Measles (Rubeola) 2019

Background Patient travel history can be crucial in evaluating evolving infectious disease events. Such information can be challenging to acquire in electronic health records, as it is often available only in unstructured text. Objective This study aims to assess the feasibility of annotating and automatically extracting travel history mentions from unstructured clinical documents in the Department of Veterans Affairs across disparate health care facilities and among millions of patients. Information about travel exposure augments existing surveillance applications for increased preparedness in responding quickly to public health threats. Methods Clinical documents related to arboviral disease were annotated following selection using a semiautomated bootstrapping process. Using annotated instances as training data, models were developed to extract from unstructured clinical text any mention of affirmed travel locations outside of the continental United States. Automated text processing models were evaluated, involving machine learning and neural language models for extraction accuracy. Results Among 4584 annotated instances, 2659 (58%) contained an affirmed mention of travel history, while 347 (7.6%) were negated. Interannotator agreement resulted in a document-level Cohen kappa of 0.776. Automated text processing accuracy (F1 85.6, 95% CI 82.5-87.9) and computational burden were acceptable such that the system can provide a rapid screen for public health events. Conclusions Automated extraction of patient travel history from clinical documents is feasible for enhanced passive surveillance public health systems. Without such a system, it would usually be necessary to manually review charts to identify recent travel or lack of travel, use an electronic health record that enforces travel history documentation, or ignore this potential source of information altogether. The development of this tool was initially motivated by emergent arboviral diseases. More recently, this system was used in the early phases of response to COVID-19 in the United States, although its utility was limited to a relatively brief window due to the rapid domestic spread of the virus. Such systems may aid future efforts to prevent and contain the spread of infectious diseases.

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The Pseudoscorpions of Illinois

Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin ◽

10.21900/j.inhs.v24.198 ◽

1949 ◽

Vol 24 (1-4) ◽

pp. 413-500 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

C. Clayton Hoff

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Natural Habitat ◽

Habitat Preferences ◽

The United States ◽

Accurate Information ◽

North Central ◽

Taxonomic Importance ◽

Central United States ◽

Identification Of Species ◽

Made In

Pseudoscorpions are minute animals only a few millimeters long, with the general appearance of diminutive scorpions except that they have no tails. They belong to the large phylum of joint-legged animals, the Arthropoda, and to the class Arachnida. which, in addition to the pseudoscorpions, embraces the spiders, mites, ticks, scorpions, and other related groups. Pseudoscorpions are seclusive in habit, occurring in soil cover and rotten logs, under bark, and in similar places out of doors: one species is found in houses. In their natural habitat, these little brown animals arc difficult to see. especially when they draw in their legs and "play possum." In this position they look like little specks of dirt. Probably because pseudoscorpions are inconspicuous, few collections of the group have been made in the past, and the fauna, at least of North America, and especially of the central and north-central United States, has remained scantily known. The object of this report is twofold, first to present illustrated keys and descriptions for the identification of species in this region, and, secondly, to summarize information regarding the distribution, biology, and habitat preferences of the species. As an aid in use of the keys, a section has been included on morphology, in which the structures now considered of major taxonomic importance are explained. Summarizing the distribution has been especially difficult because many identifications made prior to Chamberlin's work are probably incorrect and should be rechecked before they are cited. Because of this situation there is little accurate information to serve as a guide in foretelling what additional described species may be collected in Illinois. In order to make this report of wide application, the keys have been made to include all the genera known from the central and northeastern portions of the United States and adjacent portions of Canada.

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Perceived Risk of Mosquito-Borne Arboviruses in the Continental United States

Pathogens ◽

10.3390/pathogens10121562 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 1562

Author(s):

