Immunization registry, about time July 20, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Emergency Preparedness, Public Health.Tags: Arizona Department of Health Services
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Arizona is finally getting an electronic immunization registry.
Many other states such as New York, Utah, and and countries have done this, before the swine flu threat. Nevada’s Immunization Coalition has a presence on Facebook, while Utah uses GIS to map this data.
The registry will be a ‘receptacle’ of data pertaining to immunizations administered to children from birth to 18 years of age, reported to the state’s health department.
According to the DHS, the goals are
- To capture 100% of the vaccinations provided to children within the State.
- To promote efforts to ensure that 95% of all children within the state who are under six years of age are participating in the registry and have at least one immunization event on record.
- To provide all registered ASIIS providers with access to data stored in the registry, thus allowing them to query the registry for current and historical patient immunization records.
- To maintain the confidentiality of all patient information received in the registry.
- To ensure that healthcare professionals administering immunizations are reporting to the ASIIS registry in a regular and timely manner.
- To maintain the security of patient information stored in the registry.
- To provide a means for improved monitoring of immunization levels.
Govt prepping for swine flu encore July 9, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Emergency Preparedness, pandemic.Tags: DHS, Kathleen Sebelius
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Just two weeks after the swine flu summit was held here at Arizona State University, the federal government convened a large summit today.
Kathleen Sebelius, HHS secretary pointed to the urgency at hand, and the need for preparedness:
“We can step back from our planning. What we can’t do is wait until October.”
The summit had been pulled together on the request of president Obama. It’s part of a series of heightened actions to prepare for the fall flu season.
- The department of health is seeking community participation, offering a $2,500 prize for a winning public service video. Details here.
- The government is injecting $350 million in preparedness grants for fighting the H1N1 virus. Of this $260 million will be allocated to state health departments, while $90 million will be for hospitals.
- In June, Sebelius issued a joint statement with DHS Janet Napolitano on the need to start preparing now.
Cyber threats are real, not emerging says Napolitano July 8, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Emergency Preparedness, Watchlist.Tags: Janet Napolitano
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There’s a hacker who’s part of the Advisory Council of Homeland Security, one of the many interesting steps the former Arizona governor is now taking to make the department more pro-active, more resilient.
These initiatives, discussed in Napolitano’s blog this week give you a sense of where the bigger picture of emergency preparedness and securing critical infrastructure is head
ed.
Last month, Homeland Security announced two key posts, that of the Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications, and a Director of the National Cybersecurity Center.
Counter-balancing surveillance, the department is also pursuing collaboration. Its Facebook page, for instance, for DHS Alumni, is also open, to ‘anyone interested in Homeland Security news.’
Swine Flu conference wrap up June 26, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Emergency Preparedness, pandemic.Tags: H1Ni, swine flu
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How did the swine flu conference go? I have gotten a lot of feedback from different people who attended. Most of the attendees from out of state I spoke to were excited about how much they were beginning to share. Three things stood out: a sense of urgency, a greater need for collaboration, a need to work with more groups outside our line of sight.
The above photo is from an interactive decision-making exercise we conducted on the second day of the swine flu conference.
We equipped scientists and decision-makers with laptops, and took them through the scenarios laid out in the real pandemic flu exercise conducted in February this year.
To complement our coverage here and on our podcasts about the swine flu conference conducted last week, here are some media reports on the events.
- East Valley Tribune: Conference at ASU projects swine flu’s future - Mark Branom
- Newswise - Outsmarting Swine flu
- ASU Insight – Researchers meet at ASU to discuss Swine Flu strategies
“Moderate” pandemic, now declared a Level 6 June 11, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Emergency Preparedness, Global, Public Health, pandemic.1 comment so far
The WHO today increased the pandemic level from 5 to 6. The announcement had been anticipated for weeks.
Here’s the current H1N1 status:
- 74: Countries reporting laboratory cases of H1N1
- 28,774 : Number of laboratory cases
- 144: Number of deaths
What does this mean? On Tuesday, WHO’s Assistant Director-General Dr Keiji Fukuda, at a press conference said that the virus has not mutated, and the southern hemisphere it is exhibiting similar behavior. Some other highlights of his press conference and the official WHO announcement.
- Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s director general,who called H1N1 “a subtle, sneaky virus” says this is a moderate pandemic.
- A pandemic is the emergence of a new virus, so there’s very little background immunity. Disease patterns are very different, says Fukuda
- It also means that some countries are moving from ‘isolated’ spread of H1N1 to ’sustained’ spread.
- It is not virulent, said Dr. Margaret Chan.
- The severity has not increased.
- “Our preparations have anticipated that we will at some point be at Level 6,” said Janet Napolitano in an April press conference –below.
FYI: In two weeks, Decision Theater will participate in ASU’s Swine Flu Workshop, that has gotten some international participation
Swine Flu, not off our radar June 5, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Collaboration, Emergency Preparedness, pandemic.Tags: Center for Biosecurity, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Swine flu conference, Trust for America's Health
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News about A/H1N1 may have dropped off the news, but unknown to many, there has been some good tracking studies going on.
