Flu Near You - InnoCentive Challenge Annoucement

The Pandemics team at the Skoll Global Threats Fund would like to share some information about our upcoming Data Challenge that we've developed in partnership with Innocentive. Since 2011 Flu Near You, a collaboration between the American Public Health Association, HealthMap of Boston Children's Hospital, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, has collected weekly reports of influenza-like illness symptoms from volunteers in the United States and Canada. With well over 100,000 user registrations and recently surpassing 1,000,000 total reports, we've shown that we really can put the PUBLIC back into public health. 

Now that Flu Near You has demonstrated its current value and future potential as a public health surveillance tool, we'd like to engage researchers, data scientists, statisticians, epidemiologists and others in answering a fundamental question that will guide our continued development of Flu Near You - how many volunteer reports do we need to meet our public health surveillance goals? We've developed this Challenge to solicit a wide variety of ideas and approaches to answering this question. We would encourage you to take a look HERE and share widely within your networks. 

https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933598

Best Regards, 

Team Pandemics

Upcoming Webinar: “Beneficial Practices for Improving Biosurveillance: Outbreaks – Lessons Learned from Seasonal Influenza”

Please save the date for the webinar below.  Dr. Ed Baker and Dr. Perry Smith will discuss surveillance efforts regarding the outbreak of seasonal flu.  

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/797109960

In this third webinar in the series, you will hear from Marion County Public Health Department (Indianapolis, IN) staff Shandy Dearth, Epidemiology Administrator, and Melissa McMasters, Coordinator for Immunization and Infections Disease Programs describe their experiences with seasonal flu.  Additionally you will hear from Kathleen Kimball-Baker, Director of the Public Health Practices Project at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), a national online practice exchange for emergency preparedness and response professionals.

Webinar hosts, Dr. Ed Baker (Project PI and Research Professor, Health Policy and Management, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Dr. Perry Smith (Research Professor Epidemiology, State University of New York at Albany and former New York State Epidemiologist), will discuss with the guests and the audience:

• How does a local health department competently respond to an outbreak of seasonal flu?
• What are the surveillance challenges in gathering situational awareness information during an outbreak?
• How can localities best prepare their surveillance systems for responding to outbreaks?
• What special surveillance challenges does seasonal flu present to health departments?

Public health preparedness and surveillance professionals are invited to participate in this webinar.
Learn about the upcoming webinars in the series: http://sph.unc.edu/nciph/biosurv-webinar

Questions? Contact Carol Gunther-Mohr, Webinar Coordinator, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cgm@email.unc.edu

The webinar series is presented by the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center (NCPERRC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. 

Fridays from the Archives: Schools & Flu

Friday, January 24, 2014: Schools & Flu

Schools are often, for lack of a better descriptor, prime places for infectious disease transmission. But how do common infectious diseases, like seasonal influenza, move through a school? Are there specific patterns that could be accounted for to mitigate transmission?

It turns out that certain factors, such as social networks, may affect not only epidemic impact but also intervention effectiveness.  Through extensive modeling Gail Potter, PhD explores these social contact factors in School Disease Transmission: Has the time come for coordination between monitors and modelers? 

Of course, the other half of the title indicates needed coordination between modelers like Gail and monitors like Guoyan Zhang, MD, MPH and Anthony Llau, MPH, PhDc  who monitored ILI for Miami-Dade County in Florida. Daily school absenteeism surveillance used in coordination with evolving models of transmission could improve analysis of the absenteeism data. This is especially important since, as the presenters mention, absenteeism may not always equal true illness (or illness at all).

To learn more about flu and school absenteeism surveillance, and the modeling that can aid in analysis and intervention decisions, be sure to watch the full webinar from October 18, 2011 on our website.


This post is part of the series Fridays from the Archives. You can access all posts in the series here.


Written by Becky Zwickl, MPH, ISDS Public Health Analyst (bzwickl@syndromic.org)

Fridays from the Archives: Weather and Surveillance

Friday, November 15, 2013: Weather and Surveillance

Extreme weather events and infectious disease outbreaks have always struck me as being similar; both are highly unpredictable events and outcomes depend on a variety of biological and environmental factors. So, I was excited to see that there may be an interaction between the two when I found Absolute Humidity and Influenza Transmission Dynamics in the ISDS webinar archives.

In this 2010 webinar Dr. Jeffrey Shaman presents his thoughts on how a confluence of meteorological factors can affect the rates of influenza transmission. To set the stage, Dr. Shaman describes an experiment he found through a colleague; results showed that colder temperatures and lower relative humidity favor influenza transmission. He then describes his work in expanding the initial experiment to further explore humidity and temperature effects on influenza.

The meat of the presentation explores two hypotheses. First, that virus-laden aerosols are produced more efficiently at lower absolute (or specific) humidity. The second hypothesis posits that influenza virus survival increases as humidity decreases, which means that that airborne virus is viable longer at a lower humidity.

Perhaps my favorite part of this webinar occurs when Dr. Shaman explores whether or not epidemic influenza onset is associated with changes in humidity in the US. This specific case study of sorts provides real, concrete examples of how weather data may be applicable to public health.

If you are interested in the intersection of meteorology and epidemiology I recommend you set aside 60 minutes to listen to this webinar. A full recording is available here.

This blog post is the third installment of Fridays from the Archives. You can access all posts in the series here.


Written by Becky Zwickl, MPH, ISDS Public Health Analyst (bzwickl@syndromic.org)

WHO Releases Interim Epi Surveillance Standards for Flu

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released Interim Global Epidemiological Surveillance Standards for Influenza for review and comment until October 31, 2012. This document contains the WHO interim global standards for influenza surveillance that have been created over the course of the last two years. Various groups have played a role in the development of these standards from around the world, each brining a unique perspective to key surveillance issues. 


A WHO Working Group on Global Influenza Surveillance Standards was assembled, convening experts from all six WHO regions. Additionally, in March of 2011, a Global Consultation on Influenza Surveillance Standards was held in Geneva. This consultation brought together epidemiologists and surveillance officers from 35 countries from all six WHO regions, each of the WHO regional offices, as well as representation from PATH, US CDC, ECDC, and WHO HQ. 


Input from this meeting provided the basis for the initial drafts of the influenza surveillance standards document. The drafts were circulated further through various groups such as the WHO Epidemiological Network, the working group, and other advisors for feedback and comments from February to April of 2012. The feedback received from the current release of the document, the interim standards, will help direct the final version, which will be produced after the comment period that ends on October 31, 2012. 


The WHO now invites you to join this process and submit your own feedback on the interim standards.

View the WHO Interim Global Epidemiological Surveillance Standards for Influenza
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