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Qu Ming

Description

Icy weather events increase the risk for injury from falls on untreated or inadequately treated surfaces. These events often result in ED visits, which represents a significant public health and economic impact1. The goal of this project was to start the process toward an evaluation of the public health impact and the economic impact of falls associated to icy weather in Douglas County, NE for the ultimate purpose of designing and implementing injury prevention related public health protection measures. Additionally, the validated definition will be used by NE DHHS Occupational Health Surveillance Program to identify work related ice-related fall injuries that were covered by workers compensation. To achieve the goal, the first step was to identify a valid and reliable syndromic surveillance. Specifically, this project looked at the applicability of the ESSENCE syndromic surveillance definitions related to injuries associated with falls. Two syndromic surveillance definitions were compared, one that includes triage note and chief complaint search terms, and another that only includes chief complaint. The hypothesis was that the ESSENCE syndromic surveillance definition that includes triage note and chief complaint search terms, rather than the syndromic surveillance definition that only includes chief complaint, would be more effective at identifying ED visits resulting from fall-related injuries.

Objective: This project evaluated and compared two ESSENCE syndromic surveillance definitions for emergency department (ED) visits related to injuries associated with falls in icy weather using 2016-2017 data from two hospitals in Douglas County, Nebraska. The project determined the validity of the syndromic surveillance definition as applied to chief complaint and triage notes and compared the chief complaint data alone to chief complaint plus triage notes definitions to find the most reliable definition for ED visits resulting from fall-related injuries.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Opioid ODs have been rising globally and nationally. The death rate from ODs in the United States has increased 137% since 2000, including a 200% increase of OD deaths involving opioids1. The pilot project, a collaboration across 3 states, allowed information sharing with Syndromic surveillance (SyS) partners across jurisdictions, such as sharing a standard SyS case definition and verifying its applicability in each jurisdiction. This is a continuation of the work from an initial pilot project presented during the ISDS Opioid OD Webinar series.

Objective:

The objective is to develop a standard opioid overdose case definition that could be generalized nationally

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Motor vehicle crashes (MVC) are a significant public health problem in Nebraska. These events cost Nebraska $1.6 billion a year, are the leading cause of injury death, and the fourth leading cause of injury hospital treatment in the state. Speeding, driving under the influence, distracted driving, and adverse weather are the main causes of MVC in Nebraska. Effective prevention efforts to reduce MVC related deaths and injuries depend greatly on a surveillance system that monitors the frequency of these events so stakeholders may ascertain the MVC related causes and impact on the state. Currently, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NDHHS) Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES) monitors MVC related death and injuries by linking the following databases statewide crash data, hospital discharge data (HDD), trauma registry, emergency medical system (EMS) data and death certificate data. Although this system has been effective in identifying the causes of MVC-ralated injuries and supporting community based highway safety programs, it is limited by the lack of immediate availability of data. ‘An ED based SS system could potentially be used to enhance MVC injury surveillance by allowing the timely detection of clusters, anomalies and trends. Therefore, and ED SS system could be incorporated to support an efficient and rapid prevention response to MVC-related injuries.

Objective

The objective of this pilot study is to demonstrate the value of emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance (SS) data to aid the surveillance of motor vehicle crash (MVC) related injuries in Nebraska.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Achieving health equality is a national priority. The surveillance of health disparities in minority populations is key for the advancement of health equality. However, the need for improvement in documentation of race and ethnicity has been identified across various public health data sets. Currently, due to the lack of reporting of race and ethnicity in HDD, the NDHHS mainly depends on analyses of the statewide Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and Vital Records data for the surveillance of health disparities among minority populations. An alternative data set that might help inform the surveillance of health disparities is SyS data. This near-real–time electronic health record data is characterized by required core data elements that provide information about the date and time of patient encounter, treating facility, clinical information, and patient demographics. Previously, we demonstrated statistically significant correlations between the 2011 and 2012 NDHHS ED SyS and ED HDD data for ICD9-CM ECODES corresponding to motor vehicle crash related injury, which is a relevant cause of health disparities. Our new objective was to determine the reporting consistency of ICD9-CM ECODES associated with other injury related health disparities between 2013 NDHHS SyS and HDD ED data. We also sought to determine if near-real–time ED and IP SyS data provide a more complete documentation of race and ethnicity than HDD.

Objective

This pilot study evaluates Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NDHHS) emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance (SyS) data quality by cross-validating reported external cause of injury codes (ECODES) associated to racial/ethnic injury health disparities in Nebraska. The percent completeness of core data elements in SyS data and hospital discharge data (HDD) was also determined.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

Underage drinking is a significant public health problem in the United States as well as in Nebraska1-2. Alcohol consumption among underage youth accounts for approximately 5,000 deaths each year in the United States, including motor vehicle crash related deaths, homicides and suicides1. In Nebraska, 23% of 12-20 year olds have reported alcohol use during the past 30 days3. In 2010, the estimated total costs of underage drinking in Nebraska were $423 million. These costs included medical care, work loss along with pain and suffering2. The health consequences of underage drinking include alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes and other unintentional injuries, physical and sexual assault, suicide, self-inflicted injury, death from alcohol poisoning, and abuse of other drugs1, 4. The monitoring of near-real–time ED data could help underage drinking prevention efforts by providing timelier actionable public health information.

Objective

The objective of this pilot study was to develop and evaluate syndromic definitions for the monitoring of alcohol-related emergency department (ED) visits in near-real–time syndromic surveillance (SyS) data. This study also evaluates the utility of SyS ED data for the monitoring of underage drinking.

Submitted by Magou on