Conflicting activities related to marijuana at state and federal levels raise questions as to whether a new federal/state legal relationship concerning marijuana legalization is forthcoming.
Chronic Disease or Injury
Unused, expired and leftover medicines that accumulate in homes represent a significant public health problem by increasing the risk of drug misuse and preventable poisonings. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 75% percent of people who reported misusing painkillers in 2013-2014 most recently got the medication from a friend, family member, or dealer. Improper disposal of unwanted medications also poses a heightened risk to the environment.
Agriculture can be a hazardous industry. Farmers, and oftentimes their family members, are at high risk for injuries, fatalities, and illness. Risks include exposure to pesticides on crop farms and use of tractors, farming equipment, and other machinery.
Description
In mid-2017, the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (a bonafide agent of Kentucky Department for Public Health-KDPH) was alerted by members of KDPH to anecdotal evidence of a possible increase of SynCan (primarily Serenity) overdoses. The situation presented an opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of syndromic surveillance and emergency medical services (EMS) data systems to provide rapid situational awareness about SynCan overdoses.
Objective:
The aim of this project was to investigate anecdotal reports of an increase in synthetic cannabinoid (SynCan) overdoses in Lexington-Fayette County area of Kentucky, using rapid surveillance systems including emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance (SyS) and emergency medical services (EMS) data.
Description
Across the U.S.A., multiple people seek treatment for fireworks-related injuries around the July 4th holiday. Syndromic surveillance in Kansas allows for near real-time analysis of the injuries occurring during the firework selling season. During the 2017 July 4th holiday, the Kansas Syndromic Surveillance Program (KSSP) production data feed received data from 88 EDs at excellent quality and timeliness. Previous and current firework safety messaging in Kansas is dependent on voluntary reporting from hospitals across the state. With widespread coverage of EDs by KSSP, data can be more complete and timely to better drive analysis and public information.
Objective:
To develop a syndrome definition and analyze syndromic surveillance data usefulness in surveillance of firework-related emergency department visits in Kansas.
Description
As global temperatures increase, so too does interest in the effect of climate change on the populationâs health. 2016 represented the hottest year on record globally and well above the 20th century average in Virginia. With large-scale climate change comes an increase in severe weather patterns, including heat waves. Heat waves can have immense health impacts on a community, including heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and dehydration. Previous analyses of emergency department (ED) data indicate that certain populations â specifically males and rural residents â are more at risk for heat-related illness. None of these studies, however, looked for temporal relationships between the population seeking care and the day of the week. Syndromic surveillance data can be used to further describe those communities affected by heat exposure as well as identify any temporal patterns in visits.
Objective:
To describe the differences in patient populations between those who seek care for heat exposure during the work week and those who seek care during the weekend.
Description
In 2015, suicide was the 8th leading cause of death in Salt Lake County, Utah, and has recently been identified as a priority public health issue. For suicide, suicide ideation and suicide attempts surveillance, Salt Lake County Health Department staff use National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) mortality data to monitor historical trends and vital records mortality data and ESSENCE ED encounter morbidity data to monitor trends and populations in real time. To improve surveillance and better identify populations at higher risk of suicide, we tested whether we could retrospectively identify residents who died from suicide and visited an ED in the year before death.
Objective:
To explore the use of ED syndromic surveillance data to retrospectively identify individuals who died from suicide and visited an ED before death in order to improve suicide surveillance and inform planning and prevention efforts in Salt Lake County, Utah.
Description
Early detection of heroin overdose clusters is important in the current battle against the opioid crisis to effectively implement prevention and control measures. The New York State syndromic surveillance system collects hospital emergency department (ED) visit data, including visit time, chief complaint, and patient zip code. This data can be used to timely identify potential heroin overdose outbreaks by detecting spatial-temporal case clusters with scan statistic.
Objective:
To utilize syndromic surveillance data timely detecting herion overdose outbreaks in the community.
Description
The United States is in the midst of a drug crisis; drug-related overdoses are the leading cause of unintentional death in the country. In Colorado the rate of fatal drug overdose increased 68% from 2002-2014 (9.7 deaths per 100,000 to 16.3 per 100,000, respectively), and non-fatal overdose also increased during this time period (23% increase in emergency department visits since 2011). The CDCâs National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) provides near-real time monitoring of emergency department (ED) events across the country, with information uploaded daily on patient demographics, chief complaint for visit, diagnosis codes, triage notes, and more. Colorado North Central Region (CO-NCR) receives data for 4 local public health agencies from 25 hospitals across Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson Counties. Access to local syndromic data in near-real time provides valuable information for local public health program planning, policy, and evaluation efforts. However, use of these data also comes with many challenges. For example, we learned from key informant interviews with ED staff in Boulder and Denver counties, about concern with the accuracy and specificity of drug-related diagnosis codes, specifically for opioid-related overdoses.
Objective:
In order to better describe local drug-related overdoses, we developed a novel syndromic case definition using discharge diagnosis codes from emergency department data in the Colorado North Central Region (CO-NCR). Secondarily, we used free text fields to understand the use of unspecified diagnosis fields.
Description
A socio-marker is a measurable indicator of social conditions where a patient is embedded in and exposed to, being analogous with a biomarker indicating the severity or presence of some disease state. Social factors are one of the most clinical health determinants, which play a critical role in explaining health outcomes. Socio-markers can help medical practitioners and researchers to reliably identify high-risk individuals in a timely manner.
Objective:
Asthma is one of the most common chronic childhood diseases in the United States. In addition to its pervasiveness, pediatric asthma shows high sensitivity to the environment. Combining medical-social dataset with machine learning methods we demonstrate how socio-markers play an important role in identifying patients at risk of hospital revisits due to pediatric asthma within a year.