Wednesday October 15, 2025
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WHO:
Dr. Joann Schulte, Director, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness
WHAT:
The Department of Public Health and Wellness is asking any Jefferson County/Louisville Metro resident who attended Camp Blanton in Harlan County, Ky., June 5 through June 22, to contact LMPHW communicable disease staff at 502-574-8200.
WHY:
Several dozen Jefferson County individuals who attended the camp from June 5 to June 22 may have been exposed to bats. It is not known at this time whether or not the bats had rabies. To err on the side of caution, LMPHW staff need to talk to these families to determine risk. LMPHW is working in conjunction with the state department of health and other county health departments to evaluate the exposures to bats.
MORE:
Residents outside of Jefferson County who attended this camp from June 5 through 22 should call their local health department.
Citing a resurgence in the auto industry, Forbes magazine has named Louisville as the No. 1 city in the U.S. where manufacturing is thriving. Since 2011, manufacturing employment in the Louisville-area has grown 30.2 percent, bringing the employment total to 83,300 jobs, representing 12.41 percent of jobs in the local economy.
“Louisville continues to lead the way with our long-standing tradition of excellence in manufacturing. And that tradition provides the foundation necessary to be a global leader as we shift into a new era of flexible, advanced manufacturing,” said Mayor Greg Fischer. “This No. 1 ranking is an affirmation of the strength, quality and dedication of Louisville’s outstanding manufacturing workforce.”
Louisville’s diverse manufacturing economy includes such major manufacturers as Ford, GE Appliances, Clariant Corporation, Faurecia and Raytheon. Louisville also is home to FirstBuild, an innovative makerspace dedicated to designing, engineering, building and selling the next generation of home appliances.
To ensure that Louisville remains competitive in the manufacturing sector, the city is partnering with the Kentucky Manufacturing Career Center (KMCC) and the Kentucky Federation of Advanced Manufacturing Education (KY FAME) to create a pipeline of highly skilled employees who provide employers with the workforce they need.
KMCC and KY FAME offer workforce development programs to participants at no cost. KY FAME has a 98 percent job placement rate for graduates and has more than 125 member companies, while KMCC has awarded more than 3,000 certificates and credentials, and recently celebrated its 1,000 job placement.
To learn more about manufacturing workforce development programs, visit http://kcc.kentuckianaworks.org/JobSeekers/KMCC.aspx or http://kyfame.com/about/
Building on Louisville’s economic momentum, Ford Motor Company last week announced a $900 million investment in its Kentucky Truck Plant to build the all-new Expedition and Navigator.
“To be globally competitive in manufacturing, you have to have strong partners willing to collaborate with you and shape a common vision. We are proud to have Louisville as our partner, and congratulate them on being named No.1,” said Curt Magleby, Vice President, U.S. Government Relations, Ford Motor Company.
Ford’s new investment is in addition to the $1.3 billion investment and 2,000 jobs created at the plant in late 2015. According to Census figures, the auto industry alone accounts for 27,000 jobs in the Louisville area.
Louisville continues to be a place where locally grown manufacturers can establish themselves as global competitors. Louisville Plate Glass, founded in 1911, exemplifies the potential for long-term success in Louisville. The company recently opened a new $4 million production facility, more than doubling the company’s employment with 65 new jobs.
“After more than 100 years of continued operations, we chose to reinvest in Louisville with a new state-of-the-art glass production facility that will further strengthen our position as a leader in our market,” said Bill Stone, President, Louisville Plate Glass. “We feel confident that Louisville, with its central location and high quality of life, is the best place to invest in our employees and in our new production lines.”
The Forbes ranking is based on employment in the manufacturing sector over time, short-, medium- and long-term trends dating to 2005, plus variables that measure persistence and momentum.
To read the full article, visit https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2017/06/12/where-manufacturing-is-thriving-in-the-u-s/#5ab452ab1ff7
Louisville Metro tops the list in the 2017 City on a Cloud Awards’ Dream Big category for large cities, presented and announced this month by Amazon Web Services.
