Emergency Department Use Among Vermont Homeless Families

Background: Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) houses homeless individuals and families from the Burlington area. COTS believes that a high proportion of their residents use the Fletcher Allen Health Care Emergency Department (FAHCED) for their health care more frequently compared to the general population. There are many other primary care services offered in the Burlington area, such as Safe Harbor Clinic, Community Health Center, and private offices, which are more appropriate for non-emergent health concerns and are readily accessible to the homeless population. By surveying the population of homeless families in Burlington and conducting a focus group with the COTS staff, we hoped to discover the reasons for ED usage, potential barriers to primary health care, and any possible changes that could ameliorate the health care of this populationhttps://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1053/thumbnail.jp

Pacific Portraits: The People Behind the Scenes at Pacific University (Volume One)

When a dormitory toilet is clogged, who’s the guy charged with fixing it? Who assures that benefits and work-study monies are paid and accounted for on time? And who is tasked with ensuring Luau goes off without a hitch or that students from Saudi Arabia know how to navigate the cultural idiosyncrasies of an American university? Meet the people who work behind the scenes at Pacific University—the community of staff and faculty—as captured by Pacific’s own creative writing and photography students. Their jobs and lives are varied, but their dedication to ensuring a dynamic educational experience in all its varieties is common between them. This book strives to capture and share their stories through the creative efforts of the students their work serves.https://commons.pacificu.edu/beetree/1001/thumbnail.jp

The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new optical time-domain survey that uses the Palomar 48 inch Schmidt telescope. A custom-built wide-field camera provides a 47 deg 2 field of view and 8 s readout time, yielding more than an order of magnitude improvement in survey speed relative to its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory. We describe the design and implementation of the camera and observing system. The ZTF data system at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center provides near-real-time reduction to identify moving and varying objects. We outline the analysis pipelines, data products, and associated archive. Finally, we present on-sky performance analysis and first scientific results from commissioning and the early survey. ZTF’s public alert stream will serve as a useful precursor for that of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public–private enterprise, is a new time-domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg2 field of view and an 8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time-domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities that provided funding (“partnership”) are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r∼20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF, including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei, and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and solar system objects. © 2019. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific

The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new optical time-domain survey that uses the Palomar 48 inch Schmidt telescope. A custom-built wide-field camera provides a 47 deg^2 field of view and 8 s readout time, yielding more than an order of magnitude improvement in survey speed relative to its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory. We describe the design and implementation of the camera and observing system. The ZTF data system at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center provides near-real-time reduction to identify moving and varying objects. We outline the analysis pipelines, data products, and associated archive. Finally, we present on-sky performance analysis and first scientific results from commissioning and the early survey. ZTF's public alert stream will serve as a useful precursor for that of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Does the DOSPERT scale predict risk-taking behaviour during travel? A study using smartphones

Despite the continuing growth of international tourism, very little research has been done on the link between individual risk attitudes and health behaviours during travel. Our study uses a validated risk-taking questionnaire Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) and data from a smartphone application to study the association between pre-travel risk attitudes and the occurrence of behaviours during travel.; A prospective cohort of travellers to Thailand used a smartphone application to answer a daily questionnaire about health behaviours and events. Prior to travel, participants completed the DOSPERT, a validated 30-item scale that assesses risk-taking and perception in five content domains: financial decisions, health/safety, recreational, ethical and social decisions. Multiple linear regression models were used to model the relationship between DOSPERT risk-taking subdomain score and health behaviour.; Of the 75 travellers that completed the study, 70 (93.3%) completed the DOSPERT pre-travel. Men, backpackers and young travellers reported a higher willingness to take recreational risks than women, luxury travellers and older travellers. Incidence of drug and alcohol risk behaviours during travel, itching from mosquitoes, smoking and failing to use a seatbelt in automobiles while at home were all significantly associated with an individual's score on the health and safety DOSPERT subdomain.; In our study, individual scores on risk-taking in the health and safety subdomain of the DOSPERT questionnaire seem to be predictive of health behaviours both during travel and at home. By pairing new methods of data collection with questionnaires such as DOSPERT that identify key traveller characteristics to intervene on, travel medicine doctors will be able to provide more specialised health advice, ensuring that all travellers receive well-rounded advice about the full range of health challenges they will face during travel

The quantified self during travel: mapping health in a prospective cohort of travellers

