Digital Epidemiology

Mobile, social, real-time: the ongoing revolution in the way people communicate has given rise to a new kind of epidemiology. Digital data sources, when harnessed appropriately, can provide local and timely information about disease and health dynamics in populations around the world. The rapid, unprecedented increase in the availability of relevant data from various digital sources creates considerable technical and computational challenges

Enhancing Dissemination and Implementation Research Using Systems Science Methods

Dissemination and implementation (D&I) research seeks to understand and overcome barriers to adoption of behavioral interventions that address complex problems; specifically interventions that arise from multiple interacting influences crossing socio-ecological levels. It is often difficult for research to accurately represent and address the complexities of the real world, and traditional methodological approaches are generally inadequate for this task. Systems science methods, expressly designed to study complex systems, can be effectively employed for an improved understanding about dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions

Digital epidemiology

Mobile, social, real-time: the ongoing revolution in the way people communicate has given rise to a new kind of epidemiology. Digital data sources, when harnessed appropriately, can provide local and timely information about disease and health dynamics in populations around the world. The rapid, unprecedented increase in the availability of relevant data from various digital sources creates considerable technical and computational challenges

Leveraging Clinical Decision Support and Integrated Medical-Dental Electronic Health Records to Implementing Precision in Oral Cancer Risk Assessment and Preventive Intervention

Introduction: Precision medicine is focused on serving the unique needs of individuals. Oral and oropharyngeal cancer risk assessment identifies individual risk factors while providing support to reduce risk. The objective is to examine potential current and future strategies to broadly implement evidence-based oral and oropharyngeal cancer risk assessment and screening in dental practices throughout the United States. Methods: Feasible and effective oral cancer risk assessment and risk reduction strategies, ripe for implementation in dental practice, were identified in the published literature. Results: The Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral for Treatment (SBIRT) model is a feasible approach to assessing individual oral cancer risk and providing risk reducing interventions in the dental setting. HPV is a more recently identified risk factor that dentistry is well positioned to address. Evidence supporting the utilization of specific risk assessment tools and risk reduction strategies is summarized and future opportunities discussed. Discussion: Current knowledge of risk factors for oral and oropharyngeal cancers support the recommendation for dental providers to routinely assess all patients for risk factors, educate them about their personal level of cancer risk, and recommend actions to reduce relevant risk factors. Individuals ages 9–26 should be asked about their HPV vaccination status, educated about HPV and oropharyngeal cancer and receive a recommendation to get the HPV vaccination

Developmental Systems Science: Exploring the Application of Systems Science Methods to Developmental Science Questions

Developmental science theorists fully acknowledge the wide array of complex interactions among biology, behavior, and environment that together give rise to development. However, despite this conceptual understanding of development as a system, developmental science has not fully applied analytic methods commensurate with this systems perspective. This article provides a brief introduction to systems science, an approach to problem solving that involves the use of methods especially equipped to handle complex relationships and their evolution over time. In addition, a rationale is provided for why and how these methods can serve the needs of the developmental science research community