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Health Surveillance

Description

How are interactive story map journals situated within the genre of interactive, health science reporting? How can reporting information to public audiences be theorized through traditional and contemporary understandings of new media genres in technical, health and science communication (1-7). Although the polio vaccine has eradicated the disease in the United States, and 99% worldwide (8), PPS has emerged as a present-day condition that continues to affect many polio survivors years after the initial onset and recovery. Since the symptoms of PPS are oftentimes mis-identified as other illnesses, the diagnosis and management of disease is especially challenging for PPS survivors due to the limited knowledge of and access to PPS resources and support networks (9-11). In 2011, Esri created the ArcGIS story map initiative to meet a need for public audiences who sought how to critically think, better understand, communicate, and interact with world news events. ArcGIS is a geospatially-driven, new media platform that enables audiences to engage with interactive storytelling of news events. Public health and news reporting agencies are now turning to Esri and similar interactive, geospatially driven new media platforms for health and disease surveillance (12-14). Esri's ArcGIS mobile and web technology platform visually reports, maps and tracks population health data information. With the emergence of such new media applications, it is therefore important to recognize multimodal, visualization strategies that investigate how interaction design choices within the story map journal influence and engage public health audiences. In the field of technical and professional communication (15), applied concept of visual-material rhetorics is a useful mode of inquiry in the study of interactive story map journals. Propen's concept presents a new understanding of how researchers in disease and public health surveillance can analyze the effectiveness of text and new media technology in relationship to space, place, and geospatial mapping. More specifically, Propen's concept situates the visual-material as the applied use of text with visual, interactive multimodal components inclusive of images, video, and GPS/GIS mapping technologies.

Objective: A case study on the visual-material components of story map journals as visual, new media interactive health reporting used in population health surveillance. The story map journal is demonstrated an effective tool that visually reports, maps and tracks global support networks and health resources for post-polio (PPS) survivors.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Karachi is the largest metropolitan, principal port city and commercial hub of Pakistan. Although there is a national database for registering vital evens such as births and deaths but like in any other developing country the coverage of the system is sub optimal with many of birth and death not recorded. Undercounting of these events leads to inaccurate estimates of vital indicators for informed decision and planning for health at local and national level. In these settings demographic surveillance systems have the potential to supplement data from the vital registration systems and provide avenues for research by virtue of having a well-defined cohort and continuous surveillance. The Department of Paediatrics and Child Health of Aga Khan University Karachi, Pakistan maintains health and demographic surveillance system at four peri-urban and one urban community in Karachi with focus on maternal and child health. This also provide platform for many epidemiological and interventional studies as well as vaccination programs using a well-established identification procedures providing linkage to health and socio-economic data. In 2010 the surveillance system was reorganized to follow INDEPTH methodology and guidelines.

Objective

The purpose of Karachi Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) is to generate longitudinal information on health and demographics of a geographically defined population of low socioeconomic status and provide platform for larger projects in efforts for diseases control.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Presented July 10, 2018.

Why global mental health surveillance is important – understanding current issues in global mental health surveillance and learning strategies to improve mental health surveillance worldwide, particularly in low and middle –income countries.

Presenter

Shalini Ahuja, MA-HMPP, DHM, BPT, Global Mental Health Researcher, Centre for Implementation Science, Health Services and Population Research Department, King’s College London

Description

For radiological incidents, collecting surveillance data can identify radiation-related public health significant incidents quickly and enable public health officials to describe the characteristics of the affected population and the magnitude of the health impact which in turn can inform public health decision-making. A survey administered by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to state health departments in 2010 assessed the extent of state-level planning for surveillance of radiation-related exposures and incidents: 70%–84% of states reported minimal or no planning completed. One data source for surveillance of radiological exposures and illnesses is regional poison centers (PCs), who receive information requests and reported exposures from healthcare providers and the public. Since 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) have conducted ongoing surveillance for exposures to radiation and radioactive materials reported from all 57 United States (US) PCs to NPDS, a web-based, national PC reporting database and surveillance system.

 

Objective

To describe radiation-related exposures of potential public health significance reported to the National Poison Data System (NPDS).

Submitted by hparton on
Description

The French syndromic surveillance system SurSaUD was set up by the French institute for public health surveillance (InVS) in 2004. The system is based on three main data sources: 1) the attendances in the Emergency departments (ED), 2) the consultations to emergency General Practitioners’ associations SOS Médecins, 3) the mortality data from civil status offices and e-certificates.

In 2012, 400 of the 710 ED and 59 of the 62 GP’s associations are involved in the system. 80% of the national mortality is also collected. Given this large database and the need to analyze data in a short delay to reach the early warning objective of the system, a specific software has been developed.

 

Objective

The presentation describes the design and the main functionalities of the software developed to support the data management and data analysis of the French syndromic surveillance system.

Submitted by hparton on
Description

Under the revised International Health Regulations (IHR [2005]) one of the eight core capacities is public health surveillance. In May 2012, despite a concerted effort by the global community, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported out that a significant number of member states would not achieve targeted capacity in the IHR (2005) surveillance core capacity. Currently, there is no model to identify and measure these gaps in surveillance performance. Likewise, there is no toolset to assess interventions by cost and estimate the ROI. We developed a new conceptual framework that: (1) described the work practices to achieve effective and efficient public health surveillance; (2) could identify impediments or gaps in performance; and (3) will assist program managers in decision making.

Objective

To conceive and develop a model to identify gaps in public health surveillance performance and provide a toolset to assess interventions, cost, and return on investment (ROI).

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

Wearable devices are a low cost, minimally invasive way to monitor health. Sensor data provides real-time physiological indictors of an individual’s health status without the requirement of health care professionals or facilities. Information gleamed from wearable sensors can be used to better understand physiological stressors and prodromal symptoms. In addition, this data can be used to monitor individuals that are in high risk of health-related problems. However, raw data from wearable sensors can be overwhelming to process and laborious to monitor for an individual and, even more so, for a group of individuals. Often specific combination of ranges of sensor readings are indicative of changes to health status and need to be evaluated together or used to calculate specific signal parameters. In addition, the environment surrounding the individual needs to be considered when interpreting the data. To address these issues, PNNL has developed an application that collects, analyzes, and integrates wearable sensor data with geographic landscape and weather information to provide a real-time early alert and situational awareness tool for monitoring the health of groups and individuals.

Objective:

The Wearable Sensor Application developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) provides an early warning system for stressors to individual and group health using physiologic and environmental indicators. The application integrates health monitoring parameters from wearable sensors, e.g., temperature and heart rate, with relevant environmental parameters, e.g., weather and landscape data, and calculates the corresponding physiological strain index. The information is presented to the analyst in a group and individual view with real-time alerting of abnormal health parameters. This application is the first of its kind being developed for integration into the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE).

Submitted by elamb on
Description

A socio-marker is a measurable indicator of social conditions where a patient is embedded in and exposed to, being analogous with a biomarker indicating the severity or presence of some disease state. Social factors are one of the most clinical health determinants, which play a critical role in explaining health outcomes. Socio-markers can help medical practitioners and researchers to reliably identify high-risk individuals in a timely manner.

Objective:

Asthma is one of the most common chronic childhood diseases in the United States. In addition to its pervasiveness, pediatric asthma shows high sensitivity to the environment. Combining medical-social dataset with machine learning methods we demonstrate how socio-markers play an important role in identifying patients at risk of hospital revisits due to pediatric asthma within a year.

Submitted by elamb on