scholarly journals The Perfect Storm of Information: Combining Traditional and Non-Traditional Data Sources for Public Health Situational Awareness During Hurricane Response

PLoS Currents ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Bennett ◽  
Jennifer M. Olsen ◽  
Sara Harris ◽  
Sumiko Mekaru ◽  
Alicia A. Livinski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Information Combining ◽  
Perfect Storm ◽  
Hurricane Response

scholarly journals Novel Analysis and Visualization of Chemical Events for Public Health Surveillance

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Henry ◽  
Lauren Charles-Smith ◽  
Kyungsik Han ◽  
Courtney D. Corley
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
National Laboratory ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Northwest National Laboratory ◽  
Application Development ◽  
App Development ◽  
Web App ◽  
Chemical Events ◽  
Chemical Event

ObjectivePacific Northwest National Laboratory hosted an intern-basedweb application development contest in the summer of 2016 centeredaround developing novel chemical surveillance applications to aid inhealth situational awareness. Making up the three teams were threegraduate students (n=9) from various US schools majoring in non-public health domains, such as computer sicence and user design. Theinterns suc- cessfully developed three applications that demonstrateda value-add to chemical surveillance—ChemAnalyzer (textanalytics), RetroSpect (retrospective analysis of chemical events),and ToxicBusters (geo-based trend analytics). These applicationswill be the basis for the first chemical surveillance application to beincorporated into the DTRA Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE).IntroductionPacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), on behalf theDefense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA; project number CB10190),hosts an annual intern- based web app development contest. Previouscompetitions have focused on mobile biosurveillance applications.The 2016 competition pivoted away from biosurveillance to focus onaddressing challenges within the field of chemical surveillance andincreasing public health chemical situational awareness. The result ofthe app will be integrated within the DTRA BSVE.MethodsPNNL hosted nine graduate interns for a 10-week period inthe summer of 2016 as participants in a summer web applicationdevelopment contest. Students were drawn from such fields assoftware engineering and user experience and design and placedinto three teams of three students. The challenge presented to theinterns was to design and develop a fully-functional web applicationthat would address a critical need within the chemical surveillancecommunity. The interns developed their own ideas (vetted by PNNLand DTRA), discovered and inte- grated their own data sources,and produced their own visualizations and an- alytics, independentof any assistence outside of that provided in an advisory capacity.The competition end with a judging event with a panel of subjectmatter experts and cash awards were distributed to the teams.ResultsEach team produced a unique application. Although there wasmild overlap between some of the ideas, the applications weredeveloped independently and each reflected the unique contributionsof the teams. ChemAnalyzer is a text-analytics platform designedto facilitate more data- driven decision, given a corpus of text dataabout a chemical event. Their plat- form provided the ability toautomatically identify and highlight key words in documents relatedto chemical events. The keywords are drawn from an on- tologyinstalled with the system, as well as any user-identified keywords.The ChemAnalyzer team finished in third place. The RetroSpect teamdeveloped a visual analytic tool for performing retrospec- tive analysisand monitoring of chemical events. Their app provided the ability tosearch and analyze past events, as well as visualization of state andcounty information for the recorded chemical events. The RetroSpectteam finished in second place. The Toxicbusters team—the winnersof the competition—created a geo-based situational awareness toolfor tracking chemical events. Their app featured an updateable mapoverlay, search functionality for finding specific or related events,incident and city/state/national-level statistics and trends, as wellas news and social media integration based on keywords related tochemical surveillance.ConclusionsEach of the apps developed by the teams provides value to ananalyst tasked with monitoring chemical events. The apps integratedunique data sources to provides a full picture of a chemical event, andits effects upon the surrounding population. This integrated analyticsprovides a valuable benefit over existing workflows, where analystsmust monitor news, social, and other information sources manuallyfor real-time information. The apps developed by these interns aredesigned to enable identification and analysis of the incident asquickly as possible, allowing for more timely assessments of theincident and its impacts. The web app development contest provideda unique opportunity for students to learn about the emergingneeds in chemical surveillance as it relates to health sit- uationalawareness. Students were drawn from a variety of fields and weretasked with developing novel web apps addressing some of the mostpressing challenges in the field of chemical surveillance. The ideasgenerated by the students will help form the basis for future chemicalsurveillance application development to be integrated with the DTRABSVE.

