Foodborne Illness

Epidemiologists, public health agencies and scientists increasingly augment traditional surveillance systems with alternative data sources such as, digital surveillance systems utilizing news reports and social media, over-the-counter medication sales, and school absenteeism. Similar to school absenteeism, an increase in reservation cancellations could serve as an early indicator of social disruption including a major public health event. In this study, we evaluated whether a rise in restaurant table availabilities could be associated with an increase in disease incidence.

Objective

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak.

An increasing amount of global discourse reporting has migrated to the online space, in the form of publicly accessible social media outlets, blogs, wikis, and news feeds. Social media also presents pub- licly available and highly accessible information about individual, real-time activity that can be leveraged to detect, monitor, and more efficiently respond to biological events.

Objective

We propose a cloud-based Open Source Health Intelligence (OS- HINT) system that uses open source media outlets, such as Twitter and RSS feeds, to automatically characterize foodborne illness events in real-time. OSHINT also forecasts response requirements, through predictive models, to allow more efficient use of resources, person- nel, and countermeasures in biological event response.

Foodborne illnesses sicken 48 million and kill 3,000 Americans every year, presenting an enduring threat to the public’s health. In just the past three years alone, the United States has experienced at least four major multistate outbreaks in food. Despite this growing problem, efforts to prevent foodborne illness pose a particular public health challenge due in part to the widely variable laws governing foodborne illness surveillance and outbreak response. The recent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) presents an opportunity for researchers, program managers, and policy makers to assess and correct the legal barriers that may hinder states in effectively implementing the FSMA’s vision with regard to increased state and local capacity for surveillance and outbreak response.

Objective

To document and assess the variation in state legislation relating to foodborne disease surveillance and outbreak response for all 50 states and the District of Columbia by creating a database and appendix of laws and regulations that will be made available to researchers and policymakers.

Salmonellosis is the zoonotic disease caused by Salmonella bacteria. These are food-borne pathogens, which require improvement of diagnostics and surveillance measures. Prior to implementation of a PCR-based system for monitoring Salmonella, presence and differentiation of the agent was validated under Office International Epizootical (O.I.E.) requirements.

Objective

This study aimed to perform interlaboratory testing and clarification of the PCR-based test for its implementation in Ukraine.

Traditional surveillance systems only capture a fraction of the estimated 48 million yearly cases of foodborne illness in the United States due to few affected individuals seeking medical care and lack of reporting to appropriate authorities. Non-traditional disease surveillance approaches could be used to supplement foodborne illness surveillance systems.

Objective

We assessed whether foodservice reviews on Yelp.com (a business review site) can be used to support foodborne illness surveillance efforts.

In most disadvantaged communities in Northern Nigeria, adolescent girls engage in economic activities so that they can save money for household items to be bought for them when they are given out for marriage. These girls right from before they reach teenage age hawk items which include ready-to-eat foods. Various socio-cultural and environmental factors reinforce vulnerability of foods to microorganisms. Food safety awareness, knowledge and practices among food vendors can be affected by interplay between individual and outdoor factors. Teenagers engage in hawking food without understanding food-related risks for the preservation of their health and the health of others. Food hygiene is the conditions and measures necessary to ensure the safety of food from production to consumption. Lack of adequate food hygiene can lead to foodborne diseases and death of the consumer. Mishandling of food can occur during food preparation, handling and storage; and studies show that consumers have inadequate knowledge about measures needed to prevent food-borne illness. There are a number of factors which are likely to contribute to outbreaks of food-borne illness in the home, including a raw food supply that may be contaminated, a lack of food safety knowledge among the general public, mistakes in food handling and preparation at home.

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.