The Global Specialized Polio Laboratory at CDC supports the Global Poliovirus Laboratory Network with environmental surveillance (ES) to detect the presence of vaccine strain polioviruses, vaccine-derived polioviruses, and wild polioviruses in high-risk countries. Environmental sampling provides valuable supplementary information, particularly in areas with gaps in surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) mainly in children less than 15 years. In collaboration with Guatemala's National Health Laboratory (Laboratorio Nacional de Salud Guatemala), monthly sewage collections allowed screening enterovirus (EV) presence without incurring additional costs for sample collection, transport, or concentration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The use of technological innovations in ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) care networks has been shown to be effective in improving information flow and coordination, and thus reducing the time to reperfusion. We developed a smartphone application called ODISEA to improve our STEMI care network and evaluated the results of its use.
Method: Quasi-experimental study that compared the outcomes of STEMI suspected patients with an alert and indication for transfer to a cath lab during a previous period and a period in which the ODISEA APP was used.
Guatemala implemented wastewater-based poliovirus surveillance in 2018, and three genetically unrelated vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPVs) were detected in 2019. The Ministry of Health (MoH) response included event investigation through institutional and community retrospective case searches for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) during 2018-2020 and a bivalent oral polio/measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination campaign in September 2019. This response was reviewed by an international expert team in July 2021.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Residents living in US-Mexico border communities have some of the worst health outcomes nationally. This randomized trial evaluated whether patients receiving enhanced integrated behavioral health (IBH) care at a southern Texas free and charitable were more likely to improve health outcomes after 12 months compared to patients receiving standard care.
Theory & Methods: The IBH intervention featured brief intervention by a behavioral health specialist and enhanced coordinated care.
Dynamical climate models present an initialization problem due to the poor availability of deep oceanic data, which is required for the model assimilation process. In this sense, teleconnection indices, defined from spatial and temporal patterns of climatic variables, are conceived as useful tools to complement them. In this work, the near-term climate predictability of 35 temperature and 36 precipitation time series of three cities (Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon) was analysed using two approaches: (a) a statistical-dynamical combination of self-predictable teleconnection indices and long-term climate projections on a local scale and (b) dynamical model outputs obtained from drift-corrected decadal experiments.
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