This one, called Pandemic Flu: Lessons From the Frontlines report, was just published by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), the Center for Biosecurity, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
Worth reading the report’s 10 lessons Learned.
The numbers may not be scary, ( 17,500 confirmed cases in 62 countries, 100 deaths) but there are enough reasons to stay vigilant. Just this week, Arizona recorded the 5th death caused bu A/H1N1. Total confirmed cases in Arizona: 580.
To pick just one of the 10 recommendations. One of which is the need for a strategic stockpile plan and deployment strategy. “While actual delivery of vaccines may occur in both public and private settings, it is vital for the public sector to be in charge of the overall system of delivery,” it says. Mass immunization may require 100 – 150 million doses to be deployed within a month.
- The Decision is involved in an exercise to address how such a stockpile deployment strategy will be planned and managed. More details to be announced shortly.
- This month’s upcoming Swine Flu conference at ASU will be on lessons learned from previous epidemics and pandemics to help prepare for a second wave, to assess current models, and to look at long-term preparedness.
Researchers race against clock to track data on H1N1 May 10, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Collaboration, Emergency Preparedness, Events, Public Health, pandemic.Tags: Carlos Castillo-Chavez, HiN1, Marco Hererra, summit
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It’s the second working weekend here at the Decision Theater, and researchers from all over Arizona State University are gathered here chasing after data.
It’s different from most end-of-semester deadlines. This assignment –going after H1N1 influenza — is more critical as it has imposed new kinds of time lines on anyone remotely connected epidemiology, mathematics, transportation, and decision-making.
As I let them into the sweltering conference room –over the weekends the air conditioners are turned off– we look at an enormous formula written across a flow-to-ceiling white wall. Marco Hererra (from the mathematical computational modeling science center) began explaining one part of the model to me. It soon became clear that learning how to preempt or deal with this subtype of the influenza virus is not as simple as coming up with a master-list of dos and donts for cities and health officials, or plotting a supply chain model for delivering antivirals ahead of time.
“We’re trying to explain how the spread of disease occurs in a population, and we can look at two sets of populations, the ’susceptible’ and the’ infected’ at a simplistic level. You can complicate it a bit to see how the susceptible population become infected and how the infected become part of a ‘recovered’ population.”
He starts drawing lines connecting parts of this model, then deliberately complicates this by adding a new pool of ‘vaccinated’ and ‘treated’ to illustrate what we are up against. We can use data from the health sectors (Mexico City and adjoining states), and Google etc, he says to figure out the rates of how these 5 groups –susceptible, infected, recovered, treated, vaccinated — now relate to each other. More lines. More complexity as other parts of the model on the white board come into play. You get the picture.
Or maybe not!
If you’re eyes have glazed over, you may find comfort in the fact that the upcoming influenza summit here at ASU will bring a lot more clarity to a on-again-off-again influenza crisis that have ordinary citizens (and even the media) confused.
Upcoming Influenza Summit: This event in June has been initiated by Dr. Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Executive Director of the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute. It brings together international influenza experts to see how current data and models can help the world look at long-term preparedness, and to help policymakers make better decisions in this space.
More details will be announced shortly.
“For every virus we build a new model, new storyline” May 8, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Collaboration, Emergency Preparedness, Media.Tags: George Basile, H1N1, JJZZ, Tim Lant
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Yesterday we joined State interim health director Will Humble and TGEN’s David Engelthaler to discuss Arizona’s response to the swine flu outbreak.
George Basile and Tim Lant from ASU’s Decision Theater talked about how technology is helping us improve planning for pandemics.
“We come up with models that create a new scenario every time we run an exercise,” said Dr. Lant.
He talked about ongoing work modeling how a virus could move through schools, airplanes, transportation systems etc.
“Then when health officials and decision-makes come in (to the Decision Theater) we have a new storyline for them; a new narrative.”
Listen to the whole segment here.
The program also featured Maricopa County Public Health Director Dr. Bob England, and Brian Levin of the Customs and Border Protection agency.
Listen in to H1N1 flu discussion on KJZZ today May 6, 2009
Posted by decisionlab1 in Arizona State University, Emergency Preparedness, Media, pandemic.Tags: emergency planning, H1N1, Here and Now, KJZZ, Pandemic flu
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Just when you thought the H1N1 virus was going away quietly, comes news that the virus may be already mutating. What does that mean for planners? How should we be approaching decision-making, using short-term events, crises, outbreaks to inform long-term decisions?
That’s what Dr. Tim Lant and Dr. George Basile will be discussing this morning on the local NPR station, KJZZ.
The program is Here and Now. Listen to the web stream here.
Some useful links (in addition to these) if you are following the broader story of planning for emergencies. These are the three counties we have worked with:
Also:
