Student Community Outreach for Public Education: A Year in Review

As former leaders of SCOPE (Student Community Outreach for Public Education) we would like to take time to highlight our positive impact and the extent of our outreach in the Bay Area over the last two years. Our goal is to reflect on and illustrate major challenges returning to ‘normal’ in-person community outreach events following the height of Covid-19. Furthermore, we would like to recapitulate all of the events we accomplished for the term we served as leaders of this student organization. Our main objective is to capture the breadth of communities that we reached last year through a diverse range of ages, cultures, backgrounds, living circumstances, and abilities. As students, finding the time and means in our schedules to dedicate to community outreach has become increasingly difficult. We hope that by presenting on SCOPE’s wide range of accomplishments we can help revitalize the support surrounding student outreach and the impact of oral health education in our surrounding communities. We think that presenting to our peers and faculty during Excellence Day is an important part of maintaining SCOPE’s presence at the school as we look to graduation, and leave the club for students to come. We would like to acknowledge and thank Professor Miller for her mentorship and guidance throughout the term of our leadership and beyond

Climate drivers and human impacts shape 35‐year trends of coastal wetland health and composition in an urban region

Abstract: The future of coastal wetlands will depend on the combined effects of climate change and human impacts from urbanization and coastal management. Disentangling the effects of these factors is difficult, but satellite imagery archives provide a way to track biological and physical changes in wetlands over recent decades to reveal how coastal wetlands have been changing in response to climate and human drivers. In this study, we used Landsat to monitor the conditions of 32 coastal wetlands in southern California from 1984 to 2019 and identify environmental and human drivers of these trends. Wetland conditions were characterized by vegetation greenness, using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and by habitat composition, derived from areal estimates of wetland and subtidal habitats. Overall, wetlands displayed three types of long‐term response: greening and gaining wetland (10), greening and losing wetland (16), and browning and losing wetland (6). Regional environmental drivers with overall positive effects on wetland NDVI were sea level, wave height, and precipitation, whereas stream discharge, vapor pressure deficit, and air temperature had negative or nonlinear effects. Wetland area change was primarily correlated with sea level, but response was highly contextual among sites. Negative trends in wetland NDVI and area were more common in larger sites with low elevations and in sites with open inlets. Restoration had mixed effects, with only half of the restored sites showing positive changes in NDVI and wetland area post‐restoration. The important work of managing and restoring urban coastal wetlands is complicated by variability and context and requires us to account for the influence of humans and climate as we build a regional understanding of historic, present, and future wetland health

Canadian Fire Management Agency Readiness for WildFireSat: Assessment and Strategies for Enhanced Preparedness

Wildfires are worsening in Canada and globally, partly due to climate change. The government of Canada is designing and building WildFireSat, the world’s first purpose-built operational satellite system for wildfire monitoring. It will provide new fire intelligence to support decision-making. It takes time for fire management agencies to use new information: to understand it and its implications, change processes, develop training, and modify computer systems. Preparing for the system’s prelaunch will allow agencies to benefit more rapidly from the new information. We present (1) an assessment of the readiness of 12 Canadian fire management agencies to integrate WildFireSat information and (2) guidance for reducing readiness gaps. We used survey and other data to score readiness indicators for three readiness components: understanding, organization, and information technology. We weighted the influence of each indicator score on each component. We modelled scoring and weighting uncertainties and used Monte Carlo simulation to generate distributions of aggregated agency readiness. The results indicated that most agencies have a moderate level of readiness while others have a higher level of readiness. Cluster analysis was used to group agencies by similarity in multiple dimensions. Strategies for increasing readiness are highlighted. This identifies opportunities for agencies and the WildFireSat team to collaborate on enhancing readiness for the forthcoming WildFireSat data products

Development of the user requirements for the Canadian wildfiresat satellite mission

In 2019 the Canadian Space Agency initiated development of a dedicated wildfire monitoring satellite (WildFireSat) mission. The intent of this mission is to support operational wildfire management, smoke and air quality forecasting, and wildfire carbon emissions reporting. In order to deliver the mission objectives, it was necessary to identify the technical and operational challenges which have prevented broad exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) in Canadian wildfire management and to address these challenges in the mission design. In this study we emphasize the first objective by documenting the results of wildfire management end-user engagement activities which were used to identify the key Fire Management Functionalities (FMFs) required for an Earth Observation wildfire monitoring system. These FMFs are then used to define the User Requirements for the Canadian Wildland Fire Monitoring System (CWFMS) which are refined here for the WildFireSat mission. The User Requirements are divided into Observational, Measurement, and Precision requirements and form the foundation for the design of the WildFireSat mission (currently in Phase-A, summer 2020)

Novel Models of Genetic Education and Testing for Pancreatic Cancer Interception: Preliminary Results from the GENERATE Study

Up to 10% of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) carry underlying germline pathogenic variants in cancer susceptibility genes. The GENetic Education Risk Assessment and TEsting (GENERATE) study aimed to evaluate novel methods of genetic education and testing in relatives of patients with PDAC. Eligible individuals had a family history of PDAC and a relative with a germline pathogenic variant in APC, ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CDKN2A, EPCAM, MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, PALB2, PMS2, STK11, or TP53 genes. Participants were recruited at six academic cancer centers and through social media campaigns and patient advocacy efforts. Enrollment occurred via the study website (https://GENERATEstudy.org) and all participation, including collecting a saliva sample for genetic testing, could be done from home. Participants were randomized to one of two remote methods that delivered genetic education about the risks of inherited PDAC and strategies for surveillance. The primary outcome of the study was uptake of genetic testing. From 5/8/2019 to 5/6/2020, 49 participants were randomized to each of the intervention arms. Overall, 90 of 98 (92%) of randomized participants completed genetic testing. The most frequently detected pathogenic variants included those in BRCA2 (N = 15, 17%), ATM (N = 11, 12%), and CDKN2A (N = 4, 4%). Participation in the study remained steady throughout the onset of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Preliminary data from the GENERATE study indicate success of remote alternatives to traditional cascade testing, with genetic testing rates over 90% and a high rate of identification of germline pathogenic variant carriers who would be ideal candidates for PDAC interception approaches. PREVENTION RELEVANCE: Preliminary data from the GENERATE study indicate success of remote alternatives for pancreatic cancer genetic testing and education, with genetic testing uptake rates over 90% and a high rate of identification of germline pathogenic variant carriers who would be ideal candidates for pancreatic cancer interception