PHINews

In and around PHIN -- Epi InfoTM goes open source -- 5th NHIN Forum showcases biosurveillance data exchange -- Notes from the field: AIDS relief and informatics -- NCPHI and NCIRD: Collaboration for critical events -- New NCPHI website launched -- PHINews Feedback

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health From Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2008

Examines ten indicators to assess progress in state readiness to respond to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies. Evaluates the federal government's and hospitals' preparedness. Makes suggestions for funding, restructuring, and other reforms

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationPublic health surveillance systems are crucial for the timely detection and response to public health threats. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the release of anthrax in the following month, there has been a heightened interest in public health surveillance. The years immediately following these attacks were met with increased awareness and funding from the federal government which has significantly strengthened the United States surveillance capabilities; however, despite these improvements, there are substantial challenges faced by today's public health surveillance systems. Problems with the current surveillance systems include: a) lack of leveraging unstructured public health data for surveillance purposes; and b) lack of information integration and the ability to leverage resources, applications or other surveillance efforts due to systems being built on a centralized model. This research addresses these problems by focusing on the development and evaluation of new informatics methods to improve the public health surveillance. To address the problems above, we first identified a current public surveillance workflow which is affected by the problems described and has the opportunity for enhancement through current informatics techniques. The 122 Mortality Surveillance for Pneumonia and Influenza was chosen as the primary use case for this dissertation work. The second step involved demonstrating the feasibility of using unstructured public health data, in this case death certificates. For this we created and evaluated a pipeline iv composed of a detection rule and natural language processor, for the coding of death certificates and the identification of pneumonia and influenza cases. The second problem was addressed by presenting the rationale of creating a federated model by leveraging grid technology concepts and tools for the sharing and epidemiological analyses of public health data. As a case study of this approach, a secured virtual organization was created where users are able to access two grid data services, using death certificates from the Utah Department of Health, and two analytical grid services, MetaMap and R. A scientific workflow was created using the published services to replicate the mortality surveillance workflow. To validate these approaches, and provide proofs-of-concepts, a series of real-world scenarios were conducted

National Biosurveillance Advisory Committee (NBAS) summary minutes, August 24, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

The purpose of this meeting was to begin preparations for the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee\u2019s (NBAS) work ahead toward submission of its second report to the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Publication date from document properties.201

Emerging Threats to One Health: Implications to U.S. National Security Program

The program for the April 12, 2011 colloquium on Emerging Threats to One Health: Implications to U.S. National Security

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health From Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2009

Based on ten indicators, assesses progress in the readiness of states, federal government, and hospitals to respond to public health emergencies, with a focus on the H1N1 flu. Outlines improvements and concerns in funding, accountability, and other areas

Improving Antibiotic Resistant Infection Transmission Situational Awareness in Enclosed Facilities with a Novel Graphical User Interface for Tactical Biosurveillance

Serious challenges associated with antibiotic resistant infections (ABRIs) force healthcare practitioners (HCP) to seek innovative approaches that will slow the emergence of new ABRIs and prevent their spread. It was realized that traditional approaches to infection prevention based on education, retrospective reports, and biosurveillance often fail to ensure reliable compliance with infection prevention guidelines and real-time problem solving. The objective of this original research was to develop and test the conceptual design of a situational awareness (SA)-oriented information system for coping with healthcare-associated infection transmission. Constantly changing patterns in spatial distribution of patients, prevalence of infectious cases, clustering of contacts, and frequency of contacts may compromise the effectiveness of infection prevention and control in hospitals. It was hypothesized that providing HCPs with a graphical user interface (GUI) to visualize spatial information on the risks of exposure to ABRIs would effectively increase HCPs’ SA. Increased SA may enhance biosurveillance and result in tactical decisions leading to better patient outcomes. The study employed a mixed qualitative-quantitative research method encompassing conceptualization of GUI content, transcription of electronic health record and biosurveillance data into GUI visual artifacts, and evaluation of the GUI’s impact on HCPs’ perception and comprehension of the conditions that increase the risk of ABRI transmission. The study provided pilot evidence that visualization of spatial disease distribution and spatially-linked exposures and interventions significantly increases HCPs’ SA when compared to current practice. The research demonstrates that the SA-oriented GUI enables the HCPs to promptly answer the question, “At a given location, what are the risks of infection transmission there?” This research provides a new form of medical knowledge representation for spatial population-based decision-making within enclosed environments. The next steps include rapid application development and further hypothesis testing concerning the impact of this GUI on decsion-making