Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Syndromic Surveillance Using Minimum Transfer Of Identifiable Data: The Example Of The National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program, Richard Platt, Carmella Bocchino, Blake Caldwell, Robert Harmon, Ken Kleinman, Ross Lazarus, Andrew F. Nelson, James D. Nordin, Debra P. Ritzwoller

Public Health Department Faculty Publication Series

Several health plants and other organizations are collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a syndromic surveillance system with national coverage that includes more than 20 million people. A principal design feature of this system is reliance on daily reporting of counts of individuals with syndromes of interest in specified geographic regions rather than reporting of individual encounter-level information. On request from public health agencies, health plans and telephone triage services provide additional information regarding individuals who are part of apparent clusters of illness. This reporting framework has several advantages, including less sharing of protected health …

A Nearly Continuous Measure Of Birth Weight For Gestational Age Using A United States National Reference, Ken Kleinman, Emily Oken, Janet Rich-Edwards, Matthew Gillman

Public Health Department Faculty Publication Series

Background

Fully understanding the determinants and sequelae of fetal growth requires a continuous measure of birth weight adjusted for gestational age. Published United States reference data, however, provide estimates only of the median and lowest and highest 5^th and 10^th percentiles for birth weight at each gestational age. The purpose of our analysis was to create more continuous reference measures of birth weight for gestational age for use in epidemiologic analyses.

Methods

We used data from the most recent nationwide United States Natality datasets to generate multiple reference percentiles of birth weight at each completed week of gestation …

Correlates Of Parental Antibiotic Knowledge, Demand, And Reported Use, Marianne Kuzujanakis, Ken Kleinman, Sheryl Rifas-Shiman, Jonathan A. Finkelstein

Public Health Department Faculty Publication Series

Clinicians cite parental misconceptions and requests for antibiotics as reasons for inappropriate prescribing. To identify misconceptions regarding antibiotics and predictors of parental demand for antibiotics and to determine if parental knowledge and attitudes are associated with use. Survey of parents in 16 Massachusetts communities. Domains included antibiotic-related knowledge, attitudes about antibiotics, antibiotic use during a 12-month period, demographics, and access to health information. Bivariate and multivariate analyses evaluated predictors of knowledge and proclivity to demand antibiotics. A multivariate model evaluated the associations of knowledge, demand, and demographic factors with parent-reported antibiotic use. A total of 1106 surveys were returned (response …