Publications by authors named "Alvaro Mejia-Echeverry"

Background: On 29 April 2015, the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County (DOH Miami-Dade) was notified by a local dermatologist of 3 patients with suspected nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infection after receiving tattoos at a local tattoo studio.

Methods: DOH Miami-Dade conducted interviews and offered testing, described below, to tattoo studio clients reporting rashes. Culture of clinical isolates and identification were performed at the Florida Bureau of Public Health Laboratories.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • In July 2016, local transmission of the Zika virus was confirmed in Miami-Dade County, prompting a study on pediatric infections among children aged 1-17.
  • The study analyzed 478 confirmed ZIKV cases, revealing that 33 (6.9%) were in children, primarily travel-associated, with a median age of 11 years and a higher prevalence in Hispanic boys.
  • The majority of symptomatic pediatric cases displayed two of the four main symptoms, and there was a notable link to symptomatic household members during the outbreak.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Florida Department of Health in Orange County (DOH-Orange) was notified by a child care facility on January 11, 2013, that a parent had reported that an attendee and three siblings were ill with measles. All four siblings were unvaccinated for measles and had no travel history outside of Orange County during the periods when they likely had been exposed. A fifth, possibly associated case was later reported in a Brazilian citizen who had become ill while vacationing in Florida.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: This study evaluated the impact of a novel multimethod curricular intervention using a train-the-trainer model: the Public Health Infrastructure Training (PHIT). PHIT was designed to 1) modify perceptions of self-efficacy, response efficacy, and threat related to specific hazards and 2) improve the willingness of local health department (LHD) workers to report to duty when called upon.

Methods: Between June 2009 and October 2010, eight clusters of US LHDs (n = 49) received PHIT.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study examines the attitudinal impact of an Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM)-based training curriculum on local public health department (LHD) workers' willingness to respond to representative public health emergency scenarios. Data are from 71 U.S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The all-hazards willingness to respond (WTR) of local public health personnel is critical to emergency preparedness. This study applied a threat-and efficacy-centered framework to characterize these workers' scenario and jurisdictional response willingness patterns toward a range of naturally-occurring and terrorism-related emergency scenarios.

Methods: Eight geographically diverse local health department (LHD) clusters (four urban and four rural) across the U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recently, 14 persons in southeastern Florida were identified with Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W135 invasive infections. All isolates tested had matching or near-matching pulsed-field gel electrophoresis patterns and belonged to the multilocus sequence type 11 clonal complex. The epidemiologic investigation suggested recent endemic transmission of this clonal complex in southeastern Florida.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_session820iabelf188mgp5ggtc02948sken2i3): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once