The award was given to the Office of Civic Innovation (part of Performance Improvement and Innovation), which focuses on developing innovative ideas to improve access to city services. The city’s 2017 Dream Big Award submission — titled “Transit Equity: Automation, Inclusion, and Safety” — focused on improving traffic flow through real-time traffic data that automatically adjusts when it senses detrimental systematic changes, a project that is currently under development.
“Cloud services are a key component to Smart City technologies and advancing intelligent traffic management and logistics that improve the daily lives of residents in big and small ways. This award recognizes ambitions that can be achieved through Louisville Metro’s team, our partners and initiatives such as the Louisville Fiber Information Technology project, an overbuild partnership with KentuckyWired,” said Grace Simrall, Chief of Civic Innovation.
In 2015, Louisville won Amazon’s City on a Cloud contest for Best Practices. For part of that project, the city used Amazon Web Services to store Waze real-time data and transformed it for use. It was successful for Metro and this new award allows the city to expand on that success with a larger mobility project with the Traffic Engineering department.
Metro has an on-going, small pilot group of internal data consumers for the Waze CCP traffic data.
“By using Amazon Web Services to build out the city’s first data warehouse, we can centralize, share, analyze and take action on transportation data across departments. Much of this will also be sent to our Open Data Portal for the public,” says Michael Schnuerle, the city’s Data Officer. Area data sharing partnerships will include the city, state, and regional transportation agencies to improve and connect all transit.
“We continue to be amazed by the work that our customers are doing around the world to better serve citizens. This year’s City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge produced inspiring applications from cities, police departments, school districts, and our partners that use real-time data analytics, IoT services, and open data projects, all on the AWS Cloud,” said Teresa Carlson, VP of Worldwide Public Sector for AWS. “AWS is proud to recognize this year’s winners and showcase the innovation to improve our roads, provide digital learning to all students, and benefit first responders.”
More details about all the awards is available on the AWS website at:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/city-on-a-cloud-innovation-challenge-winners-announced/
Photo: Kentucky Labor Department
Labor Cabinet Deputy Secretary Mike Nemes visited Raytheon Company in Louisville today to present a Governor’s Safety and Health Award for working 1,384,573 production hours without a lost-time incident.
“Congratulations to Raytheon Company on achieving another Governor’s Health and Safety Award,” said Labor Cabinet Secretary Derrick Ramsey. “Working over 1,000,000 hours without a lost time incident is a great accomplishment and I commend Raytheon on their dedication to keeping their workers safe. On behalf of Governor Bevin and all of us at the Labor Cabinet, thank you for all of your hard work and commitment to workplace safety.”
Raytheon is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 95 years, Raytheon provides electronics, mission systems integration, C5ITM products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon employs 63,000 employees worldwide with their local Louisville branch now employing 330 employees.
“Our entire Raytheon team in Louisville is honored to receive this award,” said Raytheon Louisville Site Executive Ken Gyure. “Maintaining a safe work environment is a priority for us all and we will never become complacent when it comes to keeping our people safe.”
The Kentucky Labor Cabinet presents the Governor’s Safety and Health Award to highlight outstanding safety and health performance in Kentucky’s workplaces. A business may qualify for the award if its employees achieve a required number of hours worked without experiencing a lost time injury or illness. The required number of hours is dependent upon the number of employees.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Kentucky employers reported the lowest incident rate for nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses in the state’s history.
Based on a mathematical calculation that describes the number of recordable incidents per 100 full-time employees, Kentucky’s rate improved from 3.8 in 2014 to 3.7 in 2015 – reflecting the most recent data available. This rate has steadily declined since it was first calculated in 1996, when a rate of 8.4 was reported.
Follow the Kentucky Labor Cabinet on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest updates.
The Louisville Metro Syringe Exchange Program will mark its two-year anniversary tomorrow.
Kentucky’s first syringe exchange program began in a mobile unit outside of Public Health and Wellness headquarters at 400 E. Gray St. on June 10, 2015. Since then, the program has been moved into renovated space inside and expanded to include three neighborhood sites. The exchange is open six days a week on Gray Street, and each of the neighborhood sites is open one day per week.
