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- Wastewater surveillance (2)
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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Predictive Power Of Wastewater For Nowcasting Infectious Disease Transmission: A Retrospective Case Study Of Five Sewershed Areas In Louisville, Kentucky, Fayette Klaassen, Rochelle H. Holm, Ted Smith, Ted Cohen, Aruni Bhatnagar, Nicolas A. Menzies
Predictive Power Of Wastewater For Nowcasting Infectious Disease Transmission: A Retrospective Case Study Of Five Sewershed Areas In Louisville, Kentucky, Fayette Klaassen, Rochelle H. Holm, Ted Smith, Ted Cohen, Aruni Bhatnagar, Nicolas A. Menzies
Faculty Scholarship
Background: Epidemiological nowcasting traditionally relies on count surveillance data. The availability and quality of such count data may vary over time, limiting representation of true infections. Wastewater data correlates with traditional surveillance data and may provide additional value for nowcasting disease trends. Methods: We obtained SARS-CoV-2 case, death, wastewater, and serosurvey data for Jefferson County, Kentucky (USA), between August 2020 and March 2021, and parameterized an existing nowcasting model using combinations of these data. We assessed the predictive performance and variability at the sewershed level and compared the effects of adding or replacing wastewater data to case and death reports. …
Microbial Community Function And Bacterial Pathogen Composition In Pit Latrines In Peri-Urban Malaw, Savanna K. Smith, Benjamin B. Risk, Rochelle H. Holm, Elizabeth Tilley, Petros Chigwechokha, Drew Capone, Joe Brown, Francis L. De Los Reyes Iii
Microbial Community Function And Bacterial Pathogen Composition In Pit Latrines In Peri-Urban Malaw, Savanna K. Smith, Benjamin B. Risk, Rochelle H. Holm, Elizabeth Tilley, Petros Chigwechokha, Drew Capone, Joe Brown, Francis L. De Los Reyes Iii
Faculty Scholarship
Despite the widespread global reliance on pit latrines as improved sanitation systems, the decomposition of waste within pit latrines is poorly understood. One area needing elucidation is the characterization and function of microbial communities within pit latrines. To address this gap, we characterized the microbial communities of 55 lined pit latrines at three sampling layers from two communities in peri-urban Malawi. The microbial communities of the fecal sludge samples were analyzed for beta diversity, pathogen presence, and functional profiling. Household surveys were conducted and used to compare microbial community patterns to household characteristics and pit latrine use patterns. Compared to …
Addressing The Challenges Of Establishing Quality Wastewater Or Non- Sewered Sanitation-Based Surveillance, Including Laboratory And Epidemiological Considerations, In Malawi, Rochelle H. Holm, Ruth Nyirenda, Ted Smith, Petros Chigwechokha
Addressing The Challenges Of Establishing Quality Wastewater Or Non- Sewered Sanitation-Based Surveillance, Including Laboratory And Epidemiological Considerations, In Malawi, Rochelle H. Holm, Ruth Nyirenda, Ted Smith, Petros Chigwechokha
Faculty Scholarship
Learning from clinical laboratories, wastewater or environmental (including non-sewered sanitation) environmental microbiology laboratories can be established in resource-limited settings that focus on pathogen detection and pandemic prevention. Transparent discussions on the laboratory challenges and adaptations required for this can help meet the future requirements of health research and surveillance. This report aims to describe the challenges encountered when setting up a wastewater or environmental laboratory for multipathogen surveillance in Malawi, a resource-limited setting, as well as the lessons learnt. We identified nine unifying themes: what to monitor, human resource capacity, indicators of data quality, equipment availability, supply of consumable goods, …
What’S Scope 3 Good For?, Madison Condon
What’S Scope 3 Good For?, Madison Condon
Faculty Scholarship
Opposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) new rule on updated climate risk reporting has focused on one category of disclosures as particularly objectionable: Scope 3 emissions.7 Otherwise known as “supply chain emissions,” Scope 3 emissions have been voluntarily reported by a growing number of companies since the term was invented as part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol in 2001.8 They include all the emissions both up and downstream of a corporations’ own activities: the emissions of the privately-owned factory that produced the shoes Target sells, as well as the emissions you burn while driving to the …
Online Dashboards For Sars-Cov-2 Wastewater Data Need Standard Best Practices: An Environmental Health Communication Agenda, Colleen C. Naughton, Rochelle H. Holm, Nancy J. Lin, Brooklyn P. James, Ted Smith
