scholarly journals Ten years of diphtheria toxin testing and toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria investigations in Alberta, Canada: a highly-vaccinated population

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie C Marshall ◽  
Maulik Baxi ◽  
Clayton MacDonald ◽  
Angela Jacobs ◽  
Christopher A Sikora ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
North America ◽  
Diphtheria Toxin ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Endemic Region ◽  
Travel History ◽  
Cutaneous Infections ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Health Agencies

Abstract Respiratory diphtheria is a potentially-fatal toxin-mediated disease that is rare among highly-vaccinated populations. Cutaneous infections with toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae are most commonly linked to travel to an endemic region, though C. ulcerans has emerged as a predominant, locally-acquired cause of respiratory and cutaneous diphtheria in Western Europe. Recently, public health agencies from several highly-vaccinated regions expanded their guidelines to investigate toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria regardless of travel history. With relatively unknown epidemiology of C. diphtheriae in North America, and increasing diphtheria toxin testing over the last decade, this change could lead to substantial increases in public health investigations with unclear benefits. Therefore, this study examined the diagnostic and public health benefits of toxigenic cutaneous diphtheria investigations in the highly-vaccinated population of Alberta, Canada, where travel history is not required for cutaneous diphtheria investigations. Reviewing all C. diphtheriae isolates collected between 2010–2019, 82% were isolated from cutaneous sites and 5% were toxigenic. Three cases of toxigenic cutaneous disease were identified, none from patients with recent travel. Contact tracing identified asymptomatic C. diphtheriae colonization among 0–26% of close contacts, with identical isolate profiles among colonized contacts and primary cases. Overall, this study supports the exclusion of travel history as a prerequisite for public health investigations in North America. While further studies are needed to assess the prevalence and impact of endemic C. ulcerans in North America, this study suggests differing epidemiology of toxigenic corynebacteria compared to Europe and underscores the importance of including C. ulcerans in changing public health guidelines.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Pandemic & Bureaucracy: The Crisis Inside the Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalyn Roßmann ◽  
Heike Wegner ◽  
Hans Stark ◽  
Gerd Großmann ◽  
Andreas Jansen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Public Health Approach ◽  
Outbreak Management ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Crisis Support ◽  
Second Wave

The Medical Intelligence and Information (MI2) Unit of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) is experienced in crisis support in military missions since several years. It gained additional experiences during the current coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on different levels of the response to crisis and was requested to share the findings and expertise with the overloaded civil public health agencies inside Germany. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the unit is constantly developing new products for crisis communication, knowledge sharing techniques in new databases, dashboards for leadership, and training for laypersons in contact tracing. Hence, trying to innovate in crisis since the first severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2-disease wave. During the second wave, the unit was requested to evaluate the outbreak management of different national civil public health agencies in southern Germany, and to support the development of dashboards in a comprehensive public health approach as a necessary start toward digitalization.

scholarly journals Tracking COVID-19 Discourse on Twitter in North America: Topic Modeling and Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyeju Jang ◽  
Emily Rempel ◽  
David Roth ◽  
Giuseppe Carenini ◽  
Naveed Z. Janjua
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
North America ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Health Experts

BACKGROUND Social media is a rich source where we can learn about people’s reactions to social issues. As COVID-19 has significantly impacted on people’s lives, it is essential to capture how people react to public health interventions and understand their concerns. OBJECTIVE We aim to investigate people’s reactions and concerns about COVID-19 in North America, especially focusing on Canada. METHODS We analyze COVID-19 related tweets using topic modeling and aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA), and interpret the results with public health experts. To generate insights on the effectiveness of specific public health interventions for COVID-19, we compare timelines of topics discussed with timing of implementation of interventions, synergistically including information on people’s sentiment about COVID-19 related aspects in our analysis. In addition, to further investigate anti-Asian racism, we compare timelines of sentiments for Asians and Canadians. RESULTS Topic modeling identified 20 topics and public health experts provided interpretations of the topics based on top-ranked words and representative tweets for each topic. The interpretation and timeline analysis showed that the discovered topics and their trend are highly related to public health promotions and interventions, such as physical distancing, border restrictions, hand washing, staying-home, and face coverings. After training the data using ABSA with human-in-the-loop, we obtained 545 aspect terms (e.g., “vaccines”, “economy”, and “masks”) and 60 opinion terms (e.g., “infectious”- negative, and “professional”- positive), which were used for inference of sentiments of 20 selected aspects. The results showed negative sentiments related to overall outbreak, misinformation, and Asians and positive sentiments related to physical distancing. CONCLUSIONS Analyses using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques with domain expert involvement can produce useful information for public health. This study is the first to analyze COVID-19 related tweets in Canada in comparison with tweets in the United States by using topic modeling and human-in-the-loop domain-specific aspect-based sentiment analysis. This kind of information could help public health agencies to understand public concerns as well as what public health messages are resonating in our populations who use Twitter, which can be helpful for public health agencies when designing a policy for new interventions.

scholarly journals Tracking COVID-19 Discourse on Twitter in North America: Infodemiology Study Using Topic Modeling and Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis

10.2196/25431 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. e25431
Author(s):  
Hyeju Jang ◽  
Emily Rempel ◽  
David Roth ◽  
Giuseppe Carenini ◽  
Naveed Zafar Janjua
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
North America ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Health Experts