Situational awareness in public health preparedness settings

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parsa Mirhaji ◽  
Yanko F. Michea ◽  
Jiajie Zhang ◽  
Samuel W. Casscells
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
Public Health Preparedness

scholarly journals Use of Emergency Department Data to Monitor and Respond to an Increase in Opioid Overdoses in New Hampshire, 2011-2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 73S-79S ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Daly ◽  
Kenneth Dufault ◽  
David J. Swenson ◽  
Paul Lakevicius ◽  
Erin Metcalf ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Emergency Department ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Syndromic Surveillance ◽  
Situational Awareness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chief Complaint ◽  
Public Health Response ◽  
Syndromic Surveillance System ◽  
Icd Codes

Objectives: Opioid-related overdoses and deaths in New Hampshire have increased substantially in recent years, similar to increases observed across the United States. We queried emergency department (ED) data in New Hampshire to monitor opioid-related ED encounters as part of the public health response to this health problem. Methods: We obtained data on opioid-related ED encounters for the period January 1, 2011, through December 31, 2015, from New Hampshire’s syndromic surveillance ED data system by querying for (1) chief complaint text related to the words “fentanyl,” “heroin,” “opiate,” and “opioid” and (2) opioid-related International Classification of Diseases ( ICD) codes. We then analyzed the data to calculate frequencies of opioid-related ED encounters by age, sex, residence, chief complaint text values, and ICD codes. Results: Opioid-related ED encounters increased by 70% during the study period, from 3300 in 2011 to 5603 in 2015; the largest increases occurred in adults aged 18-29 and in males. Of 20 994 total opioid-related ED visits, we identified 18 554 (88%) using ICD code alone, 690 (3%) using chief complaint text alone, and 1750 (8%) using both chief complaint text and ICD code. For those encounters identified by ICD code only, the corresponding chief complaint text included varied and nonspecific words, with the most common being “pain” (n = 3335, 18%), “overdose” (n = 1555, 8%), “suicidal” (n = 816, 4%), “drug” (n = 803, 4%), and “detox” (n = 750, 4%). Heroin-specific encounters increased by 827%, from 4% of opioid-related encounters in 2011 to 24% of encounters in 2015. Conclusions: Opioid-related ED encounters in New Hampshire increased substantially from 2011 to 2015. Data from New Hampshire’s ED syndromic surveillance system provided timely situational awareness to public health partners to support the overall response to the opioid epidemic.

scholarly journals The time to act is now: pseudo-systematic review

BMJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. m4143
Author(s):  
Nathan Ford ◽  
Grania Brigden ◽  
Tom Ellman ◽  
Edward J Mills
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Disease Burden ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Study Selection

Abstract Objective To identify any medical or public health rationale for claims that the time to act is now. Design Pseudo-systematic review. Data sources PubMed. Study selection Studies that included the claim “time is now” in the title, with or without exclamation marks. No language or date restriction was applied. Results 512 articles were included for review. No relationship was identified between time to act and disease burden, severity, or specialty. Claims that the time to act was Christmas were almost entirely without basis. A clustering of claims that it is time to act in the first quarter of the year suggested a possible association with New Year’s resolutions. Conclusions Now is as good a time as any.

scholarly journals Cross Sector Data Sharing: Necessity, Challenge, and Hope

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (S2) ◽  
pp. 83-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cason Schmit ◽  
Kathleen Kelly ◽  
Jennifer Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Health Law ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Existing Data ◽  
Sector Data

Existing data sources have tremendous potential to inform public health activities. However, a patchwork of data protection laws impede data sharing efforts. Nevertheless, a data-sharing initiative in Peoria, IL was able to overcome challenges to set up a cross-sectoral data system to coordinate mental health, law enforcement, and healthcare services.

