Publications by authors named "Dixon B"

Objective: Biomedical informatics attracts few underrepresented racial minorities (URMs) into PhD programs. We examine graduation trends from 2002 to 2017 to determine how URM representation has changed over time. We also examine academic job placements by race and identify individual and institutional characteristics associated with URM graduates being successfully placed in academic jobs.

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The aquaculture industry is continuously threatened by infectious diseases, including those of bacterial origin. Regardless of the disease burden, aquaculture is already the main method for producing fish protein, having displaced capture fisheries. One attractive sector within this industry is the culture of salmonids, which are (a) uniquely under pressure due to overfishing and (b) the most valuable finfish per unit of weight.

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Background: Kidney disease accounts for more than 49 billion dollars in healthcare expenditures annually. Early detection and intervention may reduce the burden of disease. We describe a quality improvement project to develop a telenephrology dashboard that proactively monitors kidney disease.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzed gonorrhea (GC) testing data from Indiana's STD registry, revealing a significant rise in the number of individuals tested for GC between 2004 and 2016, increasing from 54,334 to 269,701.
  • - While the total number of GC cases also increased from 2,039 to 5,997 during this period, the positivity rate for tests decreased from 3.75% to 2.22%.
  • - The findings suggest that using combined electronic health records and public health data can better support STD control efforts, particularly as increased testing was linked to a rise in GC cases.
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Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all women with a stillbirth have a syphilis test after delivery. Our study seeks to evaluate adherence to CDC guidelines for syphilis screening among women with a stillbirth delivery.

Methods: We used data recorded in electronic health records for women who gave birth between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2016.

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Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small, usually cationic, and amphiphilic molecules that play a crucial role in molecular and cellular host defense against pathogens, tissue damage, and infection. AMPs are present in all metazoans and several have been discovered in teleosts. Some teleosts, such as salmonids, have undergone whole genome duplication events and retained a diverse AMP repertoire.

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Public Health Informatics (PHI) has taken on new importance in recent years as health and well-being face a number of challenges, including environmental disasters, emerging infectious diseases, such as Zika, Ebola and SARS-CoV-2, the growing impact of the Influenza virus, the opioid epidemic, and social determinants of health. Understanding the relationship between climate change and the health of populations adds further complexity to global health issues. To describe four examples of curricula that exist in U.

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Background: While researchers seek to use administrative health data to examine outcomes for individuals with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes used to identify persons with chlamydia and gonorrhea have not been validated. Objectives were to determine the validity of using ICD-10-CM codes to identify individuals with chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Methods: We used data from electronic health records gathered from public and private health systems from October 1, 2015, to December 31, 2016.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Plastic pollution is a serious and increasing issue, requiring effective interventions to mitigate its impact on the environment.
  • - A study modeling plastic waste and microplastics predicts that implementing all viable interventions could cut plastic pollution by 40% by 2040, but even with action, 710 million metric tons of plastic waste will still enter ecosystems.
  • - Immediate global coordination is essential to lower plastic use, enhance recycling and waste management efforts, and innovate within the plastic production cycle to prevent environmental damage.
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Population prevalence of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), varies by subpopulation and locality. U.S.

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Nebulised unfractionated heparin (UFH) has a strong scientific and biological rationale and warrants urgent investigation of its therapeutic potential, for COVID-19-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). COVID-19 ARDS displays the typical features of diffuse alveolar damage with extensive pulmonary coagulation activation resulting in fibrin deposition in the microvasculature and formation of hyaline membranes in the air sacs. Patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 who manifest severe disease have high levels of inflammatory cytokines in plasma and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and significant coagulopathy.

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Introduction: Research in traumatic brain injury suggests better patient outcomes when invasive oxygen monitoring is used to detect and correct episodes of brain hypoxia. Invasive brain oxygen monitoring is, however, not routinely used due to the risks, costs and technical challengers. We are developing a non-invasive brain oximeter to address these limitations.

