scholarly journals Effective Collaboration Models for Statisticians and Public Health Departments

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven E. Rigdon ◽  
Elena Naumova ◽  
Ian Painter ◽  
Yulia Gel ◽  
Howard Burkom
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Seeking Help ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

The session will explore past collaborations between the statistician panelists and public health departments to highlight approaches that have and have not been effective and to recommend effective, sustainable relationship strategies for mutual advancement of practical disease surveillance and relevant academic research.<br /> Panelists will describe experiences working with health departments, including actual applications as examples. Issues discussed will include requirements analysis, scoping technical problems for health department utility, adaptation of traditional statistical methods, and management of changing data environments. Panelists will derive advice for public health practitioners seeking help in forming relationships, framing problems, communicating results, and seeking funding.

scholarly journals Creating Customized Workforce Development Plans for Medium-to-Large Public Health Departments

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-403
Author(s):  
Brandon Grimm ◽  
Christine Arcari ◽  
Athena Ramos ◽  
Tricia LeVan ◽  
Kathleen Brandert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Workforce Development ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Training Needs ◽  
Public Health Workforce ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
County Health Department

Objectives: The objectives of our study were to (1) illustrate a public health workforce assessment process in a medium-sized city or county health department and (2) demonstrate the insights gained by moving from the use of aggregate department-level and competency domain-level training needs results to more granular division-level and skills-level results when creating a workforce development plan. Methods: We used a 130-question needs assessment to guide the creation of a workforce development plan for the Lincoln Lancaster County Health Department (LLCHD) in Nebraska and its 7 divisions. Using SurveyMonkey, we administered the survey to 128 (of the 129) LLCHD public health staff members in June 2015. Using a Likert scale, respondents indicated (1) the importance of the skill to their work and (2) their capacity to carry out 57 skills in 8 domains of the core competencies for public health professionals. We identified training needs as those for which the percentage of respondents who perceived moderate-to-high importance was at least 15 percentage points higher than the percentage of respondents who perceived moderate-to-high capacity. Results: LLCHD as a department had training needs in only 2 competency domains: financial planning and management (importance-capacity difference, 15 percentage points) and policy development and program planning (importance-capacity difference, 19 percentage points). The Health Promotion and Outreach division had training needs in all 8 domains (importance-capacity difference range, 15-45 percentage points). Of the 57 skills, 41 were identified by at least 1 of the LLCHD divisions as having training needs. In 24 instances, a division did not qualify as having training needs in the overall domain yet did have training needs for specific skills within a domain. Conclusions: When performing public health workforce assessments, medium-to-large public health departments can obtain detailed workforce training needs results that pertain to individual skills and that are tailored to each of their divisions. These results may help customize and improve workforce development plans, ensuring that the workforce has the necessary skills to do its job.

scholarly journals A Practitioner-Driven Research Agenda for Syndromic Surveillance

2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 116S-126S ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Hopkins ◽  
Catherine C. Tong ◽  
Howard S. Burkom ◽  
Judy E. Akkina ◽  
John Berezowski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Syndromic Surveillance ◽  
Surveillance Network ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Surveillance Practice ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

Syndromic surveillance has expanded since 2001 in both scope and geographic reach and has benefited from research studies adapted from numerous disciplines. The practice of syndromic surveillance continues to evolve rapidly. The International Society for Disease Surveillance solicited input from its global surveillance network on key research questions, with the goal of improving syndromic surveillance practice. A workgroup of syndromic surveillance subject matter experts was convened from February to June 2016 to review and categorize the proposed topics. The workgroup identified 12 topic areas in 4 syndromic surveillance categories: informatics, analytics, systems research, and communications. This article details the context of each topic and its implications for public health. This research agenda can help catalyze the research that public health practitioners identified as most important.

Public Health Surveillance and the Opioid Crisis

2019 ◽  
pp. 253-264
Author(s):  
Jeffrey P. Engel ◽  
Valerie N. Goodson ◽  
Megan Toe ◽  
Michael Landen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Public Health Surveillance ◽  
Health Surveillance ◽  
Opioid Epidemic ◽  
Infectious Disease Surveillance ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Case Based

The roles for public health surveillance are well established in the infectious disease surveillance literature; however, as they relate to noninfectious diseases and more specifically the current opioid epidemic, there is little standardization between states on what is being surveilled and there is a lack of definitions for some of the most important elements of the crisis, such as what constitutes an overdose death from opioids. Without standard definitions and processes, public health practitioners may develop response protocols based on incomplete data. As such, the opioid epidemic presents many challenges for public health surveillance by limiting the ability for case-based follow-up and stymies creation of a variety of shared indicators and metrics that make it difficult to capture the true burden of disease. In this chapter, the authors review prior surveillance activities related to substance use and share emerging consensus on opportunities to improve the surveillance among states and territories.

scholarly journals An open source inventory to evaluate public health surveillance systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
KC Decker ◽  
Catherine Ordun ◽  
Dimitrious Koutsonanos
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Data Files ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Standard Framework

