Examining Pedestrian Crash Trends and Data Sources in NC and Assessing the Effectiveness of a Community-Based Intervention to Prevent Pedestrian Injury

Evidence-based pedestrian safety programs are needed to combat rising pedestrian fatality incidence in the US. Research is lacking on the nature of pedestrian injury data sources and intervention development, delivery, and effectiveness. The dissertation aims were to: 1) evaluate how available data sources capture pedestrian injury and how determinants of pedestrian injuries differ across sources, 2) describe the Watch for Me NC intervention—a multifaceted pedestrian safety program involving public engagement, law enforcement, and engineering—and assess program delivery to identify implementation successes and challenges, and 3) estimate enforcement/engineering component effects on driver yielding. We used statewide North Carolina data sources (police reports, hospital emergency department visits, and death certificates) to analyze temporal and demographic pedestrian injury distributions. Comparison of injury data sources showed similar pedestrian injury distributions in relation to sex and temporal factors. Emergency data captured 20 percent of actual pedestrian fatalities and police data underrepresented pedestrian injury incidence, particularly among very young and old pedestrians. We used administrative records from ten cities to describe Watch for Me NC program delivery. Funding, partnerships, and training for law enforcement were instrumental in intervention implementation, and key challenges included limited resources (particularly law enforcement) to effectively engage large populations. To assess program effectiveness, we used a pre-post design with a control group, comparing locations receiving enforcement and engineering treatments with untreated locations to examine changes in driver yielding over a six-month period. Despite the intervention delivery limitations, driver yielding rates improved (between four and seven percentage points on average) at locations enhanced by enforcement and engineering, while remaining unchanged at untreated sites. This dissertation provides recommendations for making relevant comparisons between police, emergency, and death certificate data, and provides a better understanding of the discrepancies that exist between these data sources. It proposes process measures to increase the consistency and comparability of program delivery, and provides evidence that enhanced enforcement/engineering, as a part of a broader program, can increase driver yielding to pedestrians in marked crosswalks. These results can guide researchers and decision-makers in developing and evaluating pedestrian safety interventions.Doctor of Philosoph

PENGARUH TEKANAN KETAATAN DAN KOMPLEKSITAS TUGAS TERHADAP AUDIT JUDGMENT (Survey Terhadap Lima Kantor AkuntanPublik di Kota Bandung)

ABSTRAK Seperti yang kita ketahui bahwa seorang auditor dalam melakukan tugasnya membuat audit judgment dipengaruhi banyak faktor, baik bersifat teknis dan non teknis. Salah satu faktor non teknis adalah aspek perilaku individual. Aspek perilaku individu, sebagai salah satu faktor yang banyak mempengaruhi pembuatan audit judgment. Pada penelitian ini ada beberapa faktor yang mempengaruhi audit judgment yaitu tekanan ketaatan dan kompleksitas tugas. Dalam penelitian ini penullis ingin mengetahui sejauh mana “tekanan ketaatan dan kompleksitas tugas terhadap audit judgment”. Sedangkan tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui dan mempelajari tekanan ketaatan dan kompleksitas tugas terhadap audit judgment. Hipotesis yang diuji dalam penelitian ini adalah “ jika tekanan ketaatan dan kompleksitas tugas baik, maka audit judgment akan meningkat ( baik pula)”. Hipotesis ini berdasarkan asumsi bahwa tekanan ketaatan dan kompleksitas tugas berpengaruh terhadap audit judgment.dalam penelitian ini penulis menggunakan metode deskriptif asosiatif dengan pendekatan survey dan tes statistik. Penelitian ini terdiri dari atas variabel X1 dan X2 dan audit judgment sebagai veriabel Y atau variabel independen. Uji statistik dilakukan dengan mengolah data dari hasil jawaban kuesioner. Dalam penelitian ini, peulis menyebarkan angket kepada 5 Kantor Akuntan Publik di Kota Bandung khusunya untuk para auditor. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan cara penyebaran kuesioner yang telah diuji validitasnya dan reabilitasnya. Penelitian ini dilakukan di 5 KAP di Kota Bandung. Pengambilan sampel ini menggunakan purposive sampling berukuran 28 orang responden. Untuk uji hipotesis penelitian, penulis melakukannya dengan uji t untuk masing-masing variabel X1,X2, dan Y. Dari hasil uji tHitung tekanan ketaatan terhadap audit judgment tHitung =4,178>ttabel = 1.705 kompleksitas tugas terhadap audit judgment 5 tHitung = 3.364 > ttabel = 1,705. Maka, dari hasil uji hipotesis tersebut penulis menyimpulkan bahwa hipotesis penelitian diterima (Ho ditolak, Ha diterima) artinya terdapat pengaruh antara terkanan ketaatan terhadap audit judgment dan kompleksitas tugas terhadap audit judgment Untuk mencari besarnya pengaruh Tekanan ketaatan dan Kompleksitas Tugas terhadap Audit Judgment secara simultan penulis melakukannya dengan uji f dengan koefisien determinasi (KD). Dari hasil uji fhitung dan > f table yaitu 16,182>3,370. Kata kunci : Tekanan Ketaatan dan Kompleksitas tugas Terhadap Audit Judgmen

