Archive: Opinions

This slogan was on a handout on diseases carried by ticks and mosquitos from the Wayne County Public Health Department. It grabbed my attention while I was touring the Wayne County Fair back in August. It offered some helpful tips for avoiding these diseases and protecting yourself when you are outdoors – tips such as wearing long sleeves to reduce tick and mosquito bites, using tick and mosquito repellents containing DEET, treating your clothing with permethrin to repel ticks, wearing light-colored clothing to see ticks and remove them, and doing daily tick checks on yourself and your children.

These are all great things for individuals and families to do to prevent illnesses such as Lyme disease, but I couldn't help thinking that there is more that we as a society can and should do to prevent Lyme and other tick-borne diseases – a problem that is spreading around the Finger Lakes region and throughout New York State. We need more funding for research on prevention and testing methods and better diagnosis and treatment standards.

Shortly after I took office in January, I became a member of the New York State Senate Task Force on Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases and joined my fellow Senators in this important work. With New York in the epicenter of this nationwide epidemic, this group strives to disseminate verified, fact-based information on Lyme and tick-borne diseases to at-risk communities throughout the state as well as advocate for more funding and research. This year, we achieved $400,000 in funding in the state budget - $200,000 for Cornell University and its cooperative extensions around the state for prevention and outreach work and $200,000 to support continued research.

We as a task force held a public hearing at the end of August in Albany to hear testimony from a variety of experts – public health professionals, patients, physicians, professors, health insurance company representatives, and scientists – on how we can come together to address this problem and come up with a solution. I found that meeting very productive and informative in giving the task force direction in its mission and shaping my own perspective on Lyme and tick-borne diseases. We learned about the difficulty of obtaining an accurate diagnosis, the possibility of co-infections, and the diseases' impact on mental health, as well as other important related topics.

The task force will continue to hold public hearings and gather information, emphasizing prevention and awareness. In the meantime, I am bringing the conversation on Lyme and tick-borne diseases right here to the Finger Lakes region by hosting an informational forum. This forum will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 26 in the student center of Finger Lakes Community College, located at 3325 Marvin Sands Drive in Canandaigua.

There will be a series of speakers – experts on these diseases – discussing tick identification, tick bite prevention, Lyme disease and co-infection awareness, impact on pets and livestock, and health resources that are available for individuals who experience a tick bite. We will also have tick removal kits that people can take home with them, as well as informational tables with more resources, and audience members will be able to ask questions.

I hope that you will join us as we "Fight the Bite" by raising awareness of Lyme and tick-borne diseases. Together, we can work on putting out the correct information in hopes of solving this problem.

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