URISA Webinar: Crowdsourcing & the H1N1 Virus

This Wednesday, September 23 at 3:00 PM (EST) URISA will be hosting an exciting Webinar about FluTracker, a controlled crowdsourcing system for tracking the spread of swine flu developed by Rhiza Labs.

This system is able to make outbreak data available to the public 5-10 days ahead of the estimates provided by the CDC. This Webinar will explain how you can utilize controlled outsourcing and take advantage of the newly developed technology and the omnipresence of the public to inform people of flu outbreaks. This is just one example of how Community Participatory Mapping is being used to make information more readily available to the public .  You will learn how to best uitilize this tool and get the maximum amount of benefits from the developing technologies.

“Crowdsourcing and the H1N1 Virus” will be presented by Maryl Widdows and Andrew Macurak of Rhiza Labs, located in Pittsburg, PA. For more information, visit http://www.urisa.org/webinars.

Health GIS 2009 closes on informative thoughts

After the first day of hope and an overwhelming response from participants at the conference and exhibition, Health GIS 2009 witnessed an interactive and informative second day with various technical sessions.

The keynote session of the day was chaired by Ajit Gokhale, CTO Mobitech Technologies and Sakib Razak, GIS Coordinator , Ministry of Pakistan. The session had four presentations.

The first presenter for the session was Dr. Mark Souris, IVD, Faculty of Science, Thailand. In his presentation, he talked about how GIS is helpful in the eradication of infectious diseases and suggested certain measures for the same. He said we should go beyond GIS to adopt intelligent GIS.

The second presenter was Dr. Ravi Gupta, Editor in Chief, eHealth Magazine. He talked about status of e-Health in India, challenges and the opportunities involved. He detailed the current health scenarios and impediments to health care in the country.

The next presenter was Dr Eva Pilot, Geomed Research, Germany. She was presenting in the absence of Dr. Thomas Kraft, Director, Geomed Research. She focussed on GIS based European public health threat detection system and SIDARTH, an approach towards it. SIDARTHa is a local approach which alerts emergency care professionals and local public health outcomes.

The last presenter for the session was Dr. Kaew Nualchawee, Advisor, GISTDA, Burpha Univ, Thailand. He focussed on the wellbeing of people by the use of GIS and said people of Thailand are really interested in the use of GIS technology.

Source : By Simmi Sinha, GIS Development

PlantCML(R) Announces Ground-Breaking Public Safety Call Centers Now Operational in Lake County, Indiana

In an innovative endeavor to institute public safety interoperability,
PlantCML(R) announces the 18 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and
one Mobile Command Center (19 total) in Lake County, Indiana, with the
next-generation call processing solution, Sentinel(R) Patriot(R), are now
in service. These installations include 81 9-1-1 trunks and 66 call-taking
positions.

“Our county’s 9-1-1 system was operating on 19 independent systems with no
centralized system administration,” said Jeff Cicillian, 9-1-1 Director,
Lake County Commissioners. “Our hardware was outdated and it was time to
upgrade our call processing solution to one that aids our call takers and
dispatchers alike. It is necessary to have seamless interoperability
within the county’s 19 PSAPs and the PlantCML Sentinel Patriot solution
is able to provide just that.”

Sentinel Patriot, along with ORION(TM) Vela(TM) and ORION(TM) DataSync,
has the capacity to assist call takers in securing the second largest
county in Indiana. The PlantCML Aurora(TM) and Sentinel(R) CommandPost(TM)
applications will be fully integrated in the next few months. Together,
this solution suite provides countywide mapping capabilities, enterprise
Management Information System (MIS), disaster recovery support and ease of
use for call takers, to name a few.

“The citizens of Lake County are the winners with this new system in
place,” said PlantCML Chief Executive Officer Tim Fuller. “It’s a great
win for us and an outstanding solution for the county where our main
concern is that of the citizens’ safety. The solution suite installed is
IP-based enabling next-generation capabilities today, as well as being
ready to handle the demands of population growth tomorrow. The ability to
adapt to future county, state and federal requirements is a selling point
for any community.”

Sentinel Patriot provides call takers full, on-screen control of both
wireline and wireless calls, facilitating fast and efficient emergency
response. It is a robust, standards-based software solution, engineered to
accommodate the physical and functional specifications of Lake County. It
also offers a full suite of computer telephony features, including
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), Automatic Number Identification (ANI)
and Automatic Location Identification (ALI).

