April 2018 Meeting Recap

An interesting program highlighted the April 18 meeting of the Sons of Norway Music City Vikings lodge, held at the 
First Lutheran Church in downtown Nashville.

Following the US and Norwegian national anthems, President Oscar Krosnes reported that the lodge had received the 2017 Recruitment Challenge Award, which included a new banner, certificate and more for increasing membership by 10 percent in 2017. Tusen takk was sent to the Acree family - Diane, Richard, Caroline, Catherine (Cat) and Christopher - who joined MCV in 2017 and helped MCV meet this goal.

Jane Yackley, an epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) and niece of MCV board member Gloria Kleve, was the program speaker. As an epidemiologist, Jane is essentially a health detective! She helps solve the mysteries of food borne disease outbreaks by studying and analyzing the distribution and determinants or factors that affect the outcome of 
health and disease conditions in defined populations or a collection of individuals or objects known to have similar characteristics.

A graduate of the U of MN with a Masters Degree from Emory University, Jane spoke articulately about her role at TDH. She shared that MN and TN do a good job of figuring out what makes people sick. For example, when two or more people get the same illness and investigation shows it came from the same contaminated food or drink, the event is called a food borne disease outbreak. Jane then works with data from local communities and the state to find out what caused that outbreak. She has worked on Legionellosis and different types of Salmonella outbreaks in TN. To find out more information 
about reporting diseases go to the following website: https://apps.health.tn.gov/

​She also shared informative brochures on topics such as Get Ready to Grill Safely, Protect Yourself When Eating Out and  Steps to Safe and Healthy Fruits & Vegetables and more can be found at the cdc.gov and cdc.gov/food safety websites.

Tusen Takk to Jane for giving us more tools to stay healthy.