The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today released the fourth issue of its Illinois Morbidity and Mortality Bulletin (IMMB). The IMMB is IDPH’s primary publication for scientific articles of interest to public health communities and professionals in Illinois. Articles in the IMMB are prepared by IDPH staff from various programs and provideanalysis, description, interpretation, and discussion of data.
“It is not only important to collect health data, but to identify what that data means and what actions we can take moving forward to protect and improve our health,” said IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D.
This bulletin features two articles from staff in IDPH’s Office of Policy, Planning, and Statistics.
In this issue, Jane Fornoff, Theresa Sandidge, Dejan Jovanov, and Ginger Mullin present the most recent knowledge about newborns in Illinois afflicted by Zika virus, and establish state baseline data for disease that may be associated with Zika virus infection. Data was collected from the Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes Reporting System, Hospital Discharge Data, and the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Program.
In the second article, Kyle Garner and Tiefu Shen use data from the Illinois State Cancer Registry to examine trends in prostate cancer incidence and mortality in Illinois during the time when guidelines for prostate cancer screenings were changing.
The IMMB target audience is public health practitioners, researchers, physicians, nurses, epidemiologists, educators, staff at local health departments, and policy makers.
The IMMB can be found at https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/immb#publications-publications-illinois-mortality-and-morbidity-bulletin.
