When planning to buy a home there are steps you take to ensure your safety as well as anyone living under your roof.

You must assess your financial stability, find a real estate agent, buy the house, install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, secure it with locks and keep it clean.

Of course, you were already aware of how much work goes into becoming a homeowner. Now imagine that your body is a new home you’re preparing for a baby.

The first home your child will ever know is you. It is important to take the right steps to create a healthy and safe environment for your unborn baby.

January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month. In the United States, 1 in 33 babies are born with a birth defect. Some of the more common defects are cleft lip or palate, congenital heart defects and spina bifida.

You can’t always prevent birth defects in your baby. But if you’re pregnant or thinking about having a baby, here are steps you can take to help reduce the risk of birth defects and improve your chances of having a healthy baby:

•    Take folic acid before and during early pregnancy. This can help prevent birth defects of the brain and spine in your baby. Before pregnancy take a multivitamin that has 400 micrograms of folic acid in it every day. Also, leafy green vegetables and citrus fruits are great sources of folic acid.   

•    The March of Dimes notes that a visit to your doctor for a preconception checkup is key to make sure you are healthy enough to have a baby. This is especially important if you have already had a baby with a birth defect. Your health care provider will check that your vaccinations are up to date and make sure any medicines that you take are safe to keep taking during pregnancy.

•    Don’t drink alcohol during pregnancy. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy makes your baby more likely to have a premature birth—before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Alcohol can cause problems for your baby at any time during pregnancy, even before you know you’re pregnant. So if you are trying to have a baby, consider cutting down or eliminating alcohol in addition to stopping once you get pregnant. The same goes for smoking. Smoking during pregnancy can also cause low-birth weight babies as well as other problems.

•    Protect yourself from common infections, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wash your hands often, especially after using the bathroom, sneezing or coughing, changing a diaper or preparing food. Don’t eat raw or undercooked food including lunch meats. Cook meat, chicken and fish until done. Wash food before you cook or eat it. Don’t touch cat feces or change a cat’s litter box to protect you from toxoplasmosis.

•    The CDC also recommends getting tested for Group B strep. An expectant mother with Group B strep can be given IV antibiotics in order to lower the chance of passing it to the baby.

•    Get up to take on vaccinations for flu, Hepatitis B, MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), and whooping cough, also known as pertussis, with a Tdap vaccine. For more information about vaccinations during and after pregnancy click here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pregnancy/index.html

•    Don’t travel to a Zika-affected area unless it’s absolutely necessary. Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause a birth defect called microcephaly and other problems. If you do travel to a Zika-affected areas, protect yourself from mosquito bites. If your male or female sex partner may be infected with Zika, don’t have sex. If you do have sex, use a condom. If you work in a health care setting, follow safety rules to protect yourself from exposure to Zika. To find a list of locations affected by Zika, click here:

Of course, not every pregnancy is methodically planned, but if you find yourself pregnancy, take plenty of folic acid and schedule a doctor visit as soon as possible to ensure you’ve created a safe place for your baby.

Taking these preventative steps does not always ensure a child is born without birth defects, but you can rest easy knowing you’ve taken careful preventative steps.

It’s probably just a coincidence that just before the start of National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week, the West Virginia Senate Health Committee approved a bill that would ban the use of e-cigarettes in schools. The bill went on to the next committee and has the chance to become a law before the end of the 2019 state legislative session.

In late 2017, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services released good news: The adult smoking rate in West Virginia, consistently one of the highest in the United States, had dropped from 28.6 percent in 2011 to 24.8 percent in 2016.

Furthermore, much of this decline was attributed to the success of anti-tobacco school programs in West Virginia and those non-smoking students then aging into adulthood.

Still, it’s not a completely rosy picture. West Virginia just edges out Kentucky to hold the title of the state with the highest percentage, at 14.4 percent, of smoking teens, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

And, at around a quarter of the population, West Virginia still prevails as the state with the highest rate of smokers in general.

Now, vaping has become an issue. According to the CDC, e-cigarettes are sometimes called “e-cigs,” “vapes,” “e-hookahs,” “vape pens” and “electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).” Some e-cigarettes look like regular cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Some look like USB flash drives, pens and other everyday items.

Whatever form they come in, they still can contain the following substances:

• Nicotine
  
• Ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs
• Flavoring such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to a serious lung disease
  
• Volatile organic compounds
• Cancer-causing chemicals
• Heavy metals such as nickel, tin, and lead

The CDC notes that e-cigarettes can be helpful in helping some individuals quit smoking. However, scientists are still looking into the effects of vaping, and several groups, including children, teens and pregnant women, are advised to avoid the habit altogether.