Online Dashboards For Sars-Cov-2 Wastewater Data Need Standard Best Practices: An Environmental Health Communication Agenda, Colleen C. Naughton, Rochelle H. Holm, Nancy J. Lin, Brooklyn P. James, Ted Smith
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the benefits of wastewater surveillance to supplement clinical data. Numerous online information dashboards have been rapidly, and typically independently, developed to communicate environmental surveillance data to public health officials and the public. In this study, we review dashboards presenting SARS-CoV-2 wastewater data and propose a path toward harmonization and improved risk communication. A list of 127 dashboards representing 27 countries was compiled. The variability was high and encompassed aspects including the graphics used for data presentation (e.g., line/bar graphs, maps, and tables), log versus linear scale, and 96 separate ways of labeling SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations. …
Climate Services: The Business Of Physical Risk, Madison Condon
Climate Services: The Business Of Physical Risk, Madison Condon
Faculty Scholarship
A growing number of investors, insurers, financial services providers, and nonprofits rely on information about localized physical climate risks, like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. The outcomes of these risk projections have significant consequences in the economy, including allocating investment capital, impacting housing prices and demographic shifts, and prioritizing adaptation infrastructure projects. The climate risk information available to individual citizens and municipalities, however, is limited and expensive to access. Further, many providers of climate services use black box models that make overseeing the scientific rigor of their methodologies impossible— a concern given scientific critiques that many may be obfuscating the uncertainty …
The Detection Of Periodic Reemergence Events Of Sars-Cov-2 Delta Strain In Communities Dominated By Omicron, Claire E. Westcott, Kevin J. Sokoloski, Eric C. Rouchka, Julia H. Chariker, Rochelle H. Holm, Ray A. Yeager, Joseph B. Moore Iv, Erin M. Elliott, Daymond Talley, Aruni Bhatnagar
The Detection Of Periodic Reemergence Events Of Sars-Cov-2 Delta Strain In Communities Dominated By Omicron, Claire E. Westcott, Kevin J. Sokoloski, Eric C. Rouchka, Julia H. Chariker, Rochelle H. Holm, Ray A. Yeager, Joseph B. Moore Iv, Erin M. Elliott, Daymond Talley, Aruni Bhatnagar
Faculty Scholarship
Despite entering an endemic phase, SARS-CoV-2 remains a significant burden to public health across the global community. Wastewater sampling has consistently proven utility to understanding SARS-CoV-2 prevalence trends and genetic variation as it represents a less biased assessment of the corresponding communities. Here, we report that ongoing monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 genetic variation in samples obtained from the wastewatersheds of the city of Louisville in Jefferson county Kentucky has revealed the periodic reemergence of the Delta strain in the presence of the presumed dominant Omicron strain. Unlike previous SARS-CoV-2 waves/emergence events, the Delta reemergence events were geographically restricted in the community …
Quantifying The Relationship Between Sub-Population Wastewater Samples And Community-Wide Sars-Cov-2 Seroprevalence, Ted Smith, Rochelle H. Holm, Rachel J. Keith, Alok R. Amraotkar, Chance R. Alvarado, Krzysztof Banecki, Boseung Choi, Ian Santisteban, Adrienne M. Bushau-Sprinkle, Kathleen T. Kitterman, Joshua Fuqua, Krystal T. Hamorsky, Kenneth E. Palmer, J. Michael Brick, Aruni Bhatnagar, Grzegorz A. Rempala
Quantifying The Relationship Between Sub-Population Wastewater Samples And Community-Wide Sars-Cov-2 Seroprevalence, Ted Smith, Rochelle H. Holm, Rachel J. Keith, Alok R. Amraotkar, Chance R. Alvarado, Krzysztof Banecki, Boseung Choi, Ian Santisteban, Adrienne M. Bushau-Sprinkle, Kathleen T. Kitterman, Joshua Fuqua, Krystal T. Hamorsky, Kenneth E. Palmer, J. Michael Brick, Aruni Bhatnagar, Grzegorz A. Rempala
Faculty Scholarship
Robust epidemiological models relating wastewater to community disease prevalence are lacking. Assessments of SARS-CoV-2 infection rates have relied primarily on convenience sampling, which does not provide reliable estimates of community disease prevalence due to inherent biases. This study conducted serial stratified randomized samplings to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 3717 participants and obtained weekly samples of community wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 concentrations in Jefferson County, KY (USA) from August 2020 to February 2021. Using an expanded Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model, the longitudinal estimates of the disease prevalence were obtained and compared with the wastewater concentrations using regression analysis. The model analysis …