Saul Lozano ◽

Jonathan Day ◽

Lilyana Ortega ◽

Maggie Silver ◽

Roxanne Connelly

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Risk Perception ◽

Vector Control ◽

News Media ◽

Perceived Risk ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

The United States ◽

Transmission Risk ◽

Accurate Information ◽

Use Of Resources

The United States experienced local transmission of West Nile Virus (WNV) for the first time in 1999, and Zika Virus (ZIKV) in 2016. These introductions captured the public’s attention in varying degrees. The research presented here analyzes the disproportional perception of ZIKV risk compared to WNV transmission risk, by the public and vector control personnel. The risk perception of vector control was measured through purposive sampled interviews (24 interviews in 13 states; May 2020–June 2021), while the public’s perception was estimated from news publications (January 2000–December 2020), and Google searches (January 2004–December 2020). Over time, we observed a decrease in the frequency of press reporting and Google searches of both viruses with decreasing annual peaks in the summer. The highest peak of ZIKV news, and searches, surpassed that of WNV. We observed clear differences in the contents of the headlines for both viruses. We propose that the main reason in risk perception differences between the viruses were psychological. Zika infections (mosquito-borne and sexually transmitted) can result in devastating symptoms in fetuses and newborns, observations that frequently appeared in ZIKV-related headlines. Our results highlight the likely influence the news media has on risk perception and the need for public health agencies to play active roles in the conversation, helping disseminate timely and accurate information. Understanding the factors that shape risk perceptions of vector-borne diseases will hopefully lead to better use of resources by providing better guidance.

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Modeling and analysis of COVID-19 new deaths using tree-based ensemble

10.36227/techrxiv.16566012.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ibrahim Abaker Targio Hashem ◽

Raja Sher Afgun Usmani ◽

Asad Ali Shah ◽

Abdulwahab Ali Almazroi ◽

Muhammad Bilal

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

United States ◽

Random Forest ◽

Economic Activity ◽

The United States ◽

Gradient Boosting ◽

Health Crisis ◽

Modeling And Analysis ◽

Extreme Gradient Boosting ◽

The World

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as the world's most serious health crisis, affecting millions of people all over the world. The majority of nations have imposed nationwide curfews and reduced economic activity to combat the spread of this infectious disease. Governments are monitoring the situation and making critical decisions based on the daily number of new cases and deaths reported. Therefore, this study aims to predict the daily new deaths using four tree-based ensemble models i.e., Gradient Tree Boosting (GB), Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Voting Regressor (VR) for the three most affected countries, which are the United States, Brazil, and India. The results showed that VR outperformed other models in predicting daily new deaths for all three countries. The predictions of daily new deaths made using VR for Brazil and India are very close to the actual new deaths, whereas the prediction of daily new deaths for the United States still needs to be improved.<br>

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Moving forward in occupational health physical therapy: the journey toward specialization in the United States

Physical Therapy Reviews ◽

10.1179/1743288x13y.0000000102 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 18 (5) ◽

pp. 316-326 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Deirdre Daley ◽

Margot Miller

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Physical Therapy ◽

Occupational Health ◽

The United States

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Revisiting the Need for an Infectious Disease Care Network in the United States

Health Security ◽

10.1089/hs.2021.0054 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 240-241

Author(s):

Aurora B. Le ◽

Jocelyn J. Herstein

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Care Network

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1.E. Workshop: Comparative Public Health: Politics, science, and professionalism

European Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1093/eurpub/ckz185.016 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

United Kingdom ◽

Occupational Health ◽

Case Studies ◽

Health Systems ◽

Health And Safety ◽

Occupational Health And Safety ◽

The United States ◽

Public Health Systems

Abstract Look around EUPHA, or any other public health conference. Public health is difficult to define, in theory and in practice. Its boundaries are all blurred, whether with medicine, schools, environmental protection or workplace safety inspectorates. Too often, we overstate the similarities between public health systems among countries. Efforts to promote networks, good practice, and even basic coordination have been undermined for decades by misunderstandings born of different educational, organizational, financial and political systems. The lack of comparison, and comparative political analysis in particular, also means that countries can have very similar debates about the proper nature and scope of public health, an about who is to blame for deficiencies, without awareness of when they are distinctive and when they are actually part of larger trends. This project aims to identify and explain variation in the scope and organization of public health systems in selected high-income countries. Based on a formalized comparative historical analysis of Austria, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States, researchers in the study first mapped the various axes of divergence: workforce composition, organization, levels of government, relationship to medicine, and the extent to which public health encompassed adjacent areas such as environmental health and occupational health and safety. For each country we then followed both case studies (communicable disease control including vaccines, HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, diet and nutrition, occupational health and safety) as well as the legislative history of the public health field in order to identify its changing organization and scope. It then identifies the relative role of historical legacies, changing science, burden of disease and politics in explaining patterns of both divergence and convergence. This workshop presents four country specific case studies (France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States) that identify the most important forms of variation and the political, scientific and professional drivers of convergence and divergence. Key messages Political organization and scope as images of public health are grossly under-researched and nonexistent in a comparative nature. Understanding the scope and organization of public health in different countries will permit better lesson-drawing and identification of relevant and effective levers of change.

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