Skip to main content

Environmental Health

Description

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall just east of New Orleans, LA at 6:10AM CST and again at the LA/MS border at 10:00AM CST as a Category 3 hurricane, causing mass destruction along their coastlines. The devastation in LA and MS forced many residents to evacuate. Outside of the hurricane affected areas of LA, MS, and AL, GA received the second largest number of evacuees (approximately 125,000).

 

Objective

To describe the victims of Hurricane Katrina who evacuated to GA and to assess their impact on emergency departments enrolled in GA’s syndromic surveillance system.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

One of the emerging priorities for the use of syndromic surveillance is for the monitoring of environmental health conditions. Heat-related illness (HRI) is of growing public health importance, particularly with climate change and anticipated increased frequency of heat waves. High ambient temperatures are responsible for significant morbidity and mortality, as was demonstrated during the 2003 heat waves in Europe that resulted in an estimated 45,000 excess deaths. A syndromic surveillance system that is able to detect early indications of excess HRI may start the public health response earlier, and thus reduce associated morbidity and mortality. Our research group is exploring the potential use of 911 medical dispatch data for the surveillance of HRI in Toronto. An important step in this assessment is exploring the association between temperature and 911 dispatch calls for HRI.

 

Objective

This paper describes the association between 911 medical dispatch calls for heat-related illness and maximum temperature in Toronto, Ontario during the summer of 2005.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Though spatio-temporal patterns of influenza spread have often suggested that environmental factors, such as temperature, solar radiation and humidity play a key role, few studies have directly assessed their effect on the timing of annual epidemics. Finkelman et al observed a significant positive relationship between the latitudinal position of temperate countries and epidemic timing. It is hypothesized that during winter months, in temperate regions, decreased skin exposure to sunlight affects immune function by altering the production of certain immunomodulators (e.g. melatonin and Vitamin D3). Other studies have linked temperature and humidity conditions to the rate of transmission of the influenza virus.

 

Objective 

To assess the strength of the association between peak influenza activity and dew point, average daily temperature, solar radiation, latitude and longitude so that we may better understand the factors that affect virus transmission and/or innate immunity and to determine whether these climate variables should be used as covariates in the surveillance of influenza.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

A comprehensive definition of a syndrome is composed of direct (911 calls, emergency departments, primary care providers, sensor, veterinary, agricultural and animal data) and indirect evidence (data from schools, drug stores, weather etc.). Syndromic surveillance will benefit from quickly integrating such data. There are three critical areas to address to build an effective syndromic surveillance system that is dynamic, organic and alert, capable of continuous growth, adaptability and vigilance: (1) timely collection of high quality data (2) timely integration and analysis of information (data in context) (3) applying innovative thinking and deriving deep insights from information analysis. In our view there is excessive emphasis on algorithms and applications to work on the collected data and insufficient emphasis on solving the integration challenges. Therefore, this paper is focused on information integration.

Objective

EII is the virtual consolidation of data from multiple systems into a unified, consistent and accurate representation. An analyst working in an EII environment can simultaneously view and analyze data from multiple data sources as if it were coming from one large local data warehouse. This paper posits that EII is a viable solution to implement a system covering large areas and disparate data sources for syndromic surveillance and discusses case studies from environments external to health.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

On August 28, 2011 Tropical Storm Irene made landfall in Connecticut. On October 29, 2011 Connecticut was impacted by Winter Storm Alfred. Both of these storms included high winds and heavy precipitation which resulted in prolonged power outages, disruption of public drinking water systems, property damage, and widespread debris throughout the state. The Hospital Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance (HEDSS) System was utilized to provide real-time situational awareness during the response and recovery phases of both storm events.

 

Objective

To characterize the utility of the Connecticut HEDSS system for real-time situational awareness during two weather-related emergencies.

Submitted by hparton on
Description

As the summer temperatures soared to their highest ever recorded, Oklahoma experienced its highest disease count ever since the disease had been discovered in New York in 1999. Tulsa County is the second most populous county in Oklahoma and accounted for over one-fourth of the West Nile Cases in Oklahoma. Tulsa City County Health Department is also the only funded mosquito control program in the state that regularly reports to CDC’s AborNet.

 

Objective

Identify, analyze, and summarize WNV in Tulsa County, Oklahoma.

Submitted by hparton on
Description

The incidence of dengue fever (DF) has increased 30 fold between 1960 and 2010. The literature suggests that temperature plays a major role in the life cycle of the mosquito vector and in turn, the timing of DF outbreaks. We use real-time data from GDT and real-time temperature estimates from NASA Earth observing systems to examine the relationship between dengue and climate in 17 Mexican states from 2003–2011. For the majority of states, we predict that a warming climate will increase the number of days the minimum temperature is within the risk range for dengue.

 

Objective

To evaluate the association between Dengue Fever and climate in Mexico with real-time data from Google Dengue Trends and climate data from NASA Earth observing systems.

Submitted by hparton on