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Poster

Description

Different studies have shown that Streptococcal infections in adults are more common among older age, blacks, and underlying chronic medical conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney diseases. In specific, other studies have demonstrated that streptococcal pyogenes can cause severe illnesses and dramatic hospital outbreaks. Furthermore, community-acquired pneumonia studies had also suggested that cardiovascular disease, severe renal disease, chronic lung disease and diabetes were associated with increased odds of hospitalization.

Objective:

To study the factors associated with streptococcal infection that led to hospitalization in Houston, Texas for years 2015-2016

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Environmental Public Health Zoonotic Disease surveillance includes veternary, environmental, and vector data. Surveillance systems within each sector may appear disparate from each other, although they are actually complimentaly and closely allied. Consolidating and integrating data in to one application can be challenging, but there are commonalities shared by all. The goal of the One Health Integrated Data Sysytem is to standardize data collection, streamline data entry, and integrate these sectors in to one application.

Objective:

Integrate and streamline the collection and analysis of environmental, veterinary, and vector zoonotic data using a One Health approach to data system development.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Each significant outbreak and epidemic raises questions that must be answered in order to better inform future preparedness and response efforts, such as:

  • What are the systems and resources needed to characterize an outbreak?
  • What systems and resources are needed to bring an outbreak to a close?

While we can anticipate these types of questions, the absence of dedicated mechanisms to record operational experiences and challenges can result in valuable, ephemeral data that are crucial for improving outbreak response not being consistently collected or analyzed. Participation in outbreaks by external experts can be instrumental in ensuring that this important operational information is documented, analyzed and shared with the broader public health community. There is a particular need for observers external to the response who can capture and analyze applied data about the operational response to outbreaks—eg, the systems and strategies involved in responding to the such events ”in order to improve our understanding of best practices for detecting and responding to these events. These can then be shared so that the entire public health community can access and incorporate lessons learned into their own preparedness and response plans. External observers can also help describe the important work performed by local responders during outbreaks and advocate for necessary preparedness and response program resources. The Outbreak Observatory is currently in a pilot phase and is looking for international and US partners who may be interested in collaborating with members of our team during their next outbreak response.

Objective:

The Outbreak Observatory (OO) aims to:

  • Strengthen outbreak/epidemic preparedness and response activities through real-time, one-the-ground observations and analyses ●Identify best practices based on operational experience that are broadly applicable across outbreak response agencies
  • Serve as an independent voice to advocate for policies that support preparedness and response activities based on expert assessment of the resources required to build and maintain necessary outbreak response capabilities Support local practitioners’ efforts to publish their experiences
  • Sharing the firsthand experience of responders is critical for building outbreak preparedness and response capacity, and OO will serve as a dedicated mechanism to collect, analyze and disseminate this information
Submitted by elamb on
Description

The negative effect of air pollution on human health is well documented illustrating increased risk of respiratory, cardiac and other health conditions. Currently, during air pollution episodes Public Health England (PHE) syndromic surveillance systems provide a near real-time analysis of the health impact of poor air quality. In England, syndromic surveillance has previously been used on an ad hoc basis to monitor health impact; this has usually happened during widespread national air pollution episodes where the air pollution index has reached "High"™ or "Very High"™ levels on the UK Daily Air Quality Index (DAQI). We now aim to undertake a more systematic approach to understanding the utility of syndromic surveillance for monitoring the health impact of air pollution. This would improve our understanding of the sensitivity and specificity of syndromic surveillance systems for contributing to the public health response to acute air pollution incidents; form a baseline for future interventions; assess whether syndromic surveillance systems provide a useful tool for public health alerting; enable us to explore which pollutants drive changes in health-care seeking behaviour; and add to the knowledge base.

