Your digest for August 2022.

Short Bites Monthly ensures that our data as a public health agency remains transparent to the public and to people who are interested in our mission.

• 2,317 sites & 345 hours of enhanced neighborhood support has been conducted in several neighborhoods that includes door-to-door property inspections and delivery of educational material.
• The effort is to identify and eliminate residential sources of mosquito habitat. Our staff alerts residents to disease threats and teach them how to protect themselves.

• Enhanced Neighborhood Support (ENS) has been conducted in several neighborhoods that includes door to door property inspections and delivery of educational material. The effort is twofold, to identify and eliminate residential sources of mosquito habitat and to alert residents to the potential threat of West Nile virus and teach them how to protect themselves.

Here are a few takeaways from our ENS this month: 

• A lot of homes had some type of permanent covering above the front door, which provides shade and a resting place for mosquitoes.
• Few homes had visible sources in the front, including some watering cans, plant saucers under pots, and children’s toys.

70% of homes visited had dense vegetation of some kind, which creates micro climates in some yards.

• 50% of these homes had dense vegetation in the front yard (trees, bushes, and a lot of ivy).
• 20% of these homes had minimal dense vegetation in the front yard (mainly bushes and overgrown trees with some ivy).

• This month, we revamped our Repellent Zone event signage and incorporated repellent wipes into our event inventory for all of the National Night Out events that we were invited to.

A special thank you to the cities that invited us to their summer events:

• Baldwin Park's Downtown Street Market
• San Dimas's Overnight Family Fishing & Camping event
• Irwindale's Overnight Family Fishing & Camping event
• Bradbury's National Night Out
• San Gabriel's Summer Concert & Movie
• Duarte's National Night Out
• Arcadia's National Night Out

Remember to book us at your next community event

Next episode of the Bite Back Tour:

Fall in Love with Gardening airs on August 18th at 11:00 AM

• The Bite Back Tour continues with our Fall in Love with Gardening episode!
• Rock out with passionate plant people. This is the perfect time to dig into California Native plants! We are connecting our plant experts to you during this episode. You will learn how California Native plants bring nature to your home, reduce mosquito activity, and allow for beneficial bugs to thrive in your community. We'll also chat about simple ways to help create balance in your local ecosystem. Let's bring biodiversity to our doorstep!

• 4,599 people were educated on mosquito-borne diseases and bite prevention in the past month at our in-person events in the San Gabriel Valley. Additionally, 103,653 people were engaged with our social media content. 

A special thank you to the schools we visited this month:

• TECC Summer Program in Arcadia
• B'nai Simcha Preschool in Pasadena
• City of Arcadia's Summer Program

• Our Education Specialists did an amazing job developing Train-The-Trainer!
• Teachers who attended the 2-day training course, learned how to facilitate the process of our Vector Inspector Program and G.R.I.D. Program.
• These teachers and their students will be participating in this Fall's enrollement and will be able to report their results to our vector control agency. The benefit of this course is to train the teachers how to conduct water analysis and identify Aedes eggs as well as other mosquito life cycle stages. This ensures that students have access to vector education every school year, even if our Education Specialists are booked up elsewhere. 
• Participating teachers also received three university credits for free at the completion of the course.

A special thank you to Cal Poly Pomona staff for their partnership in this course and for loaning their lab to our participants & Education Specialists. 

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

Images of our Train-The-Trainer program during the lab portion of the course at Cal Poly Pomona.

• The Surveillance Department continues to focus on maintaining essential vector surveillance including mosquito trap routes, arbovirus testing, providing weekly surveillance data to the district, and maintaining the mosquito fish and mosquito colonies. 
• This month, arbovirus testing of mosquito pools and dead bird samples continued.
• The surveillance Department has detected West Nile virus (WNV) activity in mosquitoes. The Operations and Communications departments have responded to the areas with WNV positives with enhanced investigation and control measures.
• Residents can stay updated with WNV activity in the San Gabriel Valley through our District's press releases. 

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Communications Department Mission Statement:

Increase transparency and credibility through multi-media dialogue in order to engage and motivate internal, local, regional, statewide, and nationwide stakeholders to take action and become public health agents of change in their communities.

🖋 Written by Ally Gaspar, Outreach Assistant