Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Covid-19 Collaborative Modelling For Policy Response In The Philippines, Malaysia And Vietnam, Angus Hughes, Romain Ragonnet, Pavithra Jayasundara, Hoang-Anh Ngo, Elvira P. De Lara-Tuprio, Ma. Regina Justina Estuar, Timothy Robin Y. Teng, Law Kian Boon, Kalaiarasu M. Peariasamy, Zhuo-Lin Chong, Izzuna Mudla M. Ghazali, Greg J. Fox, Thu-Anh Nguyen, Linh-Vi Le, Milinda Abayawardana B. Eng, David Shipman, Emma S. Mcbryde, Michael T. Meehan, Jamie M. Caldwell, James M. Trauer

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Mathematical models that capture COVID-19 dynamics have supported public health responses and policy development since the beginning of the pandemic, yet there is limited discourse to describe features of an optimal modelling platform to support policy decisions or how modellers and policy makers have engaged with each other. Here, we outline how we used a modelling software platform to support public health decision making for the COVID-19 response in the Western Pacific Region (WPR) countries of the Philippines, Malaysia and Viet Nam. This perspective describes an approach to support evidence-based public health decisions and policy, which may help inform other …

Assessing The Health And Financial Burden Of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Among All Payer Inpatient Pediatric Discharges In Nevada, Kavita Batra

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a postnatal withdrawal syndrome among neonates born to drug-dependent mothers. NAS poses a significant health and fiscal challenge nationally, with its incidence increasing by a factor of six (1.20 to 6.7 per 1,000 hospital births/year) along with the concomitant rise in health care cost from 2000-2016. Besides national data, it is critical to quantify NAS at the state-level to identify the target areas for prevention. Given the higher opioid prescribing rates among pregnant women in Nevada, it is critical to assess the health and financial magnitude of NAS in the state. The objectives of this …

Covid-19: A Simple Curve Approximation Tool, Jane Courtney

Articles

In the current COVID-19 pandemic, much focus is put on ‘flattening the curve’. This ‘curve’ refers to the cases versus time graph, which shows the rise of a disease to its peak before descending. The aim in a pandemic is to flatten this curve by reducing the peak and spreading out the timeline. However, the models used to predict this curve are often not clearly outlined, no model parameters are given, and models are not tested against real data. This lack of detail makes it difficult to recreate the curve from these models. What is much needed is a simple …

Geographic Modelling Of Sickle Cell Trait In Four Us Regions, Marian M. Tabi, Anunay Bhattacharya

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Background: Many studies have been done concerning the prevalence of sickle cell trait, its incidence and screening techniques. It is most commonly observed in the Black and Hispanic population in the United States. This study used retrospective data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR – December 12, 2014) to model, analyze, and substantiate the geographic distribution of sickle cell trait, its incidence, prevalence and screening in 44 states divided into 4 regions in the United States.

Methods: We conducted data modelling of geographic regions in the United States. The four regions were …

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 …

Climate, Environmental And Socio-Economic Change: Weighing Up The Balance In Vector-Borne Disease Transmission, Paul E. Parham, Joanna Waldock, George K. Christophides, Deborah Hemming, Folashade Agusto, Katherine J. Evans, Nina Fefferman, Holly Gaff, Abba Gumel, Shannon Ladeau

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Arguably one of the most important effects of climate change is the potential impact on human health. While this is likely to take many forms, the implications for future transmission of vector-borne diseases (VBDs), given their ongoing contribution to global disease burden, are both extremely important and highly uncertain. In part, this is owing not only to data limitations and methodological challenges when integrating climate-driven VBD models and climate change projections, but also, perhaps most crucially, to the multitude of epidemiological, ecological and socio-economic factors that drive VBD transmission, and this complexity has generated considerable debate over the past 10-15 …

Comparing Modelled Predictions Of Neonatal Mortality Impacts Using List With Observed Results Of Community-Based Intervention Trials In South Asia, Ingrid K. Friberg, Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta, Gary L. Darmstadt, Abhay Bang, Simon Cousens, Abdullah H. Baqui, Vishwajeet Kumar, Neff Walker, Joy E. Lawn

Woman and Child Health

Background:There is an increasing body of evidence from trials suggesting that major reductions in neonatal mortality are possible through community-based interventions. Since these trials involve packages of varying content, determining how much of the observed mortality reduction is due to specific interventions is problematic. The Lives Saved Tool (LiST) is designed to facilitate programmatic prioritization by modelling mortality reductions related to increasing coverage of specific interventions which may be combined into packages.
Methods: To assess the validity of LiST outputs, we compared predictions generated by LiST with observed neonatal mortality reductions in trials of packages which met inclusion criteria …

Systematic Review And Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis Of Diagnosis Of Heart Failure, With Modelling Of Implications Of Different Diagnostic Strategies In Primary Care, J. Mant, J. Doust, A. Roalfe, P. Barton, M. Cowie, P. Glasziou, D. Mant, R. Mcmanus, R. Holder, J. Deeks, K. Fletcher, M. Qume, S. Sohanpal, S. Sanders, F. Hobbs

Jenny Doust

Objectives: To assess the accuracy in diagnosing heart failure of clinical features and potential primary care investigations, and to perform a decision analysis to test the impact of plausible diagnostic strategies on costs and diagnostic yield in the UK health-care setting. Data sources: MEDLINE and CINAHL were searched from inception to 7 July 2006. ‘Grey literature’ databases and conference proceedings were searched and authors of relevant studies contacted for data that could not be extracted from the published papers. Review methods: A systematic review of the clinical evidence was carried out according to standard methods. Individual patient data (IPD) analysis …