After only 20 minutes of being in Heber City, Dr. Gregory Maassen made just as many friends. 

The Dutch cyclist threw himself into endless conversations with strangers at the Wasatch County Library on the sunny afternoon in mid June. He quizzed one woman outside by asking her which famous actor from the 1960s he was named after — Gregory Peck — and joked with some senior citizens by calling them patrons of the county’s “junior center.” The smile permanently etched on Maassen’s face attracted attention as much as his orange safety vest.

But the biggest conversation starter was Maassen’s e-bike, which had yellow clogs affixed to the back — his “marketing device” — and was outfitted with everything Maassen needed to survive his cross-country trek across the United States. 

Maassen, who lives in Washington, D.C., after immigrating from the Netherlands, began his 5,800-mile journey in West Palm Beach, Florida, in March. He’s headed to Los Angeles, on track to arrive in about five weeks. He made a pit stop in Wasatch County on June 11 after pedaling from Duchesne County on Thursday morning.

“I went through Tabiona Valley, which is beautiful, but I forgot about the serious incline at the end. That is 4,000 feet,” he laughed. 

That’s where his e-bike comes in handy, reaching speeds up to 28 mph. Maassen’s still certainly getting a workout in, burning an average of 2,500 calories per day. His e-bike, meanwhile, consumes four batteries a day and gives him a boost — one comparable to half the power of a Tour de France cyclist.

“When people say that e-biking is cheating, maybe it is, but it’s very good exercise,” Maassen said.

For some, like Maassen, e-biking is an accessible gateway into exercising. It served as a way for him to treat his peripheral neuropathy, an umbrella term for conditions that affect nerves outside of the brain or spinal cord. Maassen is biking across the country to raise awareness about these conditions.

There are many types of peripheral neuropathy and about 30 million Americans live with it, explained Dr. Ahmet Hoke, director of the Merkin Peripheral Neuropathy Research Laboratory at John Hopkins Medicine. 

Some causes of peripheral neuropathy include diabetes, chemotherapy, vitamin deficiency, chronic alcohol use and some antibiotics and medications. 

In Maassen’s case, he was on a hike in South Africa in 2017 when he ran into a nest of ticks and was “inundated” with larvae.

“They were so microscopic, so small, those things that were on my skin, including my derriere,” he said. “My wife had to become a surgeon. I think we counted more than 80.”

Some time after the ticks were removed, Maassen’s body began to burn all over as if he had severe sunburns. His vocal cords began to hurt and it became difficult to speak. He was pushed from doctor to doctor who could not explain his condition. Some chalked it up to mental illness.

“Because of all the neurological stuff that was happening to me, I got those sensations for free. I became very depressed, and I became very anxious about the fact that no one could help me. There you are, this very active, healthy person, and for all I know, I could have been institutionalized,” he said.

Maassen was “bedridden” by the time he was finally referred to Dr. Hoke in 2019, who diagnosed him with peripheral neuropathy. That’s when Hoke told Maassen his condition could be treated with exercise. 

“Gregory had an unusual type of neuropathy. His was that his own immune system literally attacked his nerves after an infection. But that doesn’t continue. It’s not a progressive type of neuropathy. So, once the damage was done, the immune system resets itself, and then, it’s going to take some time for the nerves to regenerate,” Hoke said. “One thing we knew was that if the patients exercise during that time, their recovery is faster and more complete, and that’s what Gregory took to heart.”

Maassen started e-biking. His quality of life was so changed by the exercise that he later came up with the idea to partner with John Hopkins Medicine on a cross-country e-biking tour to raise awareness about peripheral neuropathy, making stops at universities, speaking to the media or simply striking up conversation with strangers.

The hope is that increased awareness leads to increased government funding for peripheral neuropathy research, which Hoke said is “extremely limited” despite the prevalence of the conditions.

Hoke said diabetic peripheral neuropathy is most common, followed by peripheral neuropathies with unknown causes. These idiopathic conditions make up 30% of all peripheral neuropathies.

“We suspect the majority of them have complex genetic mechanisms, either unknown new genes or perhaps subtle mutations in two or three genes that bring it out, so we’ve just started sequencing the whole genome of these patients,” Hoke said.

Sequencing the genome of one patient costs several thousand dollars, he added.

“The diseases that kill people get a lot of attention, and there’s often good advocates for these diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s,” Hoke said. “Peripheral neuropathy doesn’t kill, but it makes people’s lives miserable.”

Maassen did his first e-bike cross-country tour for peripheral neuropathy in 2022. 

He stopped in Wasatch County then, too, eating at Cafe Galleria in Midway, riding the Heber Creeper and biking on U.S. 40 all the way to Sundance and back, just for fun.

