Infectious Disease

In 2012, Louisiana’s case rate for congenital syphilis was 49.2 cases per 100,000 live births, the highest in the nation and over six times the national average1. In Louisiana, case investigations for infants perinatally exposed to syphilis are initiated through two primary methods: SHP may receive a positive syphilis test on an infant or a syphilis-infected woman may be contacted and identified by Partner Services during pregnancy. This identification process is similar to perinatal HIV surveillance in Louisiana with one major exception: for perinatal HIV surveillance an annual birth match is completed. Through this match women known to be HIV-infected are matched to women who gave birth during the previous year. Over 90% of perinatal HIV exposures are identified prior to this match, but the match ensures that Louisiana’s HIV surveillance system identifies all infants perinatally exposed to HIV.

Objective

To identify infants perinatally exposed to syphilis in Louisiana that were missed by routine surveillance activities and to ensure that all infants perinatally exposed to syphilis are investigated.

 

In 2012, Louisiana’s case rate for congenital syphilis was 49.2 cases per 100,000 live births, the highest in the nation and over six times the national average1. In Louisiana, case investigations for infants perinatally exposed to syphilis are initiated through two primary methods: SHP may receive a positive syphilis test on an infant or a syphilis-infected woman may be contacted and identified by Partner Services during pregnancy. This identification process is similar to perinatal HIV surveillance in Louisiana with one major exception: for perinatal HIV surveillance an annual birth match is completed. Through this match women known to be HIV-infected are matched to women who gave birth during the previous year. Over 90% of perinatal HIV exposures are identified prior to this match, but the match ensures that Louisiana’s HIV surveillance system identifies all infants perinatally exposed to HIV.

Objective

To identify infants perinatally exposed to syphilis in Louisiana that were missed by routine surveillance activities and to ensure that all infants perinatally exposed to syphilis are investigated.

 

Reduction in HIV transmission needs continuous, comprehensive and effective communication channels to disseminate messages that will sustain efforts to motivate adolescents to engage in a range of options to reduce the risk of HIV infection. Life skills education, an integral part of school-based AIDS programs that include sexual and reproductive health information, has been a timely prevention effort in schools.1 This has proven to be an effective method in delaying the onset of sexual intercourse, and among sexually experienced youth, in increasing the use of condoms and decreasing the number of sexual partners. Life skills are behaviors that enable individuals to adapt to and deal effectively with the demands and challenges of life. The life skills approach is an interactive, educational methodology that not only focuses on transmitting knowledge but also aims at shaping attitudes and developing interpersonal skills. The main goal of the life skills approach is to enhance young people’s ability to take responsibility for making healthier choices, resisting negative pressures, and avoiding risk behaviors. Limited studies have been done on assessing life skills of adolescents in schools. Findings from this study will provide baseline for programmatic scale up.

Objective

To assess the predictors of life-skills-based HIV/AIDS education on sexual behaviour among secondary school students in South West, Nigeria.

 

GFT is a surveillance tool that gathers data on local internet searches to estimate the emergence of influenza-like illness in a given geographic location in real time.3 Previously, GFT has been proven to strongly correlate with influenza incidence at the national and regional level.2,3 GFT has shown promise as an easily accessed tool to enhance influenza surveillance and forecasting; however, further geographic validation of city-level data is needed. 1,2,6

Objective

To test if Google Flu Trends (GFT) is predictive of the volume of influenza and pneumonia emergency department (ED) visits across multiple United States cities.

 

Active surveillance for influenza is a useful but costly endeavor. In recent years infoveillance tools have been developed to track and analyze data available on the Internet and social media (Eysenbach 2011). While infoveillance tools have been developed, few tools focus on geo-targeted data collection at a local level combined with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capability.

Objective

We developed geo-targeted social media application program interfaces (APIs) for Twitter and a web-based social media analytics and research testbed (SMART) dashboard to analyze “flu” related tweets. During the 2013-14 flu season, for 10 cities with active surveillance for influenza (ILI), we correlated weekly tweeting rates and visual patterns of flu tweeting rates. To facilitate widespread use and testing of this system, we developed an interactive webbased dashboard “SMART” that allows practitioners to monitor and visualize daily changes of flu trends and related flu news.

 

There is growing recognition that an inability to access timely health indicators can hamper both the design and the effective implementation of infectious diseases control interventions. In malaria control, the global use of standard interventions has driven down the burden of disease in many regions. Further gains in high transmission areas and elimination in lower transmission settings, however, will require an enhanced understanding of malaria epidemiology, population characteristics, and efficacy of clinical and public health programs at the local level. Currently, there is a dearth of information available to fine-tune malaria control interventions at the local level. A key obstacle is the fragmentation of data into silos, as existing data cannot be brought together to estimate accurate and timely health metrics.

Objective

Driven by the need to bring malaria surveillance data from different sources together to support evidence-based decision making, we are conducting the “Scalable Data Integration for Disease Surveillance” (SDIDS) project. This project aims to foster the integration of existing surveillance data to support evidence-based decision-making in malaria control and demonstrate a model applicable to other diseases. Central to this initiative is collaboration between academia, governmental and NGO sectors.

The global effort of malaria control is in line with the one world one health concept, but then a globally defined ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ malaria control strategy would be inefficient in endemic areas. Plasmodium falciparum is the type of malaria parasite that most often causes severe and life-threatening malaria. People get malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Regional malaria elimination campaigns in 1940s followed by the Global Malaria Eradication Program in 1955 did not succeed in eliminating malaria from subSaharan Africa, which accounts for 80% of today’s burden of malaria. The basic reproductive number, Ro, has played a central role in epidemiological theory for malaria and other infectious diseases because it provides an index of transmission intensity and establishes threshold criteria.

Objective

To examine the likely impact of malaria parasite intervention points for a steady state regional control program in endemic areas

In Mozambique about 10% of deaths in children are due to ARI. Although influenza (Flu) virus may be implicated in these infections, little is known about the circulation of this virus in the country. Thus, Mozambique implemented the influenza surveillance based on sentinel sites, facing a great challenge due to several factors. One of them is the proper influenza case definition along with others challenges since its international standardization is difficult. In order to get insights to the epidemiology of flu we reviewed the first year of surveillance implementation monitoring data to improve procedures.

Objective

Analyse challenges of the first year of surveillance implementation in Mozambique, according to samples income, hospital staff performance and available tools.

Compare two influenza surveillance approaches

Syndromic surveillance system has been developed and implemented all over the world, and many studies showed that syndromic data sources had improved timeliness towards traditional surveillance method in the early warning of some infectious disease epidemics. However, owing to the uncertainties of disease epidemic features, clinical manifestations and population behaviors, the early warning timeliness of syndromic data sources might change across time and population, and few studies had explored their consistency in different epidemic periods of infectious diseases.

Objective

To study and compare the timeliness of syndromic surveillance system for the early warning of infectious diseases among different epidemic seasons.