Objective:

To explore the utility of syndromic surveillance systems for detecting and monitoring the impact of air pollution incidents on health-care seeking behaviour in England between 2012 and 2017.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Cryptosporidiosis is a diarrheal disease caused by microscopic parasite Cryptosporidium. Modes of transmission include eating undercooked food contaminated with the parasite, swallowing something that has come into contact with human or animal feces, or swallowing pool water contaminated with the parasite. The disease is clinically manifested usually with chronic diarrhea and abdominal cramps. It is found to be more prevalent in immunocompromised patients like HIV and AIDS. Cryptosporidiosis usually causes potentially life-threatening disease in people with AIDS.

Objective:

To demonstrate the demographic and clinical distribution of reported Cryptosporidiosis cases in Houston, Texas, from 2013-2016

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Bangladesh is a South Asian country with large human and poultry populations which is highly affected with frequent outbreaks of both high and low pathogenic avian influenza since 2007. Very few studies have been carried out to reveal the farm biosecurity at backyard poultry that might have contributed to the spread of avian influenza in Bangladesh, specially rural areas. Therefore, we aimed to characterize biosecurity practices of poultry farm including the movement of live birds which is a well-known risk factor for the geographic dissemination of the virus among poultry flocks and personnel hygiene of poultry workers for rapid detection and effective risk management of incursion of HPAI and LPAI viruses.

Objective:

We have conducted this study to characterise the movement and contact patterns of poultry in Bangladesh that could be associated with transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in two districts of Bangladesh as well as to summarise the patterns arising from the network analysis in a way that can inform the parameterisation of spatially explicit stochastic models of transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in the two types of areas.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Public Health England's syndromic surveillance service monitor presentations for gastrointestinal illness to detect increases in health care seeking behaviour driven by infectious gastrointestinal disease. We use regression models to create baselines for expected activity and then identify any periods of signficant increases. The introduction of a rotavirus vaccine in England during July 2013 (Bawa, Z. et al. 2015) led to a reduction in incidence of the disease, requiring a readjustment of baselines.

Objective:

To adjust modelled baselines used for syndromic surveillance to account for public health interventions. Specifically to account for a change in the seasonality of diarrhoea and vomiting indicators following the introduction of a rotavirus vaccine in England.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Syndromic surveillance involves monitoring big health datasets to provide early warning of threats to public health. Public health authorities use statistical detection algorithms to interrogate these datasets for aberrations that are indicative of emerging threats. The algorithm currently in use at Public Health England (PHE) for syndromic surveillance is the ‘rising activity, multi-level mixed effects, indicator emphasis’ (RAMMIE) method (Morbey et al, 2015), which fits a mixed model to counts of syndromes on a daily basis. This research checks whether the RAMMIE method works across a range of public health scenarios and how it compares to alternative methods.

Objective:

To investigate whether alternative statistical approaches can improve daily aberration detection using syndromic surveillance in England.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Although effective preventive measures for heat-related illness have been recommended and mandated for military personnel, there continues to be incident cases. In 2016, there were 401 incident cases of heat stroke and 2,135 incident cases of “other heat illness” among all active component service members. Current military guidelines utilize the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) index to measure heat risk, guiding work/rest and hydration practices. The WBGT requires calibrated instrumentation and is based on fixed cutoff values. We propose using readily available meteorological data inputs and EHI cases to identify and validate an EHI risk prediction model. Prior studies have found that combinations of WBGT and the previous day’s WBGT and relative humidity and temperature have predictive value for EHI. We build upon prior work by using generalized additive models (GAMs).

Objective:

To identify predictors of the risk of developing exertional heat illness (EHI) among basic training populations in the Department of Defense.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Traditional surveillance methods have a major challenge to estimating the burden of disease due to underreporting. Participatory surveillance techniques can help supplement to monitor and detect foodborne outbreaks while reducing the impact of underreporting. As there is a low participation rate in Singapore, this study aims to better understand the barriers and facilitators to reporting and assesses what improvements can increase participation.

Objective:

To better understand the barriers and facilitators to reporting and assessing what improvements would increase participation.

Submitted by elamb on