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.
The other virus we once tracked July 6, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Public Health, Watchlist.Tags: West Nile Virus
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H1N1, the swine flu virus that dominated the news for a few months, has all but dropped off the news, so as if to take its place there’s West Nile virus.
As you may have noticed, Maricopa County just reported a case of a woman having contracted the virus.
A few good pieces of coverage.
- KJZZ did a short segment last week
- Arizona Republic has some good background
- CDC has a good map that breaks down the number of cases in 2008
- Maricopa County has a chart with the breakdown of 2008 infections + deaths
But not many people know that three years ago, Decision Theater participated in an exercise to map the spread of West Nile, working with the Arizona Department of Health. The 3d spatial map that became a visual and statistical analysis tool.
More details here – opens a PDF
New podcast on swine flu conference June 29, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Podcasts, Public Health, pandemic.Tags: H1N1, Marco Herrera, MSMSC
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Just uploaded the second podcast on the swine flu tracking that has been going on at ASU.
I had interviewed Marco Herrera, a researcher at the Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Science Center at ASU, as he was here one day in summer.
The podcast is on the media page of this blog. Click here to listen
Swine Flu conference this week June 22, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Public Health, pandemic.1 comment so far
This is the one event we had been working on for the past few weeks. Taking place from June 25 – 28.
Ever since the H1N1 virus made its appearance in April, researchers at ASU have been looking at what this might tell us about virus propagation, mitigation and using scientific and economic data to make better decisions.
This workshop will focus on:
- How can we apply what have we learned from previous epidemics to help slow the spread of this virus?
- How useful has past knowledge been in dealing with current outbreaks?
- What is our current state of preparedness?
- Do we have enough vaccines and antiviral drugs to treat every person that needs it in the USA? What about other countries?
Topics include the emergence of a super-strain of influenza, trans border risk assessment, how modeling informs policy-making in real time, the impact of school closures, simulation-based public health exercises … and much, much more.
More details here at the conference registration site.
“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
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.
Dr. Tim Lant on H1N1 flu May 1, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Education, Emergency Preparedness, Public Health, Watchlist, pandemic.Tags: Flu Wiki, Helath Map, Pater O'Dowd, swine flu, Tim Lant
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Peter O’Dowd interviewed Dr. Tim Lant this morning on the swine flu outbreak. The story on KJZZ, the public radio station here in Phoenix, is part of a series by O’Dowd, doing what radio does best – providing multiple points of view, with timely updates and deep analysis.
The focus today was on tracking the flu. Not the attack rate of the virus, not the threat levels, not the ‘Oh, gosh, this is scary stuff!‘ story angle I have been seeing a lot of.
As we continue to provide more context, based on our experience in pandemic planning exercises, we make the point that we are better prepared as a state than people realize. If you doubt this, check this plan by ADHS that goes back to 2006.
“The state has spent significant amount of time planning and preparing and thinking through what might happen,” said Lant in the segment today. We are need to build models to answer these questions, and we are gathering case data, he said.
Even as we speak, we are tracking H1N1, how information is being disseminated, CDC updates, the public response, even the various avian and regular flu tracking efforts and forums in other parts of the country and the world.
Here are three useful flu tracking sites:
- New York Times - interactive swine flu tracker
- Google.org - Health Map (different from Google’s flu tracker)
- Wikia - FluWiki aggragates information from major federal agencies such as CDC, National Microbiology Lab. As Wiki’s go, it’s a huge collaborative effort, but useful.
Emergency planning – a work in progress April 28, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Public Health, pandemic, sustainability.Tags: decision-lab, pandemic exercise, TechNewsArizona
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In a recent interview with TechNews Arizona, Dr. Tim Lant, research director for Decision Theater who runs emergency planning exercises here at the Decision Theater had this to say.
“You have to be ready to practice. You can’t just pick up a piano and play a concerto. You have to begin with your scales and work up to it.”
By the way, it was a well written story by David Brown.
The key point was about the need to work up to it. He talked about Decision Theater as a laboratory where people prepare for emergencies and hone their decision-making skills so mistakes can be fixed before real decision are needed.
That’s the kind of perspective I try to give anyone who looks to us as ‘experts’ in this field, considering we have hosted three pandemic flu planning exercises.
Emergency planing is, as always a work in progress. Not a document you complete and stuff away in the top drawer. As we had seen during the last exercise, the different school districts has plans. But when put through the exercise, they needed to revisit those plans since things looked different when facing a prepared for (but unknown) set of events, especially when looking to execute those plans with other stakeholders in the room.
Dr. Lant put it in a different way when speaking to a reporter today. Any decision you make involves a trade-off, he said. In this situation we are in, allowing people to interact with each other means there will be a chance for the flu virus to spread. But allowing people to travel, go to work and go about their business also means the economy will keep running. You need to ask those questions and face those what-if scenarios on an ongoing basis so that you can make your emergency plan work when it is needed most.
Crisis response exercise at ASU this week March 9, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Emergency Preparedness, Public Health.Tags: ASU Police, Coyote Crisis Campaign, Homeland Security
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The campus may be on Spring break, but approximately 1,200 volunteers will be involved in an emergency exercise at the Tempe campus this week. It’s the first large-scale drill at ASU, collaborating response efforts by about 15 fire departments and 25 hospitals.
Called the Coyote Crisis Campaign (CCC) this event is designed to test healthcare systems, corporations, academic institutions, government organizations. Federal law enforcement agencies, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies are involved.
Observers from the Decision Theater will be there. An exercise like this is compatible with the decision-making frameworks we study, and interestingly follows last month’s pandemic flu exercise. There too, we looked at how the chain of command can influence the speed of response and the cascading communications that take place.
For this week’s exercise:
- Here is a complete list of all involved.
- More information at the Coyote Crisis Campaign site
- Great video here
