APHA session to follow up on Research Committee's May webinar

As a follow up to the Research Committee's May 2009 webinar, "Technical Challenges from the Public Health Practice Community," several ISDS members will be participating in a panel session at this year's APHA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

The session, entitled "Disease Surveillance and Health Program Monitoring Part I: Challenges from Public Health Practitioners to Statisticians and Technology Developers," will be taking place on Monday, November 9th from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EST. The panel was organized by Howard Burkom, ISDS Board Member and Research Committee Chair, based on the abstracts submitted for the May webinar. He will also be acting as moderator for the session.

Session schedule:

10:30 AM
Research Priorities for Syndromic Surveillance Systems Response: An Expert Panel Summary
Corey Farrell

10:50 AM
Expanding electronic health information: Implications for public health practice
Julia Gunn, RN, MPH

11:10 AM
Need for Decision Support Tools in Local Public Health Surveillance and Response
Michael Coletta, MPH

11:30 AM
TBD

More information and full abstracts available here

Presentation by Dr. Craig Hales: October Public Health Practice Committee Meeting

During the October meeting of the Public Health Practice Committee, a presentation was given by Craig Hales, MD, MPH (LCDR, US Public Health Service; CDC National Center for Public Health Informatics) on the "Integration of Various Surveillance Systems on the BioSense Influenza Module."

Dr. Hales' slides are now available for viewing on the ISDS wiki.

The next meeting of the PHPC will be held on Monday, November 23rd from 12:30-1:30 pm EST.

September Public Health Practice Committee Meeting

When: Monday, September 28th 2009; 12:30-1:30 pm EDT

Agenda:

1. Welcome

2. ISDS Updates: Rachel Viola, ISDS Project Manager and Julia E. Gunn, RN, MPH (ISDS Board Representative)

3. Michael Jhung MD, MPH, of the CDC Influenza Division: Surveillance & Response Team will provide information on the syndromic surveillance component of the state's weekly influenza report to the CDC in a presentation entitled: “New Aggregate National Influenza Surveillance. For the 2009-2010 Influenza Season” (see PDF of his slides)

4. ISDS Funding & DiSTRIBuTE Project Updates: Don Olson, ISDS Research Director

Next Meeting: Monday, October 26th at 12:30 pm EDT.

Data Visualization for Health Surveillance: Webinar Recording and Slides Now Available

The recording and presentation slides from the Research Committee's webinar on "Data Visualization for Health Surveillance: Current Concepts and New Horizons" are now available on the ISDS wiki.

Thanks to all who attended and have continued to make the Research Committee's webinars a success. If you would like to get involved in future activities of the Research Committee, please contact: rviola-at-syndromic.org.

School Based Surveillance Research Opportunities

As a follow-up from the Research Committee's July webinar on school based surveillance research, Dr. Francisco Averhoff of the CDC has invited ISDS members to participate in research studies related to this topic.

Study areas include:

1. Why some schools K-12/Universities have outbreaks and not others (risk factors)
2. Use of school absenteeism data
3. Occupational risk for ILI in school personnel
4. Lessons learned about control of ILI in schools/universities

If you are interested in participating, please contact:
fma0-at-cdc.gov
syw9-at-cdc.gov
dic6-at-cdc.gov

Research Committee September Topical Meeting

For its upcoming topical meeting, the Research Committee will be hosting a webinar panel discussion entitled “Data Visualization for Health Surveillance: Current Concepts and New Horizons.” Participating panelists include:

-Wayne Loschen, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
-Karl Soetebier, Georgia Division of Public Health
-Paul Picciano, Aptima, Inc.
-Frank Hardisty, Penn State University

The panelists include veteran developers with long public health relationships as well as visualization experts newer to health surveillance but with substantial experience in other fields.

Each panelist will present for 10-15 minutes followed by an open discussion.

This webinar will be taking place on Wednesday, September 23rd from 10:00-11:30 am, US Eastern Time. Register here

September Article Listing for Literature Review

The following list contains the most recent articles collected by the Research Committee's automated search. These articles will be reviewed on the next Literature Review call, taking place on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 10:00 am EST.

------

van Hal SJ, Foo H, Blyth CC, McPhie K, Armstrong P, Sintchenko V, Dwyer DE.
Influenza outbreak during Sydney World Youth Day 2008: the utility of laboratory testing and case definitions on mass gathering outbreak containment.
PLoS One. 2009 Sep 3;4(9):e6620.

Elbert Y, Burkom HS.
Development and evaluation of a data-adaptive alerting algorithm for univariate temporal biosurveillance data.
Stat Med. 2009 Sep 1

Caudle JM, van Dijk A, Rolland E, Moore KM.
Telehealth Ontario detection of gastrointestinal illness outbreaks.
Can J Public Health. 2009 Jul-Aug;100(4):253-7.

Bayesian Information Fusion Networks for Biosurveillance Applications.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009 Aug 28

Elliot AJ, Powers C, Thornton A, Obi C, Hill C, Simms I, Waight P, Maguire H, Foord D, Povey E, Wreghitt T, Goddard N, Ellis J, Bermingham A, Sebastianpillai P, Lackenby A, Zambon M, Brown D, Smith GE, Gill ON.
Monitoring the emergence of community transmission of influenza A/H1N1 2009 in England: a cross sectional opportunistic survey of self sampled telephone callers to NHS Direct.
BMJ. 2009 Aug 27;339:b3403.

Uscher-Pines L, Farrell CL, Cattani J, Hsieh YH, Moskal MD, Babin SM, Gaydos CA, Rothman RE.
A survey of usage protocols of syndromic surveillance systems by state public health departments in the United States.
J Public Health Manag Pract. 2009 Sep-Oct;15(5):432-8.

Blair PJ, Wierzba TF, Touch S, Vonthanak S, Xu X, Garten RJ, Okomo-Adhiambo MA, Klimov AI, Kasper MR, Putnam SD.
Influenza epidemiology and characterization of influenza viruses in patients seeking treatment for acute fever in Cambodia.
Epidemiol Infect. 2009 Aug 24;:1-11.

Babin SM.
Using syndromic surveillance systems to detect pneumonic plague.
Epidemiol Infect. 2009 Aug 24;:1-8.

20Aug2009
Osnas EE, Heisey DM, Rolley RE, Samuel MD.
Spatial and temporal patterns of chronic wasting disease: fine-scale mapping of a wildlife epidemic in Wisconsin.
Ecol Appl. 2009 Jul;19(5):1311-22.

Wang X, Zeng D, Seale H, Li S, Cheng H, Luan R, He X, Pang X, Dou X, Wang Q.
Comparing Early Outbreak Detection Algorithms Based on Their Optimized Parameter Values.
J Biomed Inform. 2009 Aug 12.

Uphoff H, Geis S, Grüber A, Hauri A.
What will the next influenza season bring about: seasonal influenza or the new A(H1N1)v? An analysis of German influenza surveillance data.
Euro Surveill. 2009 Aug 13;14(32.