Mel Kohn was named by Willamette Week (this week’s issue) as the Best Keeper of the Calm for his work on H1N1. You can read the blurb below.

Best Keeper of the Calm
Remember when you first heard about that thing called the swine flu? Luckily for you, and everybody else in Oregon, state public health officer Dr. Mel Kohn was around to calmly handle the situation. Kohn and his office-who had been preparing for such an event for 10 years-were there to help you not freak out by giving you the right information and instructions on how to protect yourself: Wash your hands, cover your cough and get vaccinated. “I wanted people to understand the risk realistically that this posed, and to use that to motivate them to do whatever they needed to do to protect themselves,” says Kohn. “I love how I see people cough into their elbow. That’s not something people were doing much before H1N1.”

We like to think we had a little bit to do with it too.