The public’s response to FluLine, a new phone-based service for people with flu symptoms set up by the Minnesota Department of Health, has been so overwhelming that some callers have reported long wait times or busy signals.

Minnesota’s Positive Alternatives program, which provides assistance to pregnant women who seek to carry their pregnancies to term, provided services to 6,578 women in the first year of the program’s second grant cycle.

“This is the first time that most of us have dealt with something of this magnitude,” says Lynfield, 48, who has been Minnesota’s epidemiologist since 1997.

Is the looming H1N1 flu outbreak a full-blown public health crisis or an amplified version of regular seasonal influenza? The answer, according to Michael Osterholm, is yes: It’s both.

An informational session on diabetes will be presented by Jay Desai, an epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health’s diabetes program, Sept. 17 at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute.

The Minnesota Department of Health has awarded 39 grants to Minnesota communities to help lower the number of residents who use tobacco or are obese or overweight.

Yesterday state epidemiologist Ruth Lynfield presented updated stats and projections concerning the path of the swine flu pandemic in Minnesota, and the bottom line numbers were fairly shocking. As MPR's Lorna Benson reported:

Two more Minnesotans have died from the H1N1 virus, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to three, the Minnesota Department of Health reported this afternoon.

Two more Minnesotans have died from the H1N1 virus, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to three, the Minnesota Department of Health reported this afternoon.

Officials with the Minnesota Department of Health are continuing to track what they say appears to be a rapidly growing number of confirmed cases of ...