This tour, however, he spent much of his weekend biking to Salt Lake City and back to appear on a podcast.

Surprisingly, Maassen has not gotten into traffic accidents or even close calls on either tour. 

This year, his biggest fiascos were in Pueblo, Colorado, where someone tried to steal his bike, and he had a late-night campsite run-in with a skunk hungry for scraps of his chicken dinner.

“When a skunk visits you in the tent, you stay very silent. You don’t move. But it was very cold, and I urgently needed to address the pressure of my bladder,” Maassen said, gravely. “So, there I am. The skunk is chewing on my stuff. I cannot move, and I urgently need to go to the toilet. I was stuck.”

There have also been many cockroaches and “exploding toilets” on the trip. If Maassen cannot find a campground with electricity to charge his e-bike batteries, he spends the night at a motel, preferably cheap, whose owners won’t make a fuss if he brings an e-bike into his room.

He stayed at Mac’s Motel in Heber City over the weekend, a three-star motel that exceeded his low standards.

What has kept Maassen going on this trip has been the prospect of coming to Utah. He called Wasatch County “cycling paradise” on Thursday and was looking forward to taking in the views on a stretch of U.S. 50, “The Loneliest Highway,” between Delta — which he biked to on Monday — and Baker, Nevada.

Beyond the views, the most gratifying part of both tours has been meeting others with peripheral neuropathy and reassuring them that they are not alone. 

“My idea is to inject a lot of humor and hope into this program,” he said. “If you are afflicted with a condition like mine, it’s not always easy to be optimistic.”

Learn more about Maassen’s journey, follow the route and donate to peripheral neuropathy research at ebiketour.org.

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It was a silent, slow Friday afternoon in the lobby at Intermountain Health’s Heber Valley Hospital, aside from the occasional cooing from patients and employees alike as they came in contact with Pippi, a 6-year-old, gingerbread-colored goldendoodle hired as the hospital’s first therapy dog. 

Her handler, Kirsten Nilsson, usually breaks the ice with patients by asking them if they have any dogs. 

“I’m very careful not to ever be like, ‘So, what’s wrong?’ I just sort of ignore that they’re in the hospital. We talk about the weather, and whatever they want to do,” she said. “I’ll bring Pippi, and she’ll sit on the bed, and I’ll just stay as long as it feels like they need someone to talk to. Sometimes they’re lonely.”

As volunteers, Nilsson and Pippi have visited Intermountain Health’s Park City Hospital every Wednesday for the past four years. The pair started visiting the Heber Valley Hospital earlier this month and plans to continue doing so on the first Tuesday of each month.

Usually, the pair wanders in the lobby and visits the medical-surgical wing and emergency clinic to see if any patients might be interested in a visit from Pippi, usually by checking with the receptionist.

“Sometimes, Pippi will identify someone and start walking towards them, which I’ve learned to not ever ignore, because a lot of times, dogs can sense there’s something wrong or that they need somebody,” Nilsson said. “If Pippi picks someone out, then they’re always like, ‘This is just what I needed.’ It’s really rewarding.”

Nilsson often gives patients a card with Pippi’s “stats,” like her birthday and favorite sport: swimming with the ducks in the lake near Nilsson’s house.

Pippi learned everything she knows through the Salt Lake City organization, Intermountain Therapy Animals. Her certification test involved placing Pippi in a fake hospital environment, complete with crutches, a gurney and pills scattered on the floor that could potentially distract her. The goal was for her to jump onto a hospital bed and let a patient pet her. 

“She wanted to spend most of her time with the people who were just pretending to hang out at the hospital and didn’t really want to hang out with me,” Nilsson said. “She was overly friendly with everybody else, which is great.”

Nilsson, the children’s librarian for the Summit County Library, first adopted Pippi to certify her as a Reading Education Assistance Dog through Intermountain Therapy Animals. Those dogs attentively listen to kids read aloud to help them develop their fluency. 

Pippi was born just five months before the COVID-19 lockdown, so she wasn’t a fan of kids when she first met them in the wild. But now, she’s perfectly attentive as they read to her. If she ever gets overwhelmed, she’ll go to her “safe space,” the top of Nilsson’s storytime book cart, where the children’s little hands are mercifully out of reach. 

Pippi also visits the Salt Lake City International Airport about once a month to meet anxious flyers or people with delayed flights. That’s the most stimulating environment Pippi has been in. 

The pup is much more at home at the Heber Valley Hospital, which is generally even quieter than the Park City Hospital.

Pippi can handle visits of about an hour. When she’s feeling done, she lies on the floor, four legs splayed out like a taxidermy rug. Sometimes, though, that just means she’s enjoying the cool feeling of the tile floor against her fur.