A Case Study on the Integration of Heterogeneous Data Sources in Public Health

2017 ◽  
pp. 411-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierpaolo Vittorini ◽  
Anna Maria Angelone ◽  
Vincenza Cofini ◽  
Leila Fabiani ◽  
Antonella Mattei ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Heterogeneous Data Sources

scholarly journals Locating People Diagnosed With HIV for Public Health Action: Utility of HIV Case Surveillance and Other Data Sources

2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mabel Padilla ◽  
Christine L. Mattson ◽  
Susan Scheer ◽  
Chi-Chi N. Udeagu ◽  
Susan E. Buskin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Hiv Care ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
Public Health Action ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Contact Information ◽  
Health Action

Introduction: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) case surveillance and other health care databases are increasingly being used for public health action, which has the potential to optimize the health outcomes of people living with HIV (PLWH). However, often PLWH cannot be located based on the contact information available in these data sources. We assessed the accuracy of contact information for PLWH in HIV case surveillance and additional data sources and whether time since diagnosis was associated with accurate contact information in HIV case surveillance and successful contact. Materials and Methods: The Case Surveillance-Based Sampling (CSBS) project was a pilot HIV surveillance system that selected a random population-based sample of people diagnosed with HIV from HIV case surveillance registries in 5 state and metropolitan areas. From November 2012 through June 2014, CSBS staff members attempted to locate and interview 1800 sampled people and used 22 data sources to search for contact information. Results: Among 1063 contacted PLWH, HIV case surveillance data provided accurate telephone number, address, or HIV care facility information for 239 (22%), 412 (39%), and 827 (78%) sampled people, respectively. CSBS staff members used additional data sources, such as support services and commercial people-search databases, to locate and contact PLWH with insufficient contact information in HIV case surveillance. PLWH diagnosed <1 year ago were more likely to have accurate contact information in HIV case surveillance than were PLWH diagnosed ≥1 year ago ( P = .002), and the benefit from using additional data sources was greater for PLWH with more longstanding HIV infection ( P < .001). Practice Implications: When HIV case surveillance cannot provide accurate contact information, health departments can prioritize searching additional data sources, especially for people with more longstanding HIV infection.

Research Partnerships Between Academics and Consulting Firms: A Stakeholder Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-605
Author(s):  
Sayeedul Islam ◽  
Ken Lahti ◽  
Michael H. Chetta
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Applied Research ◽  
Stakeholder Analysis ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Research Partnership ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Research Partnerships ◽  
Consulting Firms ◽  
Phd Programs

The focal article (LaPierre et al., 2018) proposes several steps in developing a research partnership with organizations. We commend LaPierre and colleagues for bringing to light these recommendations. We agree that research partnerships may prove valuable for the science of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. For I-O psychology to grow as a science, more appropriate sampling and more relevant data sources are necessary (Landers & Behrend, 2015). Although I-O psychology master's and PhD programs continue to grow and produce more I-O psychology graduates that enter the applied marketplace, there remains a paucity of applied research partnerships between academics and organizations. Research partnerships are often established in other disciplines (i.e., computer science, public health, biochemistry) and have resulted in fruitful relationships for both parties (D'Este & Iammarino, 2010; Israel, Schulz, Parker, & Becker, 1998; Santoro & Betts, 2002), but similar partnerships have not become the norm in I-O psychology. Despite a growing number of I-O psychology graduates and programs (Shellenbarger, 2010), I-O psychology academics have not leveraged those relationships to create research partnerships between universities and business. We would argue that this lack of research partnerships is due to the difficulty of navigating and negotiating with the multiple stakeholders involved in the process of developing a research partnership.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document