Altered infective competence of the human gut microbiome in COVID-19

BACKGROUND: Infections with SARS-CoV-2 have a pronounced impact on the gastrointestinal tract and its resident microbiome. Clear differences between severe cases of infection and healthy individuals have been reported, including the loss of commensal taxa. We aimed to understand if microbiome alterations including functional shifts are unique to severe cases or a common effect of COVID-19. We used high-resolution systematic multi-omic analyses to profile the gut microbiome in asymptomatic-to-moderate COVID-19 individuals compared to a control group. RESULTS: We found a striking increase in the overall abundance and expression of both virulence factors and antimicrobial resistance genes in COVID-19. Importantly, these genes are encoded and expressed by commensal taxa from families such as Acidaminococcaceae and Erysipelatoclostridiaceae, which we found to be enriched in COVID-19-positive individuals. We also found an enrichment in the expression of a betaherpesvirus and rotavirus C genes in COVID-19-positive individuals compared to healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS: Our analyses identified an altered and increased infective competence of the gut microbiome in COVID-19 patients. Video Abstract

The Luxembourg Parkinson’s Study: A Comprehensive Approach for Stratification and Early Diagnosis

While genetic advances have successfully defined part of the complexity in Parkinson’s disease (PD), the clinical characterization of phenotypes remains challenging. Therapeutic trials and cohort studies typically include patients with earlier disease stages and exclude comorbidities, thus ignoring a substantial part of the real-world PD population. To account for these limitations, we implemented the Luxembourg PD study as a comprehensive clinical, molecular and device-based approach including patients with typical PD and atypical parkinsonism, irrespective of their disease stage, age, comorbidities, or linguistic background. To provide a large, longitudinally followed, and deeply phenotyped set of patients and controls for clinical and fundamental research on PD, we implemented an open-source digital platform that can be harmonized with international PD cohort studies. Our interests also reflect Luxembourg-specific areas of PD research, including vision, gait, and cognition. This effort is flanked by comprehensive biosampling efforts assuring high quality and sustained availability of body liquids and tissue biopsies. We provide evidence for the feasibility of such a cohort program with deep phenotyping and high quality biosampling on parkinsonism in an environment with structural specificities and alert the international research community to our willingness to collaborate with other centers. The combination of advanced clinical phenotyping approaches including device-based assessment will create a comprehensive assessment of the disease and its variants, its interaction with comorbidities and its progression. We envision the Luxembourg Parkinson’s study as an important research platform for defining early diagnosis and progression markers that translate into stratified treatment approaches

Age at onset as stratifier in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease – effect of ageing and polygenic risk score on clinical phenotypes

