Public Health Commons^™

A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The 21^st century experienced several health crises, especially in the form of infectious disease outbreaks such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 in 2009, and Ebola outbreaks in 2013. However, none has produced a worldwide socio-economic and health impact compared to the recent pandemic, known as COVID-19. As of October 4, 2022, more than 614 million cases with 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The United States is currently in the leading position with more than 98 million cases and 1 million deaths. The pandemic, however, did not impact the entire region similarly, and the infections …

Mapping Nevada's Dental Workforce, Kelvin Chen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Access to care is a concern at the forefront of public health. Due to socioeconomic and geopolitical pressures, the distribution of healthcare providers across a population often does not coincide with the demand for healthcare in a specific geographic area. Rural areas typically do not have enough providers and urban areas typically have too many. This stark reality underscores an inherent inefficiency in the allocation of healthcare resources and is a discrepancy that must be addressed by state-sponsored institutions and programs. From a public health perspective, the problem of insufficient or lack of access to care is the greater of …

Spatial Epidemiology Of Summer Trauma In Scott County, Ia: Use Of Gis To Identify Trauma Incidence In Urban And Rural Areas, Matthew Koch

Celebration of Learning

Traumatic injury is a blanket term referring to acute physical injuries which pose an immediate threat to life and limb, requiring urgent medical care. Unintentional injuries are the fifth-leading cause of death, and fatal injuries cost the American economy over $84 billion annually in lost work and medical costs. Scott County, IA, is a unique environment for trauma research because it served by a single trauma center and features within its 458 square miles distinct urban and rural populations. Patient data from the trauma registry, including age, race, and mechanism of injury (MOI) was combined with the corresponding spatial data …

Space-Time Modelling Of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Assessing Leptospirosis Risk In Sri Lanka, Cameron C F Plouffe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this research, models were developed to analyze leptospirosis incidence in Sri Lanka and its relation to rainfall. Before any leptospirosis risk models were developed, rainfall data were evaluated from an agro-ecological monitoring network for producing maps of total monthly rainfall in Sri Lanka. Four spatial interpolation techniques were compared: inverse distance weighting, thin-plate splines, ordinary kriging, and Bayesian kriging. Error metrics were used to validate interpolations against independent data. Satellite data were used to assess the spatial pattern of rainfall. Results indicated that Bayesian kriging and splines performed best in low and high rainfall, respectively. Rainfall maps generated from …

Relationship Between Altitude And Lithium In Groundwater In The United States Of America: Results Of A 1992–2003 Study, Rebekah S. Huber, Namkug Kim, Carl E. Renshaw, Perry F. Renshaw, Douglas Kondo

Dartmouth Scholarship

Therapeutic dosages of lithium are known to reduce suicide rates, which has led to investigations of confounding environmental risk factors for suicide such as lithium in groundwater. It has been speculated that this might play a role in the potential relationship between suicide and altitude. A recent study in Austria involving geospatial analysis of lithium in groundwater and suicide found lower levels of lithium at higher altitudes. Since there is no reason to suspect this correlation is universal given variation in geology, the current study set out to investigate the relationship between altitude and lithium in groundwater in the United …

Mapping Disease At An Approximated Individual Level Using Aggregate Data: A Case Study Of Mapping New Hampshire Birth Defects, Xun Shi, Stephanie Miller, Kevin Mwenda, Akikazu Onda

Dartmouth Scholarship

Limited by data availability, most disease maps in the literature are for relatively large and subjectively-defined areal units, which are subject to problems associated with polygon maps. High resolution maps based on objective spatial units are needed to more precisely detect associations between disease and environmental factors. Method: We propose to use a Restricted and Controlled Monte Carlo (RCMC) process to disaggregate polygon-level location data to achieve mapping aggregate data at an approximated individual level. RCMC assigns a random point location to a polygon-level location, in which the randomization is restricted by the polygon and controlled by the background (e.g., …

A Geographical Analysis Of Hiv/Aids Infection In Nigeria, 1991-2001, Chinekwu Azuka Obidoa, Robert G. Cromley

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Abstract

Objectives: Within the gradually accumulating literature on the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Nigeria, investigations concerning the spatial dimensions of the infection are virtually non-existent. An understanding of the spatial dimensions of the epidemic is central in the development and implementation of appropriate intervention strategies. This study is a geographic analysis of HIV/AIDS infection in Nigeria from 1991 – 2001. The three objectives of this study were: 1) to examine the geographic pattern of the epidemic, 2) to examine the spatial-temporal trend and diffusion pattern of the epidemic, and 3) to explore the factors associated with the spatial …