Background: Travel medicine research has remained relatively unchanged in the face of rapid expansion of international travel and is unlikely to meet health challenges beyond infectious diseases. Our aim was to identify the range of health outcomes during travel using real-time monitoring and daily reporting of health behaviours and outcomes and identify traveller subgroups who may benefit from more targeted advice before and during travel. Methods: We recruited a prospective cohort of travellers ≥ 18 years and planning travel to Thailand for <5 weeks from the travel clinics in Zurich and Basel (Switzerland). Participants answered demographic, clinical and risk behaviour questionnaires pre-travel and a daily health questionnaire each day during travel using a smartphone application. Environmental and location data were collected passively by GPS. Classification trees were used to identify predictors of health behaviour and outcomes during travel. Results: Non-infectious disease events were relatively common, with 22.7% (17 out of 75 travellers) experiencing an accident, 40.0% (n = 30) a wound or cut and 14.7% (n = 11) a bite or lick from an animal. Mental health associated events were widely reported, with 80.0% (n = 60) reporting lethargy, 34.7% (n = 26) anxiety and 34.7% (n = 26) feeling tense or irritable. Classification trees identified age, trip length, previous travel experience and having experienced a sports injury in the past year as the most important discriminatory variables for health threats. Conclusions: Our study offers a revolutionary look at an almost real-time timeline of health events and behaviours during travel using mHealth technology. Non-infectious disease related health issues were common in this cohort, despite being largely unaddressed in traditional travel medicine research and suggest a substantial potential for improving evidence-based travel medicine advice

Streaming data from a smartphone application: A new approach to mapping health during travel

BACKGROUND: New research methods offer opportunities to investigate the influence of environment on health during travel. Our study uses data from a smartphone application to describe spatial and environmental patterns in health among travellers. METHODS: A prospective cohort of travellers to Thailand used a smartphone application during their trips to 1) answer a daily questionnaire about health behaviours and events, and 2) collect streaming data on environment, itinerary, and weather. Incidence of health events was described by region and trip type. The relationship between environmental factors and health events was modelled using a logistic mixed model. RESULTS: The 75/101 (74.3%) travellers that completed the study answered 940 questionnaires, 796 (84.7%) of which were geolocated to Southeast Asia. Accidents occurred to 20.0% of participants and were mainly in the Thai islands, while self-rated "severe" mental health events (21.3%) were centred in Bangkok. The odds of a health event were higher in Chiang Mai (2.34, 95% CI: 1.08, 5.08) and on rainy days (1.86, 95% CI: 1.03, 3.36). CONCLUSIONS: Distinct patterns in spatial and environmental risk factors emerged in travellers to Thailand. Location based tracking could identify "hotspots" for health problems and update travel advice to target specific risk groups and regions

Travel medicine and mHealth technology : a study using smartphones to collect health data during travel

mHealth methodology such as smartphone applications offers new opportunities to capture the full range of health risks during travel in real time. Our study aims to widen the scope of travel health research in tropical and subtropical destinations by using a smartphone application to collect detailed information on health behaviours, clinical symptoms, accidents and environmental factors during travel.; We enrolled travel clinic clients in Zurich and Basel ≥18 years of age travelling to Thailand for &lt;5 weeks. Sociodemographic, clinical and risk behaviour information was collected pre-travel. Participants were equipped with a smartphone and an application that (1) actively administers a daily self-report questionnaire on the health risks, behaviours and symptoms the traveller encountered, and (2) passively collects information on the traveller's location and environmental conditions by transformation of raw GPS data.; A prospective cohort of 101 travellers planning travel to Thailand between January and June 2015 was recruited. Of the 101 enrolled travellers, 75 (74.3%) answered at least one questionnaire during travel, 10 (9.9%) had technical difficulties and 16 (15.8%) dropped out. Those who completed questionnaires were a median of 27.0 years old (range 18-57). Travellers filled out a median of 12.0 questionnaires during their trip (range 1-30), corresponding to a median completion rate of 85.0% days of travel. The typical example of a healthy female traveller shows that many and diverse health issues arise during a trip that clusters on certain days. The rich data on behaviour and local environment may be used to explain the occurrence and clustering of health issues.; Use of a smartphone app to collect health information is technically feasible and acceptable amongst a traveller population, minimizes recall bias and greatly increases the quality and quantity of data collected during travel. mHealth technology shows great potential for innovation in travel medicine