ObjectiveThe objective of this project is to advance the science of biosurveillance by providing a user curated cataloging system, to be used across health department and other users, that advances daily surveillance operations by better characterizing three key issues in available surveillance systems: duplication in biosurveillance activities; differing perspectives and analyses of the same data; and inadequate information sharing.IntroductionA variety of government reports have cited challenges in coordinating national biosurveillance efforts at strategic and tactical levels. The General Accountability Office (GAO), an independent nonpartisan agency that investigates how the federal government funding and performs analysis at the request of congressional committees or by public mandate, has published 64 reports on biosurveillance since 2005. The aim of this project is to better characterize these issues by collecting and analyzing a sample of publicly documented biosurveillance systems, and making our data and results available for the public health community to review and evaluate. This study openly publishes the data files of information collected (i.e. CSV, XLS), the Python NLP scripts, and a freely available web-based application developed in R Shiny that filters against the 227 biosurveillance systems and activities to promote a more transparent understanding of how public health practitioners conduct surveillance activities.MethodsCollected and reviewed data on 424 systems, of which 227 systems and activities met our criteria;Implemented a new approach to develop a standard framework for data collection using natural language processing (NLP);Openly published all data files publicly on Github and developed an online analytics application; andConvened a workshop of experts from across federal, state, not-for-profit, academic and commercial entities in November 2015 in Washington, D.C., to review the methodology and results of this study.ResultsThe results of this project include a fully functional web application and code (available through Github) for the continued expansion, categorization and analysis of surveillance systems. Unique findings currently rendered through the 227 surveillance systems include: Out of 227 systems, 20 were established in the year 2006, alone, with an increase in systems established following 1990; 68% of all systems catalogued are focused solely on human surveillance; 45% of all cataloged systems used statistical analysis and only 4% are using Natural Language Processing; and 43% of all biosurveillance systems in our inventory reported using “health department” data as a data source.ConclusionsWe believe this project is the first step for public health practitioners and researchers to contribute to a transparent inventory of systems and activities. Results provide meaningful metadata on an over focus on human surveillance, over-reliance on a single data source (health departments) and a lack of advanced data science practices being applied to systems in the field. The value of this project 1) provides a starting point for the development of a standard framework of categories to use for cataloging biosurveillance systems, 2) offers openly available data and code on Github [3] for others to integrate into their research, and 3) introduces a set of methodological issues to consider in a biosurveillance inventorying exercise.

Dissemination of Information About Climate Change by State and Local Public Health Departments: United States, 2019–2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (8) ◽  
pp. 1184-1190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Albright ◽  
Pari Shah ◽  
Melodie Santodomingo ◽  
Jean Scandlyn
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Local Public Health Departments

Objectives. To determine if and how state and local public health departments present information about climate change on their Web sites, their most public-facing platform. Methods. We collected data from every functioning state (n = 50), county (n = 2090), and city (n = 585) public health department Web site in the United States in 2019 and 2020. We analyzed data for presence and type of climate-related content and to determine whether there existed clear ways to find climate change information. We analyzed Web sites providing original content about climate change for explanatory or attributional language. Results. Fewer than half (40%) of state health department Web sites, and only 1.6% of county and 3.9% of city Web sites, provided clear ways to find climate change information, whether through provision of original content or links to external agencies’ Web sites. Among Web sites providing original content, 48% provided no explanation of climate change causes. Conclusions. National and global public health associations have identified climate change as a public health emergency, but most state and local public health departments are not delivering that message. These departments must be better supported to facilitate dissemination of reliable, scientific information about climate change and its effects on health.

scholarly journals Cross Disciplinary Consultancy to Bridge Public Health Technical Needs and Analytic Developers: Negation Detection Use Case

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Conway ◽  
Danielle Mowery ◽  
Amy Ising ◽  
Sumithra Velupillai ◽  
Son Doan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Text Processing ◽  
Free Text ◽  
University Of Utah ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Chief Complaints ◽  
Negation Detection ◽  
The University ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

This paper describes a continuing initiative of the International Society for Disease Surveillance designed to bring together public health practitioners and analytics solution developers from both academia and industry. Funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a series of consultancies have been conducted on a range of topics of pressing concern to public health (e.g. developing methods to enhance prediction of asthma exacerbation, developing tools for asyndromic surveillance from chief complaints). The topic of this final consultancy, conducted at the University of Utah in January 2017, is focused on defining a roadmap for the development of algorithms, tools, and datasets for improving the capabilities of text processing algorithms to identify negated terms (i.e. negation detection) in free-text chief complaints and triage reports.

scholarly journals Approaches for Ending Ineffective Programs: Strategies From State Public Health Practitioners

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Rodriguez Weno ◽  
Peg Allen ◽  
Stephanie Mazzucca ◽  
Louise Farah Saliba ◽  
Margaret Padek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Evidence Based Programs ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