Several phenotypic differences observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have been linked to age at onset (AAO). We endeavoured to find out whether these differences are due to the ageing process itself by using a combined dataset of idiopathic PD (n = 430) and healthy controls (HC; n = 556) excluding carriers of known PD-linked genetic mutations in both groups. We found several significant effects of AAO on motor and non-motor symptoms in PD, but when comparing the effects of age on these symptoms with HC (using age at assessment, AAA), only positive associations of AAA with burden of motor symptoms and cognitive impairment were significantly different between PD vs HC. Furthermore, we explored a potential effect of polygenic risk score (PRS) on clinical phenotype and identified a significant inverse correlation of AAO and PRS in PD. No significant association between PRS and severity of clinical symptoms was found. We conclude that the observed non-motor phenotypic differences in PD based on AAO are largely driven by the ageing process itself and not by a specific profile of neurodegeneration linked to AAO in the idiopathic PD patients

Evaluation of Pedestrian/Bicycle Crash Injury Case Definitions for Use with NC DETECT

ObjectiveTo evaluate four ICD-10-CM based case definitions designed to capture pedestrian and bicycle crash-related emergency department (ED) visits in North Carolina’s statewide syndromic surveillance system, NC DETECT.IntroductionOver the last few decades, the United States has made considerable progress in decreasing the incidence of motor vehicle occupants injured and killed in traffic collisions.1 However, there is still a need for continued motor vehicle crash (MVC) injury surveillance, particularly for vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists. In NC, the average annual number of pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes increased by 13.5 percent during the period 2011-2015, as compared to 2006-2010.2 Therefore, the Carolina Center for Health Informatics (CCHI), as part of a NC Governor’s Highway Safety Program-funded project to improve statewide MVC injury surveillance, developed and evaluated four ICD-10-CM based case definitions for use with NC DETECT, NC’s statewide syndromic surveillance system.MethodsWe created four pedestrian/bicycle crash injury case definitions based on ICD-10-CM transportation codes (“V-codes”): Traffic-Related Pedestrian Crashes, Traffic/Non-Traffic-Related Pedestrian Crashes, Traffic-Related Bicycle Crashes, and Traffic/Non-Traffic-Related Bicycle Crashes. These definitions were based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “ICD-10-CM External Cause of Injury Codes”.3 We then applied these pedestrian/bicycle crash case definitions to 2016-2017 NC DETECT ED visit data and data obtained from a single NC Level I Trauma Center. Next, we linked the two data sources using the variables date of visit, time of visit, and medical record number. Since trauma center data are collected and verified by a designated trauma registrar, we considered the data obtained from the Level I Trauma Center to be the “gold standard”.ResultsThe linkage between the two data sources was successful, with 99.5% of all Level I Trauma Center records linking to ED visits in NC DETECT. However, we found discrepancies in the assignment of codes between the ED visit and Trauma Center data. For example, 47.5% of NC DETECT ED visits that linked to a pedestrian/bicycle crash record in the Trauma Center data, were missing an ICD-10-CM injury mechanism code of any category. Historically, the proportion of injury-related ED visits that were missing corresponding injury mechanism codes was low (<15%). However, the transition from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM increased the proportion of injury-related visits missing injury mechanism codes.4 Among the 92 NC DETECT ED visits missing injury mechanism codes, 35.9% contained a pedestrian/bicycle crash-related keyword in the Chief Complaint or Triage Note.Among the 100 linked records with valid ICD-10-CM injury mechanism codes, the percent agreement between the two data sources on whether the ED visit was a “pedestrian” or “bicycle” crash was 54.4% and 71.9%, respectively. Percent agreement decreased for “traffic” and “non-traffic” designations, however. The most common V-code assigned to misclassified pedestrian/bicycle crashes in the NC DETECT ED visit data was “V87.7XXA-Person injured in a collision between other specified motor vehicles (traffic)”.Although the linkage study used data obtained from only a single Level I Trauma Center and primarily a single facility in NC DETECT, we felt that the results of this limited linkage study were generalizable to statewide NC DETECT ED visit data. For example, many facilities in NC DETECT underreport injury mechanism codes. Therefore, we added pedestrian/bicycle crash injury-related keywords to the Traffic/Non-Traffic Pedestrian/Bicycle Crash Injury case definitions (Table 1). After inclusion of these keywords, the number of identified pedestrian and bicycle crash injury-related ED visits identified in NC DETECT increased by 16.9% and 57.9% from January-June 2018, respectively (Figure 1).ConclusionsPedestrian and bicycle crashes represent a major cause of MVC injury morbidity and mortality. Therefore, the development and evaluation of case definitions is key for the successful surveillance of these types of injuries. The inclusion of keywords can help account for some of the injury mechanism data missingness common to ED surveillance systems.References1.NHTSA. Traffic Safety Facts 2015. DOT HS 812 384. Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation; 2017. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812384. Accessed Sept 12, 2018.2.Thomas L, Vann, M, Levitt D. North Carolina Pedestrian Crash Trends and Facts 2011-2015. RP 2017-42. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center; 2018. http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/pbcat_nc/pdf/summary_ped_facts11-15.pdf. Accessed Sept 12, 2018.3.NCIPC. Help and Tools for Injury Data; Atlanta, GA: CDC 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/dataandstats.html. Accessed Sept 12, 2018.4.Harmon K, Barnett C, Marshall S, Waller A. Implementing the External Cause Matrix for Injury Morbidity – North Carolina Emergency Department Data – January 2015 – May 2015. Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Center for Health Informatics and the Injury Prevention Research Center; 2016. https://ncdetect.org/files/2017/03/ICD10CCMExternalCauseMatrixImplementation_NCSQI_201607.pdf. Accessed Sept 12, 2018