Nilsson said three teams of Intermountain Therapy Animals handlers and therapy dogs visit the Park City Hospital. She hopes to convince some of them to volunteer at the Heber Valley Hospital, too, especially since a few live in Heber City.

She also encouraged anyone who may be interested to train a therapy dog. She said her experience with Pippi has made her more considerate of other people, more comfortable starting up conversations and a more inclusive individual.

“(Pippi) doesn’t care what you look like or how you’re dressed or what kind of piercings you have or tattoos,” Nilsson said. “The fun thing is everyone reacts to her the same way.”

Pippi clearly has a positive effect on the patients, too, as evidenced by a time someone spotted Pippi in the Park City Hospital cafeteria and asked Nilsson to visit his mom in the intensive care unit.

“His mom was in pretty bad shape and not really responsive, and looked uncomfortable. And we walked in, and she saw the dog, and everything changed. She just became much more relaxed,” Nilsson said. “Pippi put her head on top of the woman’s hand, and then, with her other hand, she could pet her on the head. It was amazing. Everyone in the room started crying. And she stayed there for minutes, like she knew, ‘This is something that I’m here for.’”

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While many would shy away from grabbing a horse’s leg to extend and rotate it, Dr. Kinal Patel, a chiropractor of humans, horses, dogs and cats, was in her element as she did so to the 21-year-old steed, Mariah, at Northfield Stables in Heber City. 

For many boarders and their horses, Northfield Stables is their happy place away from the hustle and bustle of downtown. The 20 acres are surrounded on all sides with the serene emptiness of the North Fields, a freshwater wetland area, with towering Mt. Timpanogos on the horizon.

Patel has spent as much time as possible in that environment since moving to Heber City last year, not just for the views, but to help her animal friends, too.

As Patel adjusted Mariah, the horse lifted one of her right legs, not to kick her doctor, but as her way of saying, “Help me out, here!” She has an uneven trot thanks to soreness on the right side of her body.

Patel gives Mariah adjustments once a week. The horse has arthritis in her hock and stifle joints in her hind legs, in no small part because her previous owner neglected her. Mariah’s current owner, Amy Hartquist, bought her nine years ago from a boarding barn in Washington. 

“She had at least two incidents where she reared up and flipped over with a saddle on, before I found her,” Hartquist said. “And she grew a whole baby without any nutritional support. They just threw her out in the field, and they were like, ‘Have a baby!’”

Patel said that, in her experience, saddles are the number one reason horses become lame. If a saddle is too tight, pinching the scapula while a human sits directly on the horse’s spine, it can create long-term health problems that can be worsened by running and jumping in high-octane events.

“It’s like an extra small bra, when you can’t fit into it. … You need space for their vertebrae to move around,” Patel explained. “But they try their hardest to please the owner and move.”

The goal of Mariah’s treatment is to make her healthy enough to be ridden. 

Patel’s treatment began with rubbing essential oils onto Mariah’s body to soothe her. Then, she performed a series of adjustments across Mariah’s body, extending her legs, pushing down on the spine and massaging the temporomandibular joint in the jaw.

As Patel performed the latter adjustment, Mariah involuntarily stuck her tongue out and flatulated. While stinky, that indicates the horse is relaxed and signals the treatment is working, Patel explained. Yawning and nuzzling up are also positive indicators.

By the time Patel wrapped up the treatment by enveloping Mariah in a pulsed electromagnetic field blanket, which massages the horse with vibrations and uses magnetic fields to stimulate cellular repair, the horse was falling asleep on her hooves. Hartquist’s anxious girl was completely relaxed.

Usually, it’s the horses that are in the most pain that have negative reactions, nipping, kicking or bucking if Patel tries to touch them. 

“You just have to keep calm and give the horse some space, and go back to see why it bucked back or reared up. It’s obviously pain or discomfort,” Patel said. “You don’t come in like you own them. It’s a kind of respect.”

Dogs can also be dangerous, but they’re typically easier to handle. 

For example, 13-year-old border collie poodle mix Beau didn’t resist when Patel picked him up and adjusted his legs. 

Beau suffered a neck injury last year. His owner, Ashley Peatross, didn’t see it happen, but he assumes Beau tripped on the stairs.

“I was upstairs, and he came up, and he was pretty much crawling,” Peatross said. 

After a month of trying to manage the injury, administering anti-inflammatory medications and carrying Beau outside for every bathroom trip, Peatross scheduled an appointment with Patel.

“She came over and did one adjustment, and after that, he went from barely being able to move to being able to move around and take care of himself,” Peatross said. “After two or three treatments, his quality of life was way better.” 

