Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to this edition of Public Health Landscape, a newsletter supporting our mission to protect human potential as public health professionals.

Opening the first newsletter of 2017 means a great deal to me because of the challenges we faced in 2016. When the Zika virus hit the U.S. mainland in July 2016, the entire community needed – and was expected – to act quickly and effectively to protect the health of the public. Certainly the unknowns regarding the impact of ZIKV on newborns and public perception of insecticide use to control vector populations represented conditions for public panic, the entire health community pulled together to educate citizens and deploy effective intervention tactics that broke transmission in Wynwood. While there is still much to be learned regarding Zika’s short- and long-term impacts on newborns and subsequent quality of life, we can build off our collective experiences and improve our service to the public. The cover story of this issue delves into the specifics of counties that acted both proactively and reactively to fight Zika
and a roadmap toward success in the future.

Looking forward, we are once again faced with the recurring concern for public health professionals in the change in political administration and how that will affect vector control. While there is an inherent belief that the Republican Party does not focus heavily on environmental concerns, I would like to remind our readers that past Republican Party presidents have a strong track record of supporting vector control with environmentally sustainable interventions.

It was Richard Nixon who founded the Environmental Protection Agency and Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and it was President George W. Bush who launched the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 2005 to eliminate the burden of Malaria in 15 African countries. Ten years later, PMI is showing successes across sub-Saharan Africa. You can read about the extent of that success on page 9 where we summarize the findings of the recently published 2016 World Malaria Report.

Public health vector control programs have a long history of successful partnership with industry to develop innovative products and approaches to mosquito control in the U.S. That’s not to say we do not have a ways to go. We expect that the strong federal support of the momentum established in 2016 to control Zika will continue to protect the potential of all human beings in 2017 and beyond.

We hope you enjoy this edition of Public Health Landscape and welcome your thoughts. If you have any ideas for future articles or have an interest in contributing, please contact us at edit@publichealthlandscape.com.

Best Regards,