Public Health is for Everyone An inclusive planning toolkit for public health professionals

This website features information, continuing education opportunities, resources, and more for health and health care professionals to learn about culturally and linguistically appropriate services, or CLAS. Launched in 2004, Think Cultural Health is sponsored by the Office of Minority Health.

This website offers resources that describe and comment on law and policy responses to the Zika Virus. 

Seventy years after CDC was founded to fight mosquitoes that carried malaria, CDC found itself entrenched in combat with another mosquito-borne illness, Zika virus. CDC activated its Emergency Operations Center to fight Zika on January 22, 2016, after a widespread Zika outbreak in the Americas was linked to a large increase in the number of babies born with microcephaly. As the emergency response approaches one year, CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report highlights 10 critical contributions towards the fight against Zika virus this year.

Researchers found the antibiotic azithromycin can block the Zika virus from infecting fetal brain tissue cells grown in lab dishes. The findings, published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed the virus targets brain cells with an abundance of the AXL protein.

Zika Resources including response activities and resources for pediatricians from the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

American Academy of Pediatrics

It is the news that doctors and families in the heart of Zika territory had feared: Some babies not born with the unusually small heads that are the most severe hallmark of brain damage as a result of the virus have developed the condition, called microcephaly, as they have grown older.

The findings were reported in a study of 13 babies in Brazil that was published Tuesday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. At birth, none of the babies had heads small enough to receive a diagnosis of microcephaly, but months later, 11 of them did.

The New York Times

"The Zika Virus was discovered in the heart of Africa in 1947 and infected small clusters of people over the next 60 years. But then, in 2007, it began popping up on some islands in the pacific. People infected there started traveling... triggering, Dr. Fauci says, a global pandemic."

Learn more from this CBS news story where U.S. Dr. Jon LaPook speaks with the country's top scientist about the fight against Zika. 

Recent research has shown that the mosquito-borne Zika virus has the potential to cause serious health problems, including severe birth defects in humans. But the damaging effects of Zika might not end there: results of a new mouse study show that the virus may also have an unexpected negative-and possibly long-lasting-impact on male fertility.

National Institutes of Health

Combatting the spread of the Zika virus in the United States and territories as well as helping those who are already affected requires a public health response. This includes the coordination and collaboration of health care systems, providers, and families at the national, state and local levels. In this rapidly changing environment, HRSA has made helping our programs address this public health threat a top priority.

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

This resource is focused on the comprehensive health needs of infants and children affected by Zika Virus (ZIKV). It is intended as a planning resource for states and ommunities as they develop a coordinated response to meet the immediate and long term needs of infants and children affected by ZIKV, and their families. The resource guide applies a system of care approach and builds on existing Federal and State services and programs for supporting children with special health care needs (CSHCN). This information will assist states and communities in effectively leveraging and integrating existing programs and assessing programmatic flexibilities to augment their systems of care to address ZIKV.