Patel entered chiropractic medicine because of the positive effects it had on her own life.

Patel was born prematurely, which resulted in lifelong health issues, particularly asthma and constipation. She didn’t discover chiropractic care until she was a pharmacy student at Western Illinois University. A friend recommended it to Patel, who had injured her knee while playing soccer. Patel was surprised to find that adjustments lessened the severity of her other health conditions. 

“I was literally hospitalized all the time for those two things. So, I was like, ‘If medicine didn’t help, and this is helping?’ So, I switched careers,” Patel said.

She earned her doctorate at the Logan University College of Chiropractic in Missouri in 2012, later opening a practice in Illinois with her former husband, where, among their many patients, the pair treated professional athletes from the National Football League and Major League Baseball.

Patel became interested in animal chiropractic after an experience she’d had with her dog. Then, Patel acquired a certification in animal chiropractic at the Options For Animals College of Animal Chiropractic in Kansas in 2018. 

“He got a nerve nicked by a veterinary procedure,” she explained. “When he came back, his right hind (leg) wasn’t working, and he was peeing himself. Gabapentin would make him absolutely neurotic and crazy, like, teeth out at patients, because he’d come to work with me. My girlfriend, who does show dogs and show horses in Florida and Pennsylvania … came and adjusted him, and it was magic.” 

She moved to Heber City last year after her divorce and soon found a family of sorts at Northfield Stables, where she spends her Sundays providing adjustments to animals. 

While treating human patients is fulfilling, treating horses, cats and dogs provides Patel with her sense of purpose.

“My goal is to give back to the ones that can’t speak,” she said.

Patel’s practice, Heber Valley Chiropractic, is located at 2 S. Main St. She also expanded to Park City last month and is located within Park City Fit at 4108 N. Forestdale Dr. 

Appointments can be booked at hebervalleychiropractic.com.

The post Meet chiropractor Kinal Patel, the Wasatch Back’s doctor in the (barn)house appeared first on Park Record.

Summit County children are experimenting with alcohol and other substances at a lower rate in 2025 compared to recent years, according to survey results published by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month.

The Utah Student Health and Risk Prevention survey, or SHARP survey, is administered statewide every two years through local school districts. The survey asks students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grade to answer questions related to mental health, alcohol and marijuana usage, screen time and vaping.

All three of Summit County’s school districts — Park City, North Summit and South Summit — participated in this year’s survey.

“We are seeing very encouraging trends, especially in substance use and several mental health indicators,” said Summit County Director of Behavioral Health Prevention Pamella Bello. “This also helps us identify emerging concerns and areas where we need continuous prevention, and family engagement is essential.”

Bello said when the survey was last administered in 2023, approximately 25.5% of students in Summit County reported previous alcohol usage. But in 2025, the percentage of students who had experimented with alcohol lowered to 20.6% — a significant 5% drop.

“It’s the same for Utah and across the country, too,” Bello said. “That reinforces for us, who are working in prevention, that prevention strategies are having an impact.”

Marijuana usage numbers for Summit County students also dropped from 16.6% in 2023 to 9.7% in 2025, and vaping rates similarly decreased from 15.2% two years ago to 9.6% today.

“This is great for our community,” Bello said. “Usually, our community in Summit County is higher than the state (average) with many things, and this survey has shown us that … we are not higher than the state anymore. Even if we don’t compare ourselves to the state, we are always very similar to the rest of the United States.”

However, not all of the findings were necessarily positive.

Bello said a surprising result from this year’s survey involved the rising use of nicotine pouches, which are small, dissolvable and often flavored packets of nicotine, similar to chewing tobacco but without the need to actually chew or spit out the product. In Summit County, only 3.7% of students were using nicotine pouches in 2023 compared to 8.2% in 2025.

“This is a concern, and this is why we want this survey,” Bello said. “We want to see these things so we know how to approach them. Now, I’ll be talking to other departments that work on tobacco use to come up with a plan. This also shows us how youth substance use evolves over time because it’s always something different.”

The survey also asked students about their mental health, and a significantly higher percentage of children reported fewer symptoms of depression in 2025 compared to 2023.

“In 2025, 44.8% of the kids reported no symptoms of depression, and in 2023, only 27.5% of the kids reported no symptoms of depression,” Bello said. “And the state reports 36.3% of the kids are showing no symptoms of depression … so we are even higher than the state, and in this case, for mental health, we want to be higher.”

Bello said the results of the survey were encouraging because they indicated that preventative and educational measures within the county are working. She said it was difficult to attribute the change to any specific program, but the continuous push for community engagement from the Summit County Health Department and other health partners has likely brought substance use and mental health issues to the forefront of parents’ minds.