The demand for the Louisville Metro Syringe Exchange Program has far exceeded expectations. Originally budgeted for about 500 participants per year, the program had served 10,639 participants by the end of May 2017 and referred more than 347 to drug treatment. The ratio of syringes distributed versus exchanged remains at less than 2:1.
Additionally, since it began, the Louisville Metro Syringe Exchange Program has:
- Conducted 800 HIV tests and referred 18 individuals for medical treatment and support services;
- Conducted 691 Hepatitis C tests and referred 368 individuals for medical treatment;
- Provided overdose prevention training and naloxone kits to 995 participants and their family members or friends.
“From a public health perspective, the greatest benefit of any syringe exchange program is reducing the transmission of HIV, Hepatitis C and other infectious diseases, as well as increasing access to substance abuse treatment,” said Dr. Sarah Moyer, medical director of the Department of Public Health and Wellness. “We are very grateful to our state legislative delegation, to Mayor Greg Fischer and the Metro Council, the Board of Health and to the entire Louisville community for the support they have shown over the past two years.”
The Louisville Metro Syringe Exchange Program was begun primarily to protect the community against a potential outbreak of such blood-borne diseases as HIV and Hepatitis C spread by needle sharing among injection drug users. The neighboring community of Austin, Ind., with a population of about 4,200 and just 35 miles north of Louisville, had seen 181 new HIV cases the prior year and approximately 155 new Hepatitis C cases as a result of needle sharing. In a city the size of Louisville, that would have translated to more than 31,600 new HIV cases and approximately 27,100 new Hepatitis C cases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “lifetime treatment cost of a single case of HIV infection is $379, 668; the costs of treating the patients who contracted HIV and Hepatitis C in Scott County (Austin), Indiana over the next decades are expected to approach $90 million.”
In 2015 Kentucky enacted legislation allowing local health departments to operate substance abuse outreach programs, which include syringe exchange programs. The Louisville Metro Council then adopted an ordinance to approve operating a syringe exchange program for the city, and the Louisville Metro Board of Health approved the exchange.
“Addressing the heroin epidemic effectively requires a multidisciplinary approach. Harm reduction interventions like the Louisville Syringe Exchange Program are an important part of that approach,” said Moyer.
Gov. Matt Bevin yesterday met with more than 400 faith leaders and concerned citizens at Louisville’s Western Middle School to address the epidemic of violence that is gripping the heart of Kentucky’s largest city.
He invited churches and other community groups to commit to “adopt” an inner-city neighborhood block to visit 2-3 times per week over the course of the next year—respectfully walking the perimeter in teams of 3-10 individuals to pray for and get to know local residents.
“I truly believe we’re going to see a difference in this city,” said Gov. Bevin. “I personally believe in the power of prayer. I’ve seen it evidenced in our community and across others.”
“Don’t lose sight of this: these are the sons and daughters of Louisville and Kentucky,” he said. “We owe it to each other to have each other’s back on this.”
Please click the following links to access pertinent resources:
- Presentation from Gov. Bevin’s “Reclaiming Our Communities” message
- Maps of Louisville-Jefferson County homicides: 2015 | 2016 | 2015-17
- Listing of potential Louisville-Jefferson County neighborhood blocks to “adopt”
“Do we still need economic, political and law enforcement solutions? Of course we do,” noted Gov. Bevin. “This will not take their place but we feel it will make a real difference.”
For more information or to commit to “adopt” a block, please contact Adrienne Southworth at reclaim@ky.gov.
Gov. Matt Bevin today made the following appointments to Kentucky Boards and Commissions:
Bari Ann Lewis and Brett Bachmann have been appointed to the Institute for Aging. Dr. William Michael Mansfield has been reappointed.
- Bari Ann Lewis, of Louisville, is director of education and advocacy at the Alzheimer’s Association. She shall serve for a term expiring Sept. 1, 2019.
- Brett Bachmann, of Louisville, is CEO of the Heuser Hearing Institute. He shall serve for a term expiring Sept. 1, 2019.
- Dr. William Michael Mansfield, of Louisville, is a dentist and educator. He shall serve for a term expiring Sept. 1, 2019.
The Institute for Aging advises the Secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and other officials on policy matters relating to the development and delivery of services for the aged.
