Some students are wearing surgical masks on the University of Michigan campus and in the dormitories starting this week as the second year of the M-Flu study gets underway, now that the first confirmed flu case hit campus.
Students from four dormitories on the Ann Arbor campus volunteered to participate in the study, which looks at the efficacy and feasibility of handwashing and wearing masks to stop the spread of the flu over two flu seasons. The two-year study began last year and is funded by a $1.3 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Students in dormitories are the perfect study population because they eat, sleep and work in such close confines, said Allison Aiello, assistant professor in the U-M School of Public Health, and co-principal investigator on the study along with Dr. Arnold Monto, professor in the School of Public Health. The results will be used to help shape response policy in the case of a flu pandemic.
"If we know that people will wear their masks, and if we know that they will practice proper hand hygiene, then we know that a pandemic response policy that relies on masks and hand hygiene will be more effective," Aiello said. "We need to have the information first though, in order to avoid response policies based on assumptions rather than rigorous research."
Monto said, "We need to know which non-pharmaceutical interventions will work and which will not before we can know the best way to respond to a pandemic outbreak of influenza."
Each house within participating residence halls will be randomly assigned to one of the three study arms: the face mask only group, the face mask and hand hygiene group, and the control group.
The study intervention will run through six weeks. Preliminary results from last year's study are in and will be made public when the final leg of the study is completed to avoid influencing subjects' behavior, Aiello said.
The study is a partnership between the U-M School of Public Health, University Housing, and the University Health Services.
Source: University of MichiganSchool of Public Health
Studies show good hand hygiene practices can reduce illness, absenteeism and associated costs by up to 50 percent. Ahead of the next cold and flu season, Deb SBS has launched a program called “Infection Control in the Workplace” to provide added weapons in the fight against microbes. Hand sanitizers and stand-alone dispensers are key elements in the infection control program. ...
Some students are wearing surgical masks on the University of Michigan campus and in the dormitories starting this week as the second year of the M-Flu study gets underway, now that the first confirmed flu case hit campus. Students from four dormitories on the Ann Arbor campus volunteered to participate in the study, which looks at the efficacy and feasibility ...
AUSTIN, Texas -- As Infection Prevention Week (October 14-20) begins across the country, Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, is calling on hospitals nationwide to disclose their handwashing compliance rates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers proper hand hygiene to be the single most important factor in protecting patients from hospital-acquired infections, which kill ...
When it comes to washing with soap and water, some Americans seem be slipping up. In an observational study sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), slightly over three-quarters of men and women (77 percent) washed their hands in public restrooms – a six percent decline from a similar study conducted in ...
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Three simple words give perspective to Internet and media-fueled hype on alcohol-based hand sanitizers: Use as directed. In recent weeks, a flurry of local TV news stories – based on chain e-mails and random Internet postings – have reported on isolated cases of accidental or improper ingestion of hand sanitizers, some involving children. The Soap and ...
Bacteria and viruses are the microscopic organisms – otherwise known as germs -- that are responsible for causing and transmitting illness and disease. These microbes are so small, that according to the American Society for Microbiology, if the smallest of all microbes was the size of a baseball, an average bacterium would then be the size of the pitcher's mound, and just one of the millions of cells that make up your body would be the size of the ballpark!