According to state Sen. Ron Bollings, D-W.Va., who introduced the bill, about 4 million students under the age of 18 in the United States currently vape. Bollings was quoted in the Dominion Post.

National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), runs through Sunday. The goal is to highlight what can happen when smoking, drinking and drug use begin at an early age and to convince teens not to start at all.

According to a booklet released by NIDA in 2010 and revised in 2015, most people who smoke started before the age of 18. Product placement in movies and TV shows contributes to the idea that smoking is cool, which prompts teens to start lighting up even when faced with the facts on how addictive it is and how bad it is for their health.

The booklet calls on their common sense as well as their vanity to convince them otherwise. Cigarette smoking can lead not only to lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer and heart disease, but also wrinkles, yellow teeth, cataracts and skin disease.

Then there is drinking. About 1 in 4 of the teens who begin drinking before age 15 become alcoholics.

Alcohol can lead not only to a slew of medical problems but to bad judgment and impairment. Those conditions can cause a teen to drive while drunk, get into a car with a driver who is drunk, take other drugs or to uninhibited sex that can lead to sexually-transmitted diseases, some of which, such as HIV, are not curable.

In fact, according to NIDA, behaviors associated with drug misuse are among the main factors in the spread of HIV infection in the United States.

If you have a teenager in your life, make sure they know that alcohol, smoking and drugs are not all fun and games and have real-life consequences.

Last year, NIDA released an animated version its booklet, "Drugs: Shatter the Myths." It’s worth sharing it with the teens in your life.

Mary Wade Triplett is the public information officer at Monongalia County Health Department.

The statistic is staggering. Nearly 80 million Americans are infected with some type of HPV, or human papillomavirus. That’s almost one-quarter of the country’s population.

What’s more, there are about 14 million new infections each year.

Here’s another statistic: Each year, HPV causes about 33,700 new cancers. And the HPV vaccine can prevent about 31,200, which is nearly 93 percent of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HPV can evolve into cervical cancer in women as well as a variety of cancers in men.

The HPV vaccine, which is available at Monongalia County Health Department, is ideally is given to both girls and boys at around age 11 or 12, before they even become sexually active and have the opportunity catch HPV.

Getting the HPV vaccine is just one way to observe Cervical Health Awareness Month, which takes place in January.

In fact, the HPV vaccine helps prevent other types of cancers, including:

•    cancers of the vagina and vulva in women (in addition to cervical cancer);
•    cancers of the penis in men; and
•    cancers of the anus and back of the throat, including the base of the tongue and tonsils (oropharynx), in both women and men.

While the goal is to give the HPV vaccine to girls and boys at around ages 11 or 12, it can be administered up through the age of 46 to both women and men. Until last fall, the age limit was 26 but the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) broadened the range on Oct. 5, 2018.

The HPV vaccine is a great way to help children avoid these types of cancers when they become adults. Once a woman turns 21 at least through the age of 65, it’s also important for her to get screened for cervical cancer through the Pap test.

The Pap test looks for cellular changes in the cervix that could evolve into cancer. Woman with normal results generally should get the test every three years, although health care providers can offer a more specific schedule to suit each individual’s situation.

At the same time, the cells collected during the Pap test can be tested for HPV so that it can be monitored and treated.

In this day and age, there is no reason why any women should go without testing. To make things easier, MCHD Clinical Services is a participant in the West Virginia Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program.

The WVBCCSP provides clinical breast examinations, mammograms and Pap tests for eligible women, as well as diagnostic testing for women whose screening outcome is abnormal. The program helps woman who are uninsured or underinsured who meet income guidelines.

Because the early stages of cervical cancer often do not cause symptoms in women, these preventative measures are important to take. In the latter stages of the disease, a woman might experience bleeding or discharge that is not her period.

Other ways to lower the risk of cervical cancer is to avoid using tobacco products, use condoms during sex and limit the number of sexual partners.

Cervical cancer and others caused by HPV are very easy to prevent. Cervical cancer also can be detected early and often treated successfully. Follow these steps so you can be around to celebrate Cervical Health Awareness Month for years to come.

And to make an appointment for an HPV vaccine or a Pap test, call MCHD Clinical Services at 304-598-5119.

Money Magazine just named Morgantown the best place to live in West Virginia. WVU, not one but two highly-rated hospitals, the rail-trail, city parks, restaurants and lots of activities and entertainment help make our home very habitable.
 
Also, in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings 2018 County Health Rankings for West Virginia, Monongalia County comes in No. 2—behind only Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle.

Clearly, in Monongalia County, we have a lot going for us.

