Ear disease, hearing loss, and cognitive outcomes in high school children who were previous participants in a randomized placebo controlled trial of an 11 valent conjugate pneumococcal vaccine administered in infancy.

Background: The WHO estimates that close to 1.7 billion people worldwide have hearing loss; 34 million of whom are children, with 90% residing in low- and middle-income countries. While the effects of ear disease and hearing loss on language, academic, and behavioral development are established, there is remarkably little data on intellectual and other cognitive differences.

Exposure to air pollution and cardiovascular risk in young children - a pilot project.

Objective: To examine relationships between traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) and markers of pre-clinical cardiovascular risk in young children.

Study Design: We studied a cohort of healthy children ages 2-5 recruited from pediatric primary care sites (n = 122). We obtained child weight, height, blood pressure and hair nicotine levels.

Distance to Health Centers and Effectiveness of Azithromycin Mass Administration for Children in Niger: A Secondary Analysis of the MORDOR Cluster Randomized Trial.

Importance: The MORDOR (Macrolides Oraux pour Réduire les Décès avec un Oeil sur la Résistance) trial demonstrated that mass azithromycin administration reduced mortality by 18% among children aged 1 to 59 months in Niger. The identification of high-risk subgroups to target with this intervention could reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance.

Objective: To evaluate whether distance to the nearest primary health center modifies the effect of azithromycin administration to children aged 1 to 59 months on child mortality.

Gender and zoonotic pathogen exposure pathways in a resource-limited community, Mpumalanga, South Africa: A qualitative analysis.

The Mnisi community is a livestock-dependent community neighboring the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area in South Africa. Here, zoonotic pathogens contribute to as many as 77% of cases of acute febrile illness. Previous gender-disaggregated analysis in the community has shown that men and women have different risks of zoonotic illness, suggesting that exposure routes for zoonotic infections should be further explored to inform gender-sensitive risk mitigation strategies.

Projecting COVID-19 cases and hospital burden in Ohio.

As the Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) started to spread rapidly in the state of Ohio, the Ecology, Epidemiology and Population Health (EEPH) program within the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at The Ohio State University (OSU) took the initiative to offer epidemic modeling and decision analytics support to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). This paper describes the methodology used by the OSU/IDI response modeling team to predict statewide cases of new infections as well as potential hospital burden in the state. The methodology has two components: (1) A Dynamical Survival Analysis (DSA)-based statistical method to perform parameter inference, statewide prediction and uncertainty quantification.

Projecting COVID-19 Cases and Subsequent Hospital Burden in Ohio.

Unlabelled: As the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease started to spread rapidly in the state of Ohio, the Ecology, Epidemiology and Population Health (EEPH) program within the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at the Ohio State University (OSU) took the initiative to offer epidemic modeling and decision analytics support to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). This paper describes the methodology used by the OSU/IDI response modeling team to predict statewide cases of new infections as well as potential hospital burden in the state. The methodology has two components: 1) A Dynamic Survival Analysis (DSA)-based statistical method to perform parameter inference, statewide prediction and uncertainty quantification.

Understanding the role of urban social and physical environment in opioid overdose events using found geospatial data.

Opioid use disorder is a serious public health crisis in the United States. Manifestations such as opioid overdose events (OOEs) vary within and across communities and there is growing evidence that this variation is partially rooted in community-level social and economic conditions. The lack of high spatial resolution, timely data has hampered research into the associations between OOEs and social and physical environments.

A Bayesian Spatiotemporal Nowcasting Model for Public Health Decision-Making and Surveillance.

As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread through the United States in 2020, states began to set up alert systems to inform policy decisions and serve as risk communication tools for the general public. Many of these systems included indicators based on an assessment of trends in numbers of reported cases. However, when cases are indexed by date of disease onset, reporting delays complicate the interpretation of trends.

Prevalence of current and past COVID-19 in Ohio adults.

Purpose To estimate the prevalence of current and past COVID-19 in Ohio adults. Methods We used stratified, probability-proportionate-to-size cluster sampling. During July 2020, we enrolled 727 randomly-sampled adult English- and Spanish-speaking participants through a household survey.

The impact of the national stay-at-home order on emergency department visits for suspected opioid overdose during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Although national syndromic surveillance data reported declines in emergency department (ED) visits after the declaration of the national stay-at-home order for COVID-19, little is known whether these declines were observed for suspected opioid overdose.

Methods: This interrupted time series study used syndromic surveillance data from four states participating in the HEALing Communities Study: Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. All ED encounters for suspected opioid overdose (n = 48,301) occurring during the first 31 weeks of 2020 were included.

Disparities in Opioid Overdose Death Trends by Race/Ethnicity, 2018-2019, From the HEALing Communities Study.

