Chronic Disease or Injury

SCRAs are accessible and affordable, sold online, in gas stations, and in “head” shops for $5-30 per package.[1] While marijuana is a schedule 1 narcotic, unavailable for any use, SCRAs navigate the legal landscape with marketing as non-consumable and frequent modifications to the active ingredients that outpace lawmakers’ updates. When consumed, SCRAs bind the same receptor as the active ingredient in marijuana with 10-1000 times the affinity. Physical reactions to marijuana use include breathing problems, increased heart rate, hallucinations, paranoia, lower blood pressure, and dizziness. [2] Health departments have reported varying clinical presentations in response to SCRAs, including extreme agitation and tachycardia. Ongoing reports of SCRA reactions and rising marijuana legalization emphasize the imperative to leverage syndromic surveillance to monitor trends, detect emerging outbreaks, and observe changes in clinical presentations or user demographics.

Objective

Use syndromic surveillance to identify and monitor adverse health events resulting from synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) or marijuana. Characterize the current trend of SCRAs and marijuana use among emergency department (ED) and urgent care center (UCC) visits in Virginia to determine whether findings align with utilization trends identified by other states from poison control center calls and ED visits.

International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates that 21.4 million women in 2013 had some form of hyperglycaemia in pregnancy and in India alone an estimated 4 million women have GDM. Recognizing the shortfall of trained manpower; Certificate Course in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (CCGDM) was launched in 2012; since then it has spread across 17 states and 39 cities across 55 regional training centers and trained 2400 Primary care physicians (PCP) all across India.

Objective With implementation of program on all India level aim is to develop a robust monitoring and evaluation system to ensure quality assurance and standardized course delivery on all India level.

The increasing frequency and severity of Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) in India have caused grave concern for road safety, posing serious challenge to transport policy makers, planners, regulators, police, engineers and civil society alike. With just 1% of world’s vehicles, India leads with 10% of world’s total Road Traffic Fatalities, resulting in untold misery to lakhs of people and costing about 3% of the GDP1. Due to the impact of the RTA, the United Nations declared the current decade “the decade of action for road safety with a goal to save five million lives”2. Post-crash response is very critical to reduce the mortality and morbidity due to accidents. Piramal Swasthya in collaboration with the National Highways Authority of India and General Insurance Company set up the Highway Emergency Response and Accident Mitigation Service between Hyderabad and Vijayawada, as a pilot project to address the post-crash response.

Objective

The objectives of this paper are 1. To describe the functioning of a highway emergency response and accident mitigation service and 2. To characterize the profile of the accidents and the victims served by this project

Syndromic surveillance ED data has historically shown the highest number of visits on Mondays, with decreasing volumes throughout the week. Previous studies have shown that increased negative health outcomes have occurred on Mondays. A study in the European Journal of Epidemiology provided evidence that suggests a higher incidence of cardiovascular events on Mondays compared to other days of the week.

Objective

To investigate the day of week effect on myocardial infarctions (MI) in the age group of 18 – 64 years using ESSENCE-FL emergency department (ED) data.

The North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) investigated the feasibility of using syndromic surveillance (SyS) data to identify health care visits due to electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use. E-cigarettes have been associated with injuries and fatalities in all age groups, including young children attracted to the colorful liquid nicotine carriage packaging [1]. Previously, poison control data was the only resource available to the NDDoH for e-cigarette adverse outcomes surveillance.

Objective

To explore the use of emergency department syndromic surveillance data to identify adverse health events related to electronic cigarettes in order in enhance existing surveillance.

Violence is now clearly recognized as a public health problem. Intentional injuries ranked among the top six leading causes of death for Illinois residents aged 1-44 in 2013. The Illinois Department of Public Health currently collects data on violent injuries and deaths from emergency medical services reports, death certificates, coroner/ medical examiner reports, law enforcement reports, and crime lab reports. However, syndromic surveillance provides near real-time data on violence-related emergency department visits that would increase the timeliness and quality of data available for public health interventions.

Objective

Our objective was to measure the incidence and prevalence of intentional violent injury and death using Illinois’ syndromic surveillance system.

Although Marin County ranks as the healthiest county in California, it ranks poorly in substance abuse indicators, including drug overdose mortality.1 Death certificates do not always include specific detail on the substances involved in a drug overdose.2 This lack of specificity makes it difficult to identify public health issues related to specific prescription drugs in our community. We analyzed 2013 drug overdose death toxicology reports to determine if they could improve the description of drug overdose deaths in our community and to describe associated data characteristics.

Objective

To describe the potential impact of using toxicology data to support drug overdose mortality surveillance.