Still, it could be better. West Virginia is Ground Zero for a nationwide opioid epidemic that took more than 70,000 lives in the U.S. in 2017, and Morgantown has its share of homelessness and drug users. During 2018, southern West Virginia saw an outbreak of Hepatitis A; now the number of cases in nearby Harrison County is close to 40. Monongalia County Health Department’s public health nurses went out into the community several times in 2018 to offer Hepatitis A vaccines to at-risk populations in a proactive measure to keep the outbreak from reaching us.

Another problem is that life expectancy in the United States has been declining since 2014, and a recent Associated Press story used West Virginia as an example of how these events often begin here 10 or 20 years earlier than in most other states.

According to the AP report, “West Virginia eclipses most other states in the percentage of people affected by diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It has had the nation’s highest rate of drug overdose deaths for years running. It also has the highest obesity rate and the highest rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. Adding to those woes is the highest suicide rate among states east of the Mississippi River.

“Earlier this fall, U.S. health officials released for the first time life expectancy predictions at a neighborhood level. An Associated Press analysis of the data found wide disparities in cities and towns. Among states, the AP found, Hawaii had the highest life expectancy. West Virginia was the second lowest, behind Mississippi.”

The story concentrated on southern West Virginia, which has been harder hit by these problems. As Dr. Lee B. Smith, executive director of Monongalia County Health Department and county officer notes from the County Health Rankings report, socioeconomic factors count for the large portion—40 percent—of circumstances that predict an individual’s health outcomes. That gives us an edge over the poorer counties in the southwest coalfields.

As for the rest of the factors, health behaviors—whether your drink, smoke, exercise, etc.—come in at 30 percent. Access to clinical care accounts for 20 percent, while your physical environment makes up the final 10 percent.

As we celebrate MCHD’s 90th anniversary this year, we also happen to be reaching out to the community with a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) survey.

This is an opportunity to tell us what you think are the biggest health-related problems in Monongalia County and what we can do to address them. If you could, please take 10 minutes to help us help you by taking the survey.

The survey will ask you to rank quality-of-life statements so we can gauge what residents think about the current state of Monongalia County as well as what is important to them.

MCHD will be busy in 2019. In addition to celebrating our 90th anniversary and performing our regular day-to-day activities providing immunizations, clinical exams, food worker and threat prep training, dental care and more to the community, we’ll also continue to be hard at work at the accreditation process that we began in 2017.

The process, through the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), is a relatively new goal for health departments. Not only will the CHNA allow us to better serve our clients, but it also will help us with this accreditation process.

So please celebrate the new year by taking 10 minutes to help us make Monongalia County one of the best places to live in the entire country.

Building a new home? The Environmental Protection Agency has some suggestions on how to protect it from unsafe levels of radon. That's especially important in Monongalia County, where 1 in 5 homes have high levels of radon, compared to the national average of 1 in 15.

But even if you are living in an older home, there are still steps you can take to protect your family from radon. The first one is to have your home tested. The EPA encourages all homeowners to test their houses for radon.

Environmental Health staff members at the Monongalia County Health Department are nationally board-certified to conduct radon testing. A staff member will come to your home and leave a continuous monitoring device for 48 hours, and then return to collect it and read the results.

If the test shows radon levels to be 4.0 pCi/L, or picocuries per liter, or higher, mitigation can be done that will make your home safer. The average cost of mitigation is $1,500.

While every home should be tested for radon at least every two years—and more often after a renovation, mitigation or certain other occurrences—residents of Morgantown and surrounding areas should really heed this advice.

Why is radon bad? It is the second-leading cause of lung cancer after smoking cigarettes. About 21,000 deaths occur each year from radon-induced lung cancer. And smokers who have a high radon content in their homes are even in more danger.

Radon can be a problem year-round, but once the cold rolls around during the winter, houses tend to be more closed-up with less ventilation, which can make a high radon situation even worse. It's no coincidence that January is National Radon Action Month, which is a great time to highlight the dangers of radon as well as the simple measures to detect and protect homes against this gas.

The EPA released the National Radon Action Plan in November 2015. The plan represents a collaborative effort among 11 organizations dedicated to eliminating avoidable radon-induced lung cancer in the United States. Led by the American Lung Association, the plan requires cooperation to incorporate radon testing and mitigation in the purchasing, financing, constructing and renovating of homes and other buildings.

The goal is to reduce radon risk in 5 million homes and save 3,200 lives by 2020—which, of course, is just around the corner now. eopa ra

Do your part to help achieve that goal and keep your family safe at the same time. You can set up a test by calling MCHD Environmental Health at 304-598-5131 or you can request a test online.

And if you want to read more about radon, the EPA’s website is a wellspring of information, providing sites on radon in general as well as the National Radon Action Plan.

Do the research. Make the call. And rest easy in 2019 in what should be the cozy fortress that is your home.