Infectious Disease

Currently Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employ threshold rules to declare epidemic outbreaks, such as influenza, separately in each population. However each year influenza starts in one population and spreads population-to-population throughout the country. Therefore there is a need for an algorithm to declare the epidemic that uses information from multiple populations.

Objective

Detect epidemics over multiple Populations using computational methods

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease of veterinary, public health and economic significance in most developing countries, yet there are few studies that show integrated human and veterinary health care intervention focusing on integration at both activity and actors levels. The aim of our study, therefore, was to explore community perceptions on integration of animal vaccination and health education by veterinary and public health workers in the management of brucellosis.

Objective

To explore community perceptions on integration of animal vaccination and health education by veterinary and public health workers in the management of brucellosis.

Recently signed in Denver, the Paris Declaration demonstrates a collective resolution to end AIDS by continually monitoring these goals. However siloed data and in/out migration results in poor capacity to track population level care indicators for persons living with HIV (PLWH). Surveillance should not only enumerate PLWH but also support prevention and care programming (1). We designed and implemented the HIV Data to Care Tool to describe the continuum, from case finding to HIV care. This study describes a system to combine data sources to inform local HIV surveillance, outreach, and care. Development objectives included targeted community and clinical interventions and evaluation, user defined reports to identify subpopulation disparities, and a persistent data visualization readily available to stakeholders.

Objective

To describe Denver Public Health’s model for designing a business intelligence (BI) tool for HIV surveillance and outreach and the impact after implementation.

The Louisiana Office of Public Health (OPH) Infectious Disease Epidemiology Section conducts emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance using the Louisiana Early Event Detection System (LEEDS). LEEDS automatically processes electronic chief complaint, admit reason and diagnosis data to identify ED visits indicative of specific syndromes. In response to local transmission of chikungunya virus in the Caribbean and the first travel-associated case in Louisiana in May of 2014, OPH conducted an arboviral syndromic surveillance study to validate arboviral syndromes and evaluate the utility and practicality of detecting and monitoring arboviral disease using ED chief complaint, admit reason and diagnosis text data.

Objective

To validate arboviral syndromes and evaluate the utility and practicality of detecting and monitoring arboviral disease using ED chief complaint, admit reason and diagnosis text data.

Rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) can prevent fatal encephalitis associated with exposure to the rabies virus. However, overuse and inappropriate administration of rabies PEP are common.1 Mandatory reporting of potential rabies exposures provides opportunities for public health practitioners to monitor the appropriateness of PEP administration and offer recommendations. In Illinois, potential human exposure to rabies, including any person started on PEP and any person with contact to a bat, must be reported to the local health authority. Previous investigations into the completeness of rabies reporting have concluded that active surveillance in addition to mandatory reporting may be useful.2 As rabies PEP is often given in an emergency department setting, syndromic surveillance records may provide a basis for estimating completeness of reporting and identifying candidates for active surveillance follow up.

Objective

To determine whether unreported cases of potential human exposure to rabies can be detected using an emergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance system and to assess both reporting completeness and compliance with clinical guidelines related to rabies exposures in suburban Cook County.

Arizona is facing multiple public health threats from arboviral diseases. State and local public health departments are monitoring two mosquito-borne outbreaks within its borders and two in adjacent territories. To prevent transmission, viremic patients must be identified in a timely manner and encouraged to avoid additional mosquito exposure and vector control actions must be implemented. Using traditional surveillance, however, health departments may not be alerted until the laboratory confirms and reports a positive result, which may take up to 14 days after specimen collection. The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) partnered with local public health jurisdictions to enhance traditional arboviral surveillance by incorporating syndromic surveillance.

Objective

To develop a protocol for enhancing traditional arboviral surveillance with syndromic surveillance and to evaluate the protocol for accuracy, effectiveness, and timeliness

Champaign and Urbana, Illinois are considered twin cities that share the University of Illinois. Due to different geographic recruitment procedures, Champaign and Urbana public elementary schools offer a particularly novel opportunity to examine the H1N1 outbreak among students. Urbana schools recruit from specific geographic areas (neighborhoods) designated by the school district whereas Champaign schools are non-selective in their composition where students residing in Champaign can attend any school within the city.

Objective

The goal of this project is to examine the patterns of school absenteeism during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 comparing two contiguous school districts with very different enrollment policies.

The burdens of poverty and disease continue to affect the livelihoods of pastoralists in Tanzania. Their knowledge of seasons and the ecosystems has evolved over years to manage human and animal health problems, including food insecurity. But, both local and global factors are putting pressure on their knowledge base and their capacity to manage health issues, this conflict has not been adequately explored nor have the synergies between indigenous and exotic knowledge.

Objective

To collect and assess indigenous knowledge and practices to manage diseases of food security as well as create opportunities to disseminate results for improving self-help.

In recent years, the threat of pandemic influenza has drawn extensive attention to the development and implementation of syndromic surveillance systems for early detection of ILI. Emergency department (ED) data are key components for syndromic surveillance systems. However, the lack of standardization for the content in chief complaint (CC) free-text fields may make it challenging to use these elements in syndromic surveillance systems. Furthermore, little is known regarding how ED data sources should be structured or combined to increase sensitivity without elevating false positives. In this study, we constructed two different models of ED data sources and evaluated the resulting ILI rates obtained in two different institutions.

Objective

To compare the influenza-like illness (ILI) rates in the emergency departments (ED) of a community hospital versus a large academic medical center (AMC).

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe illness that spread in the human population through human-to-human transmission. In the past, EVD outbreaks occurred in the rural communities of Africa, near tropical rainforests, but the most recent outbreak in West Africa has also involved major urban areas and big cities, with air travel playing an important role in its spread.On July 23, 2014, the EVD outbreak was declared in Nigeria following the confirmation of EVD in a traveller, who arrived acutely ill at the international airport in Lagos, South Western Nigeria from Liberia .The outbreak subsequently filtered to a South Southern Nigeria city, by a symptomatic contact who escaped surveillance in Lagos and flew to the South Southern city.

Objective

This study describes the epidemiological characteristics and the transmission dynamics of the EVD outbreak in a South-Southern city of Nigeria.