Background: Public health agencies are increasingly concerned with ensuring they are maximizing limited resources by delivering evidence-based programs to enhance population-level chronic disease outcomes. Yet, there is little guidance on how to end ineffective programs that continue in communities. The purpose of this analysis is to identify what strategies public health practitioners perceive to be effective in de-implementing, or reducing the use of, ineffective programs.Methods: From March to July 2019, eight states were selected to participate in qualitative interviews from our previous national survey of US state health department (SHD) chronic disease practitioners on program decision making. This analysis examined responses to a question about “…advice for others who want to end an ineffective program.” Forty-five SHD employees were interviewed via phone. Interviews were audio-recorded, and the conversations were transcribed verbatim. All transcripts were consensus coded, and themes were identified and summarized.Results: Participants were program managers or section directors who had on average worked 11 years at their agency and 15 years in public health. SHD employees provided several strategies they perceived as effective for de-implementation. The major themes were: (1) collect and rely on evaluation data; (2) consider if any of the programs can be saved; (3) transparently communicate and discuss program adjustments; (4) be tactful and respectful of partner relationships; (5) communicate in a way that is meaningful to your audience.Conclusions: This analysis provides insight into how experienced SHD practitioners recommend ending ineffective programs which may be useful for others working at public health agencies. As de-implementation research is limited in public health settings, this work provides a guiding point for future researchers to systematically assess these strategies and their effects on public health programming.

An analysis of state health department COVID-19 information for the public (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nandita S. Mani ◽  
Terri Ottosen ◽  
Megan Fratta ◽  
Fei Yu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
Material Type ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Clear Communication

BACKGROUND In response to the current COVID-19 crisis, public health departments across the U.S. have created, distributed, and shared COVID-19 health information. The extent to which information is understandable and actionable can be examined by use of validated health literacy and readability tools. Health information must be actionable, simple, and straightforward, particularly for health messages in times of urgency or during a health crisis. OBJECTIVE This study aimed (1) to use three validated health literacy tools to assess the understandability, actionability, clarity, and readability of COVID-19 health information created for the public by U.S. state public health departments; (2) to examine the correlations between understandability, actionability, clarity, readability, and material types; (3) to propose potential strategies to improve public health messaging. METHODS Based on CDC statistics on June 30, 2020, we identified the top 10 U.S. states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases. We visited the 10 state public health department websites and selected materials related to COVID-19 prevention according to a pre-defined eligibility criteria. Two raters independently assessed the materials by Patient Education and Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) and Clear Communication Index (Index). One rater generated the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) score. Statistical analyses included (1) interrater reliability (IRR) by Cohen’s kappa; (2) the mean, median, standard deviation, range, minimum, maximum, and frequency scores associated with PEMAT, Index, and FKGL; (3) statistical significance of the correlation between PEMAT, Index, FKGL, and Material Type. RESULTS Of 42 materials in this study, (1) inter-rater reliability was 0.94. (2) The mean PEMAT (n=42) understandability was 88.67% (SD±17.69%), with a media of 94% and a range between 21% and 100%; the mean of PEMAT actionability was 88.48% (SD±14.3%), with a media of 100% and a range between 40% and 100%; the mean Index scores was 78.32 (SD±13.03), with a media of 78.35 and a range between 50 and 100. The mean of FKGL of the materials (n=34) was 7.11 (SD±2.60), with a media of 7.3 and a range between 1.7 and 12.5. (3) Correlations were significant (P<0.01) and positive between PEMAT understandability and actionability, PEMAT understandability and Index scores, PEMAT actionability and Index scores, PEMAT understandability and Material Type, PEMAT actionability and Material type. Correlations were significant (P<0.01) and negative between PEMAT understandability and FKGL scores, PEMAT actionability and FKGL scores, Index and FKGL scores, and FKGL and Material Types. No correlation was detected between Index scores and Material types (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS COVID-19 health information provided by states for the public were easy to understand and act upon but could be improved in terms of readability and clear communication. The positive correlation identified between material types and PEMAT understandability/PEMAT actionability/Index scores respectively led to our recommendation on using more infographics and video format for public health messaging. CLINICALTRIAL N/A

Ebola-Related Health Information Wanted and Obtained by Nurses and Public Health Department Employees: Effects of Formal and Informal Communication Channels

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Xie ◽  
Le (Betty) Zhou ◽  
Linda H. Yoder ◽  
Karen E. Johnson ◽  
Alexandra Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Communication Channel ◽  
Communication Channels ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Public Health Department ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Types Of Information

ABSTRACTObjectives:The aim of this study was to (1) understand types and amounts of Ebola-related information that health organization employees wanted and obtained through formal, informal, internal, and external organizational communication channels; (2) determine potential discrepancies between information wanted and obtained; and (3) investigate how organizational structure might affect information wanted and obtained through these communication channels.Methods:Primary data were collected from 526 health workers in 9 hospitals and 13 public health departments in Texas from June to November 2015. Survey data were collected for 7 types of Ebola-related information health organization employees wanted and obtained through various types of organizational communication channels. Descriptive statistical analyses, mixed design analysis of variance, regression analyses, and multilevel analyses were used to analyze the data.Results:Hospital employees (mostly nurses in our sample) received more self-care information than they wanted from every communication channel. However, they received less about all other types of information than they wanted from every communication channel separately and combined. Public health department employees wanted more information than they received from every communication channel separately and combined for all 7 types of information.Conclusions:Discrepancies existed between the types of Ebola-related information wanted and obtained by employees of hospitals and public health departments.

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