Background Social media is a rich source where we can learn about people’s reactions to social issues. As COVID-19 has impacted people’s lives, it is essential to capture how people react to public health interventions and understand their concerns. Objective We aim to investigate people’s reactions and concerns about COVID-19 in North America, especially in Canada. Methods We analyzed COVID-19–related tweets using topic modeling and aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA), and interpreted the results with public health experts. To generate insights on the effectiveness of specific public health interventions for COVID-19, we compared timelines of topics discussed with the timing of implementation of interventions, synergistically including information on people’s sentiment about COVID-19–related aspects in our analysis. In addition, to further investigate anti-Asian racism, we compared timelines of sentiments for Asians and Canadians. Results Topic modeling identified 20 topics, and public health experts provided interpretations of the topics based on top-ranked words and representative tweets for each topic. The interpretation and timeline analysis showed that the discovered topics and their trend are highly related to public health promotions and interventions such as physical distancing, border restrictions, handwashing, staying home, and face coverings. After training the data using ABSA with human-in-the-loop, we obtained 545 aspect terms (eg, “vaccines,” “economy,” and “masks”) and 60 opinion terms such as “infectious” (negative) and “professional” (positive), which were used for inference of sentiments of 20 key aspects selected by public health experts. The results showed negative sentiments related to the overall outbreak, misinformation and Asians, and positive sentiments related to physical distancing. Conclusions Analyses using natural language processing techniques with domain expert involvement can produce useful information for public health. This study is the first to analyze COVID-19–related tweets in Canada in comparison with tweets in the United States by using topic modeling and human-in-the-loop domain-specific ABSA. This kind of information could help public health agencies to understand public concerns as well as what public health messages are resonating in our populations who use Twitter, which can be helpful for public health agencies when designing a policy for new interventions.

Contact Tracing and Consequences

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kulldorff
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Agencies

COVID-19 contact tracing programs are eroding trust between the public and public health agencies—with potential dire consequences for future disease outbreaks in which contact tracing could be critical.

The Perils of Partnership

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan H. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Public Bodies

Collaboration with industry has become the paradigm in public health. Governments commonly develop close relationships with companies that are creating or exacerbating the very problems public health agencies are trying to solve. Nowhere is this more evident than in partnerships with food and soda companies to address obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases. The author argues that public-private partnerships and multistakeholder initiatives create webs of influence that undermine the integrity of public health agencies; distort public health research and policy; and reinforce the framing of public health problems and their solutions in ways that are least threatening to the commercial interests of corporate “partners.” We should expect multinational corporations to develop strategies of influence. But public bodies need to develop counter-strategies to insulate themselves from corporate influence in all its forms. The author reviews the ways in which we regulate public-public interactions (separation of powers) and private-private interactions (antitrust and competition laws), and argues for an analogous set of norms to govern public-private interactions. The book also offers a novel framework that is designed to help public bodies identify the systemic ethical implications of their existing or proposed relationships with industry actors. The book makes a compelling case that, in public health, the paradigm public-private interaction should be at arm’s length: separation, not collaboration. The author calls for a new paradigm to protect and promote public health while avoiding the ethical perils of partnership with industry.

scholarly journals International Perspectives on COVID-19 Communication Ecologies: Public Health Agencies’ Online Communication in Italy, Sweden, and the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422199283
Author(s):  
Serena Tagliacozzo ◽  
Frederike Albrecht ◽  
N. Emel Ganapati
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Communication Ecology ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
National Public Health

Communicating during a crisis can be challenging for public agencies as their communication ecology becomes increasingly complex while the need for fast and reliable public communication remains high. Using the lens of communication ecology, this study examines the online communication of national public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Sweden, and the United States. Based on content analysis of Twitter data ( n = 856) and agency press releases ( n = 95), this article investigates two main questions: (1) How, and to what extent, did national public health agencies coordinate their online communication with other agencies and organizations? (2) How was online communication from the agencies diversified in terms of targeting specific organizations and social groups? Our findings indicate that public health agencies relied heavily on internal scientific expertise and predominately coordinated their communication efforts with national government agencies. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that agencies in each country differed in how they diversify information; however, all agencies provided tailored information to at least some organizations and social groups. Across the three countries, information tailored for several vulnerable groups (e.g., pregnant women, people with disabilities, immigrants, and homeless populations) was largely absent, which may contribute to negative consequences for these groups.

scholarly journals Non-woven materials for cloth-based face mask inserts: Relationship between material properties and sub-micron aerosol filtration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Crilley ◽  
Brian Malile ◽  
Andrea Angelucci ◽  
Cora Young ◽  
Trevor C. VandenBoer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Material Properties ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
Respiratory Viruses ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Aerosol Filtration ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Current Guidance

Current guidance by leading public health agencies recommends wearing a 3-layer cloth-based face mask with a middle non-woven material insert to reduce the transmission of infectious respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2....

scholarly journals A tale of two parts of Switzerland: regional differences in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Seiler ◽  
Georg Staubli ◽  
Julia Hoeffe ◽  
Gianluca Gualco ◽  
Sergio Manzano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Pediatric Emergency ◽  
The South ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The North ◽  
Regional Strategies ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background We aimed to document the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on regions within a European country. Methods Parents arriving at two pediatric emergency departments (EDs) in North of Switzerland and two in South of Switzerland completed an online survey during the first peak of the pandemic (April–June 2020). They were asked to rate their concern about their children or themselves having COVID-19. Results A total of 662 respondents completed the survey. Parents in the South were significantly more exposed to someone tested positive for COVID-19 than in the North (13.9 and 4.7%, respectively; P <  0.001). Parents in the South were much more concerned than in the North that they (mean 4.61 and 3.32, respectively; P <  0.001) or their child (mean 4.79 and 3.17, respectively; P <  0.001) had COVID-19. Parents reported their children wore facemasks significantly more often in the South than in the North (71.5 and 23.5%, respectively; P <  0.001). Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant regional differences among families arriving at EDs in Switzerland. Public health agencies should consider regional strategies, rather than country-wide guidelines, in future pandemics and for vaccination against COVID-19 for children.

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