Lantana Group Blog

Malissa Mojica, Analyst II

For as long as I can remember, my biggest goal in life was to make an impact in people’s lives. In middle and high school, I enjoyed my math and science classes the most. Combined with my desire to help people, I decided early on that becoming a doctor (particularly a pediatrician) would be my…

Climate change is impacting human lives and health in a variety of ways. It threatens the essential ingredients of good health – clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply, and safe shelter – and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause…

Each day of the American Public Health Association’s National Public Health Week (NPHW) focuses on a theme considered essential for the future success of public health as a whole. The Tuesday theme for NPHW 2022 is Public Health Workforce: Essential to our Future. I understand how critical workforce development is to public health, but I…

One of the most significant risks transfusion patients face is an adverse reaction to blood products such as whole blood, red blood cells (RBC), platelets, and plasma. A number of factors can trigger an adverse reaction, but the most prevalent cause is RBC product incompatibility. Every year blood product transfusions benefit millions of patients, but…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have a better understanding of the concept of public health compared to several years ago. Public health has become highly politicized over the course of the pandemic, yet public health agencies and professionals work every day to protect and promote community health. Lantana is proud to employ many…

Each year, we observe U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) and honor Lantana’s continued partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This year again we provide an update on the nation’s primary system for tracking inpatient antimicrobial use and resistance: the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (AUR) Module. USAAW is an…

The Lantana pharmacists have been busy on work beyond the pharmacy, from optimizing how we get medication data out of electronic health records (EHRs) to supporting nursing home reporting of vaccination data. We are working to get healthcare data out of EHRs so that it’s understood faster and better. We are working to understand medication…

Often dubbed (somewhat mockingly, I would say) the “hand hygiene police,” Infection Preventionists (IPs) are tasked with a broad set of responsibilities aimed at preventing and controlling infections within healthcare settings. One of an IP’s biggest responsibilities is healthcare-associated infection (HAI) surveillance and submission of HAI data to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NSHN) to…

Our health is affected by climate change and its consequences, such as natural disasters and extreme weather. Just last year alone, wildfires burned the western US, Australia, the Amazon rain forest, Siberia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The COVID-19 pandemic traveled the world due the perfect storm of a loss of environmental buffers…

No matter how far away a nurse gets from the frontline, we remain nurses at heart. A perfect example of this is our very own, Robin Williams, RN and Zabrina Gonzaga, RN. Zabrina practiced as a nurse and then as a nurse practitioner for 10 years prior to becoming a nurse informaticist in 2006, and…

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spotlight health disparities/inequities in the US. Hear what Lantana’s CEO, Liora Alschuler and the DIG leads have to say about addressing theses disparities and the advancing racial equity.

Public health was thrust into the spotlight with the emergence of COVID-19. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Over a year later, we’re still grappling with its impact. National Public Health Week (NPHW) is April 5-11 this year. The overall theme is Building Bridges to Better Health. Our…

In honor of U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) and Lantana’s continued partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we provide an update on the nation’s primary system for tracking inpatient antibiotic use and resistance: The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Use and Resistance (AUR) Module. USAAW is an annual week-long observance…

Lantana is a distributed company, meaning all employees work remotely. Working from home has a lot of advantages: cost savings for both the company and employee, a smaller carbon footprint due to lack of a commute, and never having to wear real pants again (okay, sometimes we change out of our pajamas). Unfortunately, working from…

U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) raises awareness about appropriate antimicrobial use and the threat of antimicrobial resistance. More than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the United States each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result.[1] Improving antimicrobial use improves the treatment of infections, protects patients from preventable harms from antimicrobials, and…

I grew up in rural northern Ohio playing outside and exploring the countryside—rain, snow, or sunshine. I loved being outside, active, and just playing in the dirt. I also loved school, especially biology and art class. I was good at both. I was expected to go to college, while my best friend joined the Army.…

As a teen, when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a doctor. In high school, my favorite classes were biology and human anatomy, and I enjoyed listening to and helping people. As a summer lifeguard, I enjoyed the feeling of saving lives and keeping people safe. (Yes, I did actually save people during my tenure! Learning to swim is a life-saving skill!) Becoming a doctor seemed like a logical career path.

The me of ten years ago never would have predicted the career that I have now. Ten years ago, I was majoring in mathematics and economics at the University of California San Diego, on track to become a retirement actuary. I took a class on the US healthcare system to fulfill one of my general education requirements, and the professor assigned us a paper on a local healthcare organization of our choice.

In the summer of 2001, I had one of those life-defining moments while interning at Harvard Medical School; I discovered the public health field. Up to that point, all I ever wanted to be was a family medicine physician with a dream of one day opening a private practice to help those in my community back in Peekskill, New York.

The American Public Health Association (APHA) observes National Public Health Week during the first week of April each year. Each of Lantana’s public health analysts has a story to tell of their journey–we couldn’t let the nursing informaticists have all the fun. Keep an eye out for upcoming blogs about the individual journeys each of…