“Prevention works, progress is possible and community engagement matters,” Bello said. “We need these parents engaged and working with us, toward the same goals for our kids and for our community. The choices we make today as a community shape the outcomes of our next generation. That is something that we know, so we all need to work toward the same goals together.”

Information on the SHARP survey and its 2025 results is available online by visiting sumh.utah.gov/data-reports/sharp-survey.

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On Nov. 22, The Wasatch County Health Department confirmed that five Wasatch High School students had contracted measles, with two additional suspected cases awaiting test results. 

On Tuesday, the two suspected cases were confirmed positive, with one more case being identified.

Of the eight cases confirmed in the high school, six were unvaccinated. Wasatch High School has a 92% vaccination rate for the MMR vaccine, according to the health department’s records. To maintain herd immunity, 95% of a certain population has to be vaccinated.

The Health Department said “one or more” of these students attended school or school activities while infectious. Exposures may have occurred during school hours on Nov. 14, 17 and 18, as well as during a school play on Nov. 15.

Wasatch High School families were sent an informative letter with further guidance.

“The cases we have confirmed at the high school are not connected to each other, and because of that, we suspect that other cases may start to pop up in the community,” said Health Director Jonelle Fitzgerald.

Measles is highly contagious and can remain in the air for up to two hours.

Symptoms typically appear one to three weeks after exposure and include high fever, cough, runny nose, red and watery eyes and a rash on the face that spreads down the body.

The Health Department encourages anyone with symptoms to contact their healthcare provider before visiting a clinic, emergency room or urgent care facility to prevent further spread.

Health Department public information officer Lana North added, “With Thanksgiving and family gatherings around the corner, please be aware that measles is around. Keep your friends and family healthy by staying home if you’re sick.”

The MMR vaccine is available at the Health Department, pharmacies and doctors’ offices. Receiving two doses of the MMR vaccine is 97% effective in preventing illness, said Health Department immunization coordinator Brenda Scobee.

North added that immunization lessens the communicability of measles and severity of symptoms if a vaccinated person contracts the virus.

Fitzgerald was not surprised to see measles cases emerge in Wasatch County.

“We did have a wastewater test indicate the presence of measles in the community on Nov. 6,” she said. 

Furthermore, measles has been on the rise across the state. According to a report by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, last updated on Nov. 24, Utah has had 96 measles cases in 2025, with the first case emerging in June. Twenty-one of those cases had been reported in the last three weeks. With the three additional Wasatch County cases confirmed Nov. 25, that number is at least 99.

As of Nov. 18, there had been 87 cases. Of these cases, 49 were under the age of 18. Only two were vaccinated at the time of infection. Nine were hospitalized. This data has not yet been updated to reflect the current number of cases.

The majority of statewide cases have come from the Southwest Utah Health Department, which includes Beaver, Iron, Washington, Garfield and Kane counties, with 72 cases between them. 

According to data from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, there had been only one measles case in the state between the beginning of 2020 and June 2025. That case occurred in 2023. 

The rise in Utah cases is part of a countrywide trend that began with outbreaks in Texas in January. There have been 1,753 reported cases in the United States as of Nov. 18. There were 285 cases in 2024.

The rise in cases has been attributed to declining vaccination rates.

Measles was also unusually high in 2019, with 1,274 reported cases across the country — the largest number of cases since 1992. As reported by The Associated Press, three-quarters of the cases were in Orthodox Jewish communities in or near New York City, and the outbreak began with travelers infected overseas spreading measles to people who hadn’t been vaccinated. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, before the measles vaccination program began in the United States in 1963, an estimated 3 million to 4 million people contracted measles annually across the country. Among reported cases, which tended to be around half a million, “approximately 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized and 1,000 developed encephalitis (brain swelling).”

Measles was officially classified as eliminated in the United States in 2000.

The post Eight measles cases reported in Wasatch County, all high school students appeared first on Park Record.

The Summit County Health Department may need to temporarily downsize its Women, Infants and Children program if the government shutdown isn’t resolved by the end of the month.

Commonly referred to as WIC, the program ensures that qualifying families receive nutritional food needed for early childhood development in addition to providing mothers with baby formula. Families can buy WIC-approved groceries from local stores similar to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was paused on Saturday.

However, the ongoing government shutdown has also frozen the WIC program at the federal level. Now, the state is stepping in to redistribute funding to WIC initiatives in Utah to keep them afloat while budget discussions continue in Washington, D.C.

“As far as WIC participants in the state of Utah go, it is business as usual for them,” said Summit County Health Department Director Phil Bondurant. “Once the state has run out of emergency resources to keep this program funded, (that) is when we will begin to see some of those impacts.”