The ORION Vela comprehensive feature set combines mapping functionality
and administrative control with an intuitive, information rich Graphical
User Interface (GUI). With its scalable design, it allows for enhanced
customization of its display functionality, integrates seamlessly with
Sentinel Patriot, and supports Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) operations.

These 18 call centers and one Mobile Command Center are responsible for
receiving incoming emergency and administrative calls, as well as the
dispatching of several police, fire, EMS agencies and the Coroner’s
Office.

Lake County is located in northwest Indiana, bordering Chicago. With over
500 square miles and a population of nearly 490,000, Lake County is the
second largest county in the state. According to the County Commissioners,
Lake County handles over 1 million calls a year.

About PlantCML (www.plantcml.com)

PlantCML, an EADS North America company, is the industry’s leading
provider of crisis communications and response technologies. Today,
PlantCML is pioneering the next generation of E9-1-1 and secure network
communications through Voice over IP-enabled applications, interoperable
P25 radio systems and advanced emergency notification technologies.
PlantCML solutions are resident in 14 of the top 20 most populous U.S.
cities and largest first responder operations.

About EADS North America (www.eadsnorthamerica.com)

EADS North America is the North American operation of EADS, the largest
aerospace and defense company in the world. As a leader in all sectors of
defense and homeland security, EADS North America and its parent company,
EADS, contribute over $11 billion to the U.S. economy annually and support
more than 200,000 American jobs through its network of suppliers and
services. Operating in 17 states, EADS North America offers a broad array
of advanced solutions to its customers in the commercial, homeland
security, aerospace and defense markets.

Media Contact:
Tami Timperio
VP, Global Marketing Communications
PlantCML(R), an EADS North America Company
Tel: 951.719.2423
Email: Email Contact

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS135926+08-Jun-2009+MW20090608

Obesity ‘link to same-sex parent’

There is a strong link in obesity between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, but not across the gender divide, research suggests.

A study of 226 families by Plymouth’s Peninsula Medical School found obese mothers were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters.

For fathers and sons, there was a six-fold rise. But in both cases children of the opposite sex were not affected.

The researchers believe the link is behavioural rather than genetic.
They say the findings mean policy on obesity should be re-thought.

Researchers said it was “highly unlikely” that genetics was playing a role in the findings as it would be unusual for them to influence children along gender lines.

Instead, they said it was probably because of some form of “behavioural sympathy” where daughters copied the lifestyles of their mothers and sons their fathers.
It is because of this conclusion that experts believe government policy on tackling obesity should be re-thought.

Much of the focus so far in the UK – in terms of targets and monitoring – has been targeted at younger age groups in the belief that obese children become obese adults.
But the researchers said the assumption ignored the fact that eight in 10 obese adults were not severely overweight when they were children.

In fact, they said their findings suggested the opposite was true – that obese adults led to obese children, the International Journal of Obesity reported.

Study leader Professor Terry Wilkin said: “It is the reverse of what we have thought and this has fundamental implications for policy.

“We should be targeting the parents and that is not something we have really done to date.”

Read more here.

Improving Our Health With GIS

Our changing world is forcing health professionals to rethink how they work. GIS technology is shaping health in communities everywhere, from investigating what makes us sick to evaluating how interventions can improve our lives.

Join ESRI this fall at the Hilton Nashville Downtown in Tennessee
to connect with your colleagues, exchange ideas, and explore best practices for improving our health with GIS.

More Information: http://www.esri.com/events/health/index.html

Is a national GIS on the map?

Government has embraced geographic information systems so thoroughly that the G in GIS might as well stand for government. Agencies big and small at the federal, state and local levels have long looked to GIS to make sense of data and how it integrates with location.

But with improvements in mapping tools and Web-based applications, geospatial data is no longer the sole domain of engineers or researchers. Topographic maps with layered demographic, environmental and other data abound on the Web. At one time, satellite data was secret stuff that only the intelligence agencies could see, said Jeff Vining, research vice president at Gartner. “Now everybody can get satellite data from the Web,” he said.

In recent years, the power of GIS has become increasingly apparent in disseminating a wide array of information visually, from pandemic data to congressional districts and flood zones. As GIS has become recognized as a powerful situational awareness tool, the idea of a developing a national GIS has also developed grass-roots support in government and industry.

The concept of a national GIS has been floating around in various forms for perhaps 15 years, said Jack Dangermond, president and CEO of ESRI. Technology has now advanced to the point where a national GIS is doable, he said.

