility, for those who are susceptible and a lack of accessibility to treatment for those who are already infected.”

Dr. Judith Feinberg is a professor of behavioral medicine and psychiatry and professor of medicine in infectious diseases, and the vice chair of medicine for research at WVU. She confirmed the recent outbreak or cluster of HIV and AIDS in Morgantown, defining a cluster as 10 infections or more.

“The one in Mon County, there are a couple of recent outbreaks, but the one in Mon county involves 10 men who have sex with men and they’ve been identified and offered care,” Feinberg said. “And I believe the majority are being cared for actually at what is called the positive health clinic here.”

Feinberg said that with modern preventative medication accessible and information available, cases of HIV and AIDs should be falling, not rising.

“Relative to the fact that before 2017, only an average of maybe 75 to 77 new cases were diagnosed a year, 10 new cases is a lot and in recent years since 2017, because we’ve had a number of HIV outbreaks across the state, that number has doubled,” Feinberg said. “I believe for 2021, which is the last year we have full reporting on it’s something like 139. And it’s been running about double ever since 2017 and that’s really because that’s the point at which HIV entered the community of people who inject drugs.”

Feinberg said there are two major behavioral risks associated with HIV.Fauci agreed with Feinberg’s conclusion about the reason for an uptick in cases in West Virginia.

“Injecting drugs has really recently overtaken men who have sex with men as the primary behavior behavioral risk for HIV,” Fauci said. “And how can we do better with this? Well, first of all, we need a public, we need the public to understand that this is happening.”

According to the West Virginia 2020-2022 Substance Use Response Plan, from 2014 to 2017, the drug overdose death rate in West Virginia increased from a rate of 35.5 per 100,000 to 57.8 per 100,000, far exceeding any other state in the nation.

“Drug addiction, as we all know, is a disease and not a crime,” Fauci said. “And when you’re trying to prevent someone from getting infected from injection drug use, that’s a very difficult problem unless you get sterile needles a little as a needle exchange, but for sexual transmission, we should be looking in the community about why is there lack of the access to what we know is a highly effective prevention. That’s my only comment about that. Very disturbing.”

That prevention is available as a pill to be taken frequently, or a shot, taken on a less frequent basis.

“That is entirely preventable,” Fauci said. “We now have pre-exposure prophylaxis that’s either in an oral form with a drug that you could take every day or in association with your sexual contact, or now most recently, highly, highly effective, injectable long acting every couple of months, pre-exposure prophylaxis that the efficacy of that in preventing perfection, if utilized properly, is 90 plus percent 98 percent, sometimes close to 100 percent.”

With preventative medication available, experts think it is a lack of public perception of HIV and AIDs as a threat that leads to an uptick in infections.

“Changing public perception has been really hard. And I think, as I said, I think what happened is that this entered the public knowledge and the public imagination decades ago, in this more limited context of you know, men who have sex with men,” Feinberg said. “So I think, you know, education and having an awareness is really key, right?”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

CDC Purchases Pocahontas County Land For Mine Safety Research Facility

The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is building the Underground Mine Safety and Health Research Program facility to primarily research mine explosions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acquired land in Pocahontas County to construct a facility for mine safety research.

The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is building the Underground Mine Safety and Health Research Program facility to primarily research mine explosions, alongside work on mine seals, escape and rescue protocols, refuge alternatives and ventilation, among other projects like automation technology.

It will be built in Mace, replacing a similar facility in Lake Lynn, Pennsylvania, which opened in 1982 and closed in 2012. Negotiations between NIOSH and the previous property owner for the agency to purchase the land, as well as an environmental impact statement, began in 2018. The purchased property is 465 acres.

“The surface development is anticipated to take about 12 acres, so 453 acres will be left undisturbed, but it will contain some of our underground workings within a limestone bed,” NIOSH Deputy Associate Director for Mining George Luxbacher said.

Parts of the underground facility are designed to mimic the geometry of “room and pillar” and longwall coal mines, with the mine openings constructed in limestone. Other facilities that would emulate limestone mines and metal mines are also planned for construction.

“By constructing these mine openings in limestone, we don’t have to worry about the issues that we would have if we were to conduct these explosion testings in coal,” Luxbacher said.

Despite mine safety improvements brought on in part by the 2006 Sago, Alma and Darby mine disasters, Luxbacher says the industry still has issues that require research in unique facilities.

“This isn’t the kind of thing that you can do primarily in the laboratory, you have to be able to do it in a field environment that’s similar in conditions as to a working mine,” Luxbacher said.

The facility is expected to be completed within five years once construction begins. Design of the facility is expected to take around one year.

W.Va. Scores Poorly Among National Tobacco Use Averages

The American Lung Association released its annual “State of Tobacco Control” report Wednesday, naming West Virginia among the worst-scoring states in the union.

The report evaluates state and federal policies on actions taken to eliminate tobacco use and recommends proven-effective tobacco control laws and policies to save lives.

According to the report, West Virginia lags behind when it comes to tobacco control policies and as a result, the state’s average smoking rates are 22 percent of adults and 40.6 percent of high school students.

“This gives us an important opportunity to improve the health of our state through proven policies, such as increasing funding for tobacco prevention and cessation programs aligned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended level,” said Lance Boucher, division assistant vice president, Eastern, at the American Lung Association.

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in America and takes the lives of 4,280 West Virginia residents each year.

Jennifer Folkenroth, senior national director of the American Lung Association, said policy changes are the keys to reduce tobacco use and save lives.

“At this time, when really looking at West Virginia’s report card, the strength of the smoke free laws received a grade D. But of course, considering the loopholes that currently exist and continue to allow workers across West Virginia to be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Folkenroth said. “Unfortunately, West Virginia received a failing grade for all other areas of the report, including funding for state tobacco prevention programs, level of state tobacco taxes, coverage and access to services to quit tobacco, and, of course, ending the sale of all flavored tobacco products.”

It is estimated that 35 percent of cigarette smokers have a direct behavioral health disorder and account for 38 percent of all U.S. adult cigarette consumption. Despite the national cigarette smoking rate of 14 percent overall among adults, it is 23 percent for individuals with a behavioral health disorder.

“So between tobacco and mental health, it is so very important that we ensure that programs are integrated with behavioral health facilities to provide substance use disorder facilities with the tools to provide voluntary cessation programs to support these individuals in breaking free from nicotine addiction,” Folkenroth said.

To learn more about this year’s “State of Tobacco” report, visit lung.org/sotc.

CDC Funding Will Improve Healthcare Infrastructure

Millions of federal dollars are coming to the state to help improve healthcare infrastructure.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) was awarded more than $18 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to strengthen the state’s critical public health infrastructure.

The money will go to recruitment, retention and training of the public health workforce.

It will also be used for improving organizational systems and advancing public health data modernization efforts.

In a press release, Sen. Joe Manchin said he is pleased the CDC is investing in strengthening the public health infrastructure and workforce across West Virginia.

“Our healthcare providers continue to go above and beyond to care for their fellow West Virginians,” he said. “I look forward to seeing the positive impacts of this investment.”

The funding is part of the CDC’s Strengthening U.S. Public Health Infrastructure, Workforce, and Data Systems grant program.

It provides funding to public health departments and national partners to help ensure every community has the workforce capacity, services and systems needed to promote and protect public health.