The state’s emergency funding is expected to run out by the end of November. If the government shutdown isn’t resolved by then, Summit County becomes responsible for finding a solution — or risk briefly shuttering the program.

“There are likely going to be some restrictions that are in place as a result of decisions made at the federal level,” Bondurant said. “We have heard that it’s possible that when and if the state is no longer able to fill that gap, we would not be allowed to enroll any new WIC participants during that time. That will be really tough for people because we will not be able to serve any families in need after that period.”

However, families already receiving services through the WIC program would remain eligible. Bondurant said the Health Department has been working with local vendors to create a voucher system mirroring what WIC already does.

“If the state system goes on a pause, we would be able to carry over that list and provide very basic foods to families so that, as they go through this process of the government shutdown, they’re not left without eggs, milk, bread, formula, those really important things that the families depend on for basic nutrition,” he explained.

The Summit County Council is in the middle of its budgeting process for 2026. Bondurant said he doesn’t expect any issues locally, as projections for public health funding federally are similar to last year. Plus, any changes made to the national budget wouldn’t go into effect until July 1, 2026, which gives staff time to adjust the county budget accordingly if needed.

“We could realize this almost as a ripple effect at a later date since the decisions made today will impact us in the summer,” Bondurant said. “But the sticking points for the current (federal) resolution are not associated with public health funding.”

Bondurant also expressed his gratitude to Summit County staff for supporting the Health Department through a tumultuous time, especially in light of the upcoming holidays.

“They have, without blinking, stepped in and said, ‘You guys do what you have to do to support these families during the holiday season,’” he said. “That is very empowering for a health department to be able to step in and continue providing resources to families who need it most, so I’m extremely grateful for (the county’s) support and the families of Summit County.”

Food banks across the country are also working to supplement families who have lost WIC or SNAP benefits as a result of the government shutdown.

In Summit County, St. Mary’s Catholic Church operates a weekly food bank from noon to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays at the Old Town Chapel Hall. The Christian Center of Park City similarly distributes food in both Summit and Wasatch counties, and the Kamas Valley Food Pantry, which focuses on East Side residents, is open from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays.

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Utah quietly navigated a measles scare last month after a symptomatic passenger landed at the Salt Lake City International Airport and traveled to Idaho the week before Memorial Day.

Summit County Nursing Director Derek Moss said a passenger traveling from Canada had an active measles case and landed in Salt Lake City on May 19. The passenger then drove to southern Idaho but seemingly did not make any stops along the route.

Days later, on May 23, the same individual drove back to Salt Lake City from Idaho and boarded another plane at the airport. The person has since been placed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Do Not Board” list, effectively prohibiting them from airline travel in the United States.

State health officials alerted Summit County Epidemiologist Nancy Porter of the situation, as well as other health departments across the state. Moss said there is no reason to believe the passenger interacted with anyone from Summit County at this time, however.

“The state has decided not to do a health advisory or any public notices at this time,” Moss told the Summit County Board of Health on Monday. “They determined at this point he was low-risk, and they didn’t want to cause chaos. That was the rationale.”

Moss said the state believes the individual was fully vaccinated, but one of the two doses the person received was not a vaccination approved in the United States.

“Idaho’s agreed to let us know of any suspect cases related to this individual so that we know what kind of concern we should have, and I haven’t heard anything since they left Utah,” he added.

Measles is a highly contagious illness with serious complications, especially for children under the age of 5, according to the CDC. Symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes and rashes. It spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes, and the particles can remain in a room after the infected person leaves for up to two hours.

The best prevention method is the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, commonly known as an MMR vaccine. The CDC says two doses of the vaccine are approximately 97% effective when it comes to preventing measles while one dose is about 93% effective.

The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but outbreaks have recently become more common. The Associated Press reported last week that the CDC identified more than twice as many measles cases coming from outside of the U.S. compared to May of last year, mostly from unvaccinated American travelers returning to the country.

“In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles,” the Associated Press added.

There are currently 1,088 confirmed measles cases in the United States. Texas has the highest number of cases with a total of 738, and two elementary school-aged children died in West Texas, which is considered the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, in April.

One infected adult in New Mexico also died of measles-related complications in March.

The two children and the adult were all unvaccinated, according to the Associated Press.

The highly contagious nature of measles makes airline travel during outbreaks especially dangerous. In a case similar to Utah’s scare last month, an infected out-of-state passenger traveled through the Denver International Airport in mid-May and subsequently infected six other people who were either on the same flight or inside the airport during the exposure period, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The post Utah has brush with measles before Memorial Day weekend appeared first on Park Record.