Sars-Cov-2 Rna Abundance In Wastewater As A Function Of Distinct Urban Sewershed Size, Rochelle H. Holm, Anish Mukherjee, Jayesh P. Rai, Ray A. Yeager, Daymond Talley, Shesh N. Rai, Aruni Bhatnagar, Ted Smith
Sars-Cov-2 Rna Abundance In Wastewater As A Function Of Distinct Urban Sewershed Size, Rochelle H. Holm, Anish Mukherjee, Jayesh P. Rai, Ray A. Yeager, Daymond Talley, Shesh N. Rai, Aruni Bhatnagar, Ted Smith
Faculty Scholarship
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based epidemiology has emerged as a promising approach for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 prevalence on a community-level. Despite much being known about the utility of making these measurements in large wastewater treatment plants, little is known about the correlation with finer geographic resolution, such as those obtained through sewershed sub-area catchments. This study aims to identify community wastewater surveillance characteristics between sewershed areas that affect the strength of the association of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in a metropolitan area. For this, wastewater from 17 sewershed areas were sampled in Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky (USA), from August 2020 to April 2021 …
Surveillance Of Rnase P, Pmmov, And Crassphage In Wastewater As Indicators Of Human Fecal Concentration Across Urban Sewer Neighborhoods, Kentucky, Rochelle H. Holm, M. Nagarkar, R. A. Yeager, D. Talley, A. C. Chaney, J. P. Rai, A. Mukherjee, S. N. Rai, A. Bhatnagar, Ted Smith
Surveillance Of Rnase P, Pmmov, And Crassphage In Wastewater As Indicators Of Human Fecal Concentration Across Urban Sewer Neighborhoods, Kentucky, Rochelle H. Holm, M. Nagarkar, R. A. Yeager, D. Talley, A. C. Chaney, J. P. Rai, A. Mukherjee, S. N. Rai, A. Bhatnagar, Ted Smith
Faculty Scholarship
Wastewater surveillance has been widely used as a supplemental method to track the community infection levels of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. A gap exists in standardized reporting for fecal indicator concentrations, which can be used to calibrate the primary outcome concentrations from wastewater monitoring for use in epidemiological models. To address this, measurements of fecal indicator concentration among wastewater samples collected from sewers and treatment centers in four counties of Kentucky (N = 650) were examined. Results from the untransformed wastewater data over 4 months of sampling indicated that the fecal indicator concentration of human ribonuclease P (RNase …
A Comparative Study Of Faecal Sludge Management In Malawi And Zambia: Status, Challenges And Opportunities In Pit Latrine Emptying, Rochelle H. Holm, James Madalitso Tembo, Bernard Thole
A Comparative Study Of Faecal Sludge Management In Malawi And Zambia: Status, Challenges And Opportunities In Pit Latrine Emptying, Rochelle H. Holm, James Madalitso Tembo, Bernard Thole
Faculty Scholarship
This review paper covers the issues of pit latrine emptying national policies and regulations with a focus on Malawi and Zambia. With 2.4 billion people worldwide still lacking improved sanitation facilities, developing countries need to look at policy, regulation and practice for household sanitation service provision with a new lens. What happens “next,” when improved sanitation facilities eventually become full? An emphasis on faecal sludge management has multiplied this important issue in the past few years. The authors compare the pit latrine emptying situation in Malawi and Zambia with a focus on status, challenges and opportunities. To build this comparison, …
Why Financial Lending Institutions Are Not Willing To Provide Services To The Private Sector For Rural Sanitation And Hygiene (Malawi)., Rochelle H. Holm, Victor Kasulo, Elijah Wanda
Why Financial Lending Institutions Are Not Willing To Provide Services To The Private Sector For Rural Sanitation And Hygiene (Malawi)., Rochelle H. Holm, Victor Kasulo, Elijah Wanda
Faculty Scholarship
This study examines the gap between financial lending institutions and sanitation and hygiene services within Nkhata Bay District, Malawi. The study reviewed literature and policies, and conducted interviews, field observations, focus group discussions, household and lending institutions surveys, and peer reviewed workshops. Results suggest the following recommendations: promoting informal financial services, improving access for “risky” customers, improving knowledge for financial service providers, and promoting loan diversity. Although it has been found in Malawi households are willing to pay, cash, for improved sanitation, build-up of private sector businesses is hampered by lending institutions not willing to provide financial services.