Dangermond is part of a 28-member group that’s focused on the development of a national GIS (www.gis.com/gisnation/), which he said will accomplish at least three things.

It will involve better management of geographic data. One example is imagery. Currently geospatial images are collected by state, local and federal agencies, so there’s a lot of redundancy.
The committee is pushing for imagery for the nation, where the country is flown over once a year and images are taken. These images would be made available to all tiers of government and the public. Consolidating those flights would save an estimated $140 million a year.
Those high-resolution images would be disseminated on the Web and available to organizations as downloadable chunks.
A national GIS also could promote economic recovery by creating new technical and support jobs.

However, a few hurdles stand in the way of a national GIS. For one, state and local government agencies, not federal ones collect and maintain some of the datasets, Dangermond said. So some of the data wouldn’t be centralized. “That’s one of the interesting architectural dimensions of this, that we can manage some data locally, like land records,” he said. The challenge is integrating the data because, for example, not all counties are automated.

Read more: http://gcn.com/articles/2009/07/13/national-gis-federal-agencies-esri.aspx

The University of Chicago launches neighborhood mapping project

University of Chicago researchers and local residents have fanned out into six South Side neighborhoods to begin gathering information for the first detailed maps of all of the area’s resources, businesses, public agencies, churches, social service organizations and health-related facilities.

Researchers recently trained this team of students to help gather health information in South Side neighborhoods for the Resource Mapping Project.

As they are completed, the searchable maps will be posted on a Web site so that residents who want to learn about nearby services, such as grocery stores, child care centers or hospitals, can quickly and easily find out what is available in their communities.

The Resource Mapping Project is the first step of a larger effort to assess the current and future state of health of those who live on the South Side of Chicago. The larger project, known as the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, is coordinated by researchers at the University of Chicago working closely with South Side civic leaders and community residents.

“Creating accurate maps is the best way to start a long journey,” said Resource Mapping Project co-director Colleen Grogan, Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration. “These maps will help us discover all the assets and barriers to good health in the community and to search for new ways to improve health and health care in the area. They will help community members determine which assets to build on to improve health and which barriers need to be addressed.”

The project, led by Grogan and colleague Daniel Johnson, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, will focus first on six Chicago neighborhoods: East Side, Grand Boulevard, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Washington Park and Woodlawn. Later the survey will expand to cover all 32 neighborhoods on the South Side.

The two-person teams will walk each city block and record all the resources and services that could potentially have an impact on the health of area residents. Over time, the maps also will add an historical component, information on how long a business has been in place, what preceded it and the range of service it provides. The survey teams will talk with business owners and staff to gather this information.

The initial phase of the mapping project is expected to last about six months. The researchers will return to the field in December, March and July to update their results.

They will compare the information with existing data on health trends in the neighborhoods to measure the impact of local businesses, services and amenities. It will help researchers understand “how environmental and social factors impact people’s health: both good health and illness,” said Johnson.

Information from the Resource Mapping Project will highlight service strengths in the community and reveal where services are lacking. Community leaders and residents can use the data to push for better access to grocery stores or medical clinics and to bolster grant applications for community projects.

“We need reliable data to measure overall health status in each neighborhood and to see how health changes over time,” said Stacy Lindau, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and of Medicine at the University and director of the larger South Side Health and Vitality Studies, which includes the map project.

For more than a year, Medical Center researchers have been meeting with community leaders and area residents to plan the project. Community members are participating in the design of the study and will help conduct the research. All results, ultimately designed to improve health and health care on the South Side, will be shared.

Although the University has long preformed groundbreaking social research focused on the surrounding communities, “we have not always been a trusted neighbor,” Lindau said. “This time we are coming in, not just as scientific observers, but as community partners. The faculty and students involved in the studies work, live, learn and provide direct service in the community.”

“By working together,” she said, “the University and our neighbors on the South Side of Chicago are creating a new model for understanding and promoting healthy urban living.” The information they collect will be of interest “not just to health researchers and students, but to all those who live or work in South Side neighborhoods.”

The South Side Health and Vitality Studies, including the Resource Mapping Project, are a project of the Medical Center’s new Center for Community Health and Vitality and are supported by a grant to Lindau from the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative.

Additional community input and involvement with the Resource Mapping project is welcome. For more information or to make suggestions, please contact Martha Van Haitsma, of the University’s Survey Lab, at (773) 834-3674. For information about the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, contact Thuy Tran, project coordinator, at (773) 834-2356.