The Summit County Health Department is offering a free six-week pilot program for community members interested in cutting down on their tobacco usage. The class, which the University of Colorado developed, is in response to public demand for group-based support systems within the county.

“Research has shown that having these group-based classes is able to help individuals trying to quit by giving them a little bit more opportunity for that, especially because it helps them hold each other accountable, as well as being able to share their life experiences,” explained Matt Wolbach, a health educator with the Summit County Health Department.

The class isn’t only focused on quitting, though. Anyone is welcome to attend, whether they’re looking to quit altogether, cut down on usage, or simply hope to learn more about tobacco’s health effects on the body, Wolbach said.

The six sessions, which will run every Wednesday from 5-6 p.m. starting April 23, focus on changing behavior. Instructors will cover triggers, goal-setting, breathing exercises and more.

“It’s a lot more of defining their values, creating smart goals, different healthy exercises instead of tobacco use, looking internally at how it makes you feel, what you want to accomplish with quitting,” Wolbach said. “It could be that you don’t like the smell anymore. You have kids now. You have an injury and can’t smoke, and it’s expensive, so it could be even just another cost-saving measure. … It’s just a lot of how to say no and being healthy in general.”

Wolbach said the class is meant to be flexible, and interested community members can sign up by emailing mwolbach@summitcountyutah.gov. Students are also not required to attend all six sessions or register ahead of time to participate.

“If someone can’t make one of the classes because of a scheduling conflict, then I’m also happy to work with them individually to provide those resources that they’re not able to attend that class to receive,” Wolbach added. “We know that the quit process is different for each person, so we want to be as flexible as possible to be able to provide the best benefit for them.”

Most people aren’t able to quit completely on their first try, which is another reason Wolbach said the focus is more on providing a tool kit to help people change behaviors. If someone has tried to quit before or just wants to use tobacco less frequently, the Health Department staff will work with them to see what’s helped in the past and adjust from there.

“Even if someone just wants to reduce, that’s still making a healthier change for their body, so we want to be able to support them too,” Wolbach said. “We don’t want it to be cut-and-dry and tell people, ‘No, you have to quit.’ If they want to use but they want to start reducing it down, we will absolutely support that as well.”

There’s no official cap on the class size, but Wolbach estimated the room where the class will be held can only comfortably accommodate 20 people. However, if there’s a large demand for more spots, Wolbach said the Health Department will likely continue the program and add more classes.

“We know there’s been interest from the community on having something in person because, at the moment, most other resources are usually one-on-one through the Utah Tobacco Quitline,” Wolbach said. “We will also connect all the individuals to the state quit line because they have additional resources, additional counseling, as well as other nicotine replacement therapy that they offer that we can’t. It’s just another, easier way to help start that quit process.”

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William Hall looks like any other happy 10-month-old baby. He cries, he eats and he sleeps, growing more and more every day.

Internally, however, William has a malfunctioning gene. When he was only 4 days old, he was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, a rare genetic disease affecting one in 17,000 people worldwide.

William’s grandfather, Park City resident Joey Hall, described ALD as a “ticking time bomb.” Despite his early diagnosis, it’s impossible to predict how the disease will affect William’s body until he’s older, but it has the potential to be fatal.

That’s why Joey is raising money to fund scientific research and find a cure alongside his son and William’s father, Tyler.

“What we quickly saw is, on the positive side, there’s a ton of collaboration and momentum behind research happening right now, and these are extremely established, prestigious people that are working to try and find a cure for ALD,” Tyler said. “We were equally shocked by the amount of funding that they’re receiving and looking at the landscape of medical research and how we pour billions of dollars into a ton of very common diseases, but it’s these rare diseases that are in some ways easier to fix because they impact just a single gene and we know what the problem is. There’s not as much funding going toward them.”

ALD affects the gene responsible for breaking down long chains of fatty acids in the body. As a person with the disease gets older, their body accumulates a buildup of those fatty acids, which can impact the brain, spine and adrenal glands.

Not every person with ALD has all three forms. But if a child develops the cerebral form affecting the brain, the outcome is fatal. Bone marrow transplants can help slow down the disease’s progression, but there is currently no cure for any form of ALD.

The Hall family lives in Texas, which has an ALD screening process for newborns. When William was diagnosed four days after his birth, neither Tyler nor Joey had ever heard of the disease.

“The critical part of the newborn screening is they can put William in a protocol where he’ll get MRIs starting when he’s 2 until he’s 12, basically every six months,” Joey explained. “William looks perfectly healthy right now, but for people that didn’t have that flagged, once the disease sets in and you start to notice systems, which are behavioral changes, sight changes, things like that, by the time that happens, it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s why this newborn screening is so critical.”