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The Cag type IV secretion system (T4SS) translocates the effector protein CagA and nonprotein bacterial constituents into host cells. In this study, we infected Mongolian gerbils with an strain in which expression of the operon (required for Cag T4SS activity) is controlled by a TetR/ system. Transcript levels of were significantly higher in gastric tissue from -infected animals receiving doxycycline-containing chow (to derepress Cag T4SS activity) than in tissue from infected control animals receiving drug-free chow.

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Neonatal thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) is a rare and severe disease characterized by a triad of non-immune hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and organ dysfunction in neonates. We describe herein an early-term infant who underwent hemicolectomy at 4 days of age due to intestinal perforation. Following surgery, the patient had recurrent bouts of vomiting and abdominal distention, together with acute kidney injury, non-immune hemolytic anemia, and severe thrombocytopenia.

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Maternal and infant health (MIH) mobile applications (apps) are increasingly popular and frequently used for health education and decision making. Interventions grounded in theory-based behavior change techniques (BCTs) are shown to be effective in promoting healthy behavior changes. MIH apps have the potential to be useful tools, yet the extent to which they incorporate BCTs is still unknown.

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It is important that women of reproductive age have access to and use routine health services to improve birth outcomes. While it is estimated that more than 5 million women in over 1000 counties across the United States live in maternity care deserts, to date there have been no published studies characterizing access and barriers to routine healthcare utilization in these areas. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted in a rural county in northwest Ohio with 315 women ages 18-45 years.

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Healthcare analytics is impeded by a lack of machine learning (ML) model generalizability, the ability of a model to predict accurately on varied data sources not included in the model's training dataset. We leveraged free-text laboratory data from a Health Information Exchange network to evaluate ML generalization using Notifiable Condition Detection (NCD) for public health surveillance as a use case. We 1) built ML models for detecting syphilis, salmonella, and histoplasmosis; 2) evaluated generalizability of these models across data from holdout lab systems, and; 3) explored factors that influence weak model generalizability.

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The rapid detection of foodborne microbial pathogens contaminating fresh fruits and vegetables during the intervening period between harvest and consumption could revolutionize microbial quality assurance of food usually consumed raw and those with a limited shelf life. We have developed a sensitive, shotgun whole genome sequencing protocol capable of detecting as few as 1 colony forming unit (cfu) of serovar Typhimurium spiked on 25 g of lettuce. The Ion Torrent sequencing platform was used to generate reads of globally amplified DNA from microbes recovered from the surface of lettuce followed by bioinformatic analyses of the nucleotide sequences to detect the presence of .

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Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a multifunctional neuropeptide belonging to the glucagon/secretin superfamily. In teleost fish, PACAP has been demonstrated to have an immunomodulatory role. Although previous studies have shown that viral/bacterial infections can influence the transcription of PACAP splicing variants and associated receptors in salmonids, the antiviral activity of PACAP has never been studied in teleost.

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Objective: Outbreak detection and disease control may be improved by simplified, semi-automated reporting of notifiable diseases to public health authorities. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of an electronic, prepopulated notifiable disease report form on case reporting rates by ambulatory care clinics to public health authorities.

Methods: We conducted a 2-year (2012-2014) controlled before-and-after trial of a health information exchange (HIE) intervention in Indiana designed to prepopulate notifiable disease reporting forms to providers.

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Introduction: As the health system seeks to leverage large-scale data to inform population outcomes, the informatics community is developing tools for analysing these data. To support data quality assessment within such a tool, we extended the open-source software Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) to incorporate new functions useful for population health.

Methods: We developed and tested methods to measure the completeness, timeliness and entropy of information.

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Background: Pulmonary hypercoagulopathy is intrinsic to inhalation trauma. Nebulized heparin could theoretically be beneficial in patients with inhalation injury, but current data are conflicting. We aimed to investigate the safety, feasibility, and effectiveness of nebulized heparin.

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