More information: http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1655

Development of risk maps to minimize uranium exposures in the Navajo Churchrock mining district

Decades of improper disposal of uranium-mining wastes on the Navajo Nation has resulted in adverse human and ecological health impacts as well as socio-cultural problems. As the Navajo people become increasingly aware of the contamination problems, there is a need to develop a risk-communication strategy to properly inform tribal members of the extent and severity of the health risks.

Researchers developed GIS-based thematic maps as communication tools to clearly identify high risk exposure areas and offer alternatives to minimize public and ecological health impacts. The maps show the location and quality of unregulated water resources and identify regulated water sources that could be used as alternatives. In addition, the maps show the location of contaminated soil and sediment areas in which disturbance of surface deposits should be avoided. The maps, in the end, helped to make suggestions for improvements for the area. It is predicted that once the maps are presented to the public, water hauling and soil use behaviors will change, and dialogue with chapter officials will be initiated to accelerate further risk reduction efforts.

To learn more about this study, please view this link.

Melissa Lawrence, Social Marketing Coordinator, VERTICES, LLC

Sri Lanka dengue eradication push

The Sri Lankan government is threatening to jail people who do not clean up water puddles in an effort to combat a rise in cases of dengue fever. The disease is spread by mosquitoes, which breed on stagnant water. The authorities are also importing bacteria from Cuba to kill the larvae of the mosquitoes, and are spraying their breeding grounds.
The government says more than 160 people have died from dengue in 2009 – more than double last year’s figure.

Female Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads dengue fever

Dengue fever is a flu-like illness spread by the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito.
The disease is most prevalent during the annual monsoons, when heavy rainfall leave puddles of stagnant water where the insects breed.
Government medical official Dr Sankalpa Marasinghe told the BBC Sinhala service that there is a sense of alarm about the disease.
“This is because the mortality rate in relation to the infection rate is very high. There have been 163 deaths and 14,750 people infected this year. The spread of the disease is around Sri Lanka, not localised. There are doubts of the strain of the virus and there could be mutations,” he said.
“That is why the government is taking various measures, imposing laws and regulations, to keep the environment clean and reduce mosquito breeding. There are direct interventions by the ministries of environment, health and education.”
Health officials blame the spread of the disease on people’s carelessness in not properly cleaning their properties and eliminating mosquito breeding grounds.
In recent weeks government inspectors have warned people in Colombo and outside the capital that they must get rid of mosquito breeding grounds within two weeks or face fines of up to 25,000 rupees ($220) or a six month jail term.
Dr Marasinghe said that the Cuban bacterium would be useful for large marshy areas. “But there is the problem of feasibility,” he said, “since the majority of mosquito breeding occurs in as little as 5mm of water – such as in plant pots.”

Dengue fever usually begins suddenly with a high temperature, rash, severe headache, pain behind the eyes and in the muscles and joints.
The severity of the joint pain has given the disease the nickname “breakbone fever”. Nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite are common.
In January Austrian scientists said that people could be protected from dengue by infecting mosquitoes carrying the disease with a parasite which halves their lifespan.
They said that only older mosquitoes pass on dengue – so killing them could cut disease.
Many thousands of cases of dengue fever occur worldwide each year, mainly in tropical countries.
The virus is passed to humans when mosquitoes carrying it feed on their blood, and while there have been efforts to eradicate them using insecticides, these have been fraught with problems, including the ability of the mosquito to become resistant to the chemicals used.

Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8138917.stm

Disease Tracking for Indonesia

As apart of the Australian Aid Agency (AusAid) Australian Leadership Awards Fellowships (ALAF) program fourteen veterinarians from Indonesia are learning how to track and stop the spread of animal borne diseases in a three-week training program hosted by the University of Sydney. The aim if the program is to equip Indonesian veterinary epidemiologists with important skills to improve surveillance, detection and monitoring of animal borne diseases.

While in Australia, they will learn about the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in Camden before heading to Canberra to visit the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry. They will then travel to the Gold Coast for the Science Week conference of the Epidemiology Chapter of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists and finally to Orange to be hosted by the NSW Department of Primary Industries and trained in risk management in animal health. This training adds to our ability to identify disease and also to look at methods for managing animal disease. As an NGO working in this field, it is believed they can be the bridge between Government and the community by training people at home in Indonesia to learn these skills.

To learn more about this study, please view this link: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20090707/Vets-learn-how-to-track-disease.aspx

Melissa Lawrence, Social Marketing Coordinator, VERTICES, LLC