There are five main research centers studying ALD, including a University of Utah laboratory led by Dr. Joshua Bonkowsky. Joey and Tyler said they intend to primarily support research at the University of Utah and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where William is also an established patient, but they’re open to funding research at the other centers if opportunities arise.

“Gene editing, gene therapy, those are things that are progressing exponentially, and because it’s a monogenetic disease, meaning a single gene, gene editing and gene therapy show great promise, but it’s just not there yet,” Joey explained.

Joey moved to Park City in 2021 and had a successful career in the energy business, which is now allowing him to fund ALD research to help his grandson. He seeded the research fund with $1 million of his own money in December and agreed to match other donations from within the Hall family’s internal network dollar-by-dollar for another million. 

By last week, the Hall family had fundraised $2 million of their $3 million goal.

“We’re about to begin entering the phase of giving grants and soliciting proposals from the various research labs on exactly how they’ll use the money, what they’ll use it for and some clear deliverables on what we expect to see this time next year,” Tyler said.

Joey added, “I’m beginning to believe this is a high number, but we estimate that less than $5 million a year total is spent on ALD research. Two of the hospitals that we visited, one of them had a budget of $400,000, and another had a budget of $500,000. I can’t imagine the other three are that much more, so my guess is the total funding per year is way less than $5 million, which tells you that this can definitely make an impact.”

Tyler said he hopes there will be more treatment options within the next five to 10 years if research projects can be thoughtfully funded. The family is now also accepting donations from the public and pursuing partnerships with other organizations that may be interested in finding a cure for ALD.

“Like my dad says, there is this ticking time bomb that we don’t know when it’s going to go off,” Tyler said. “We’re essentially in a race against that clock to find a cure for him and for everyone else. Every week, there’s a baby born that gets this diagnosis, and the thing they see when they Google it is that it’s fatal with no cure and involves some incredibly high risk treatments. We want, for our sake and for everyone else’s sake, whenever they Google that to see more options on the table and not spend the first year of their newborn baby’s life worrying about what’s to come in the future.”

More information on the Hall’s fundraising campaign is available at willtocureald.org.

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Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant will serve on the Utah Drinking Water Board for the next four years, after being confirmed to the position by the state Legislature last week.

“The Drinking Water Board adopts and enforces rules related to the drinking water systems, and it’s also the board that oversees the financial assistance piece to existing drinking water systems in the state if there’s a need for additional assistance for repairs or updates,” Bondurant explained. “It’s for those things that are required to make sure that the individual drinking water systems throughout the state are consistent and compliant with EPA standards, as well as state standards, for the delivery of clean, safe and abundant drinking water.”

The Drinking Water Board meets at least six times a year and has nine members from all over the state. It convenes in different locations across Utah each meeting in an effort to be more equitable, according to Bondurant.

“The board members reside all over the state from rural settings to big metropolitan areas,” he said. “The meetings tend to last between one to two hours with a lot of the homework and background reading being done prior to the arrival of the meeting.”

Other board members include engineers, mayors, water system operators and academics.

“There is an individual that owns a restaurant on the board, so someone that is affected by the regulatory aspect of this in terms of their business,” Bondurant added. “It’s really interesting to see the diverse group of professionals that represent this board and the interests of what the board regulates, but for me, what’s most interesting is it shows how important it is to deliver clean drinking water.”

State law requires one of the nine board members to be a public health professional. Jeff Coombs, the Tooele County health director, served on the board for two terms but decided to step down in 2025. 

To prepare for Coombs’ departure, the Governor’s Office reached out to the Utah Association of Local Health Departments for a nomination, leading to Bondurant’s involvement. 

“My fellow health officers across the state nominated me, which I was very honored to be considered in this capacity,” Bondurant said.

The nomination was then sent to the Governor’s Office, along with an application that Bondurant filled out. The governor decided to nominate Bondurant, a decision ratified by a Senate committee and then confirmed by the Senate last week.

Bondurant also expressed his gratitude for the Summit County Council and the Summit County Board of Health for supporting his appointment and recognizing the value of the Drinking Water Board. He said it’s an exciting opportunity to have someone from Summit County involved given the number of water systems in the area.

“Some of the regulations that exist in the health code are really progressive around clean, safe drinking water,” Bondurant said. “I’m looking forward to learning from the other professionals that are on this board across this state, hearing about some of the things that they might be encouraged by or might be dealing with. For me, it’s always just been about making sure that the environment that we interact with, whether it’s drinking water or air, is as safe as it could possibly be so that we can live a happy, healthy life.”

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