Effect of a community-based pedestrian injury prevention program on driver yielding behavior at marked crosswalks.

BackgroundFew studies have comprehensively evaluated the effectiveness of multi-faceted interventions intended to improve pedestrian safety. "Watch for Me NC" is a multi-faceted, community-based pedestrian safety program that includes widespread media and public engagement in combination with enhanced law enforcement activities (i.e., police outreach and targeted pedestrian safety operations conducted at marked crosswalks) and low-cost engineering improvements at selected crossings. The purpose of this study was to estimate the effect of the law enforcement and engineering improvement components of the program on motor vehicle driver behavior, specifically in terms of increased driver yielding to pedestrians in marked crosswalks.MethodsThe study used a pre-post design with a control group, comparing crossing locations receiving enforcement and low-cost engineering treatments (enhanced locations) with locations that did not (standard locations) to examine changes in driver yielding over a 6-month period from 2013 to 2014. A total of 24,941 drivers were observed in 11,817 attempted crossing events at 16 crosswalks in five municipalities that were participating in the program. Observations of real pedestrians attempting to use the crosswalks ("naturalistic" crossing) were supplemented by observations of trained research staff attempting the same crossings following an established protocol ("staged" crossings). Generalized estimating equations (GEE) were used to model driver yielding rates, accounting for repeated observations at the crossing locations and controlling other factors that affect driver behavior in yielding to pedestrians in marked crosswalks.ResultsAt crossings that did not receive enhancements (targeted police operations or low-cost engineering improvements), driver yielding rates did not change from before to after the Watch for Me NC program. However, yielding rates improved significantly (between 4 and 7 percentage points on average) at the enhanced locations. This was true for both naturalistic and staged crossings.ConclusionsThis study provides evidence that enhanced enforcement and low-cost engineering improvements, as a part of a broader program involving community-based outreach, can increase driver yielding to pedestrians in marked crosswalks. These data are important for the staff and decision-makers involved in pedestrian safety programs to gain a better understanding of the different engineering and behavioral mechanisms that could be used to improve driver yielding rates