To examine trends in opioid overdose deaths by race/ethnicity from 2018 to 2019 across 67 HEALing Communities Study (HCS) communities in Kentucky, New York, Massachusetts, and Ohio. We used state death certificate records to calculate opioid overdose death rates per 100 000 adult residents of the 67 HCS communities for 2018 and 2019. We used Poisson regression to calculate the ratio of 2019 to 2018 rates.

Thirty-five years later: Long-term effects of the Matlab maternal and child health/family planning program on older women's well-being.

Family planning programs are believed to have substantial long-term benefits for women's health and well-being, yet few studies have established either extent or direction of long-term effects. The Matlab, Bangladesh, maternal and child health/family planning (MCH/FP) program afforded a 12-y period of well-documented differential access to services. We evaluate its impacts on women's lifetime fertility, adult health, and economic outcomes 35 y after program initiation.

Electronic cigarette use and risk of cigarette and smokeless tobacco initiation among adolescent boys: A propensity score matched analysis.

Introduction: Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among adolescents is associated with increased risk of subsequent cigarette smoking initiation in observational research. However, the existing research was not designed to answer causal questions about whether adolescent e-cigarette users would have initiated cigarette smoking if they had never used e-cigarettes. The current study used a causal inference framework to identify whether male adolescent e-cigarette users were at increased risk of initiating cigarette smoking and smokeless tobacco (SLT) use, compared to similar boys who had never used e-cigarettes.

Investigating the association of room features with healthcare-facility-onset : An exploratory study.

Objective: To investigate hospital room and patient-level risk factors associated with increased risk of healthcare-facility-onset Clostridioides difficile infection (HO-CDI).

Design: The study used a retrospective cohort design that included patient data from the institution's electronic health record, existing surveillance data on HO-CDI, and a walk-through survey of hospital rooms to identify potential room-level risk factors. The primary outcome was HO-CDI diagnosis.

Operationalizing and selecting outcome measures for the HEALing Communities Study.

Background: The Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEALing) Communities Study (HCS) is a multisite, parallel-group, cluster randomized wait-list controlled trial evaluating the impact of the Communities That HEAL intervention to reduce opioid overdose deaths and associated adverse outcomes. This paper presents the approach used to define and align administrative data across the four research sites to measure key study outcomes.

Methods: Priority was given to using administrative data and established data collection infrastructure to ensure reliable, timely, and sustainable measures and to harmonize study outcomes across the HCS sites.

Organizations matter in local governance: evidence from health sector decentralization in Honduras.

Health systems strengthening is at the forefront of the global health agenda. Many health systems in low-resource settings face profound challenges, and robust causal evidence on the effects of health systems reforms is lacking. Decentralization has been one of the most prominent reforms, and after more than 50 years of implementation and hundreds of studies, we still know little about whether these policies improve, harm or are inconsequential for the performance of health systems in less-developed countries.

A Community Development Program and Reduction in High-Cost Health Care Use.

Adverse housing and neighborhood conditions influence child health. The Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families community development initiative was established in 2008 to address housing, education, employment, and other neighborhood-level, child health-influencing factors on the south side of Columbus, Ohio, with the goal of improving child health and well-being. In this article, we discuss the path from advocacy to outcomes analysis in this initiative and assess changes in high-cost health care use by children in the target area over the first decade of implementation.

Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis of Infant Mortality and Preterm Birth in Ohio, 2008-2015: Opportunities to Enhance Spatial Thinking.

Objectives: Geovisualization and spatial analysis are valuable tools for exploring and evaluating the complex social, economic, and environmental interactions that lead to spatial inequalities in health. The objective of this study was to describe spatial patterns of infant mortality and preterm birth in Ohio by using interactive mapping and spatial analysis.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using Ohio vital statistics records from 2008-2015.

Repurposing Geographic Information Systems for Routine Hospital Infection Control.

This chapter discusses the potential role of geographic information systems (GIS) for infection control within the hospital system. The chapter provides a brief overview of the role of GIS in public health and reviews current work applying these methods to the hospital setting. Finally, it outlines the potential opportunities and challenges for adapting GIS for use in the hospital setting for infection prevention.

Network analysis of intra-hospital transfers and hospital onset clostridium difficile infection.

Objectives: To explore how social network analysis (SNA) can be used to analyse intra-hospital patient networks of individuals with a hospital acquired infection (HAI) for further analysis in a geographical information systems (GIS) environment.

Methods: A case and control study design was used to select 2008 patients. We retrieved locational data for the patients, which was then translated into a network with the SNA software and then GIS software.

Top 10 Research Priorities in Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology.

The International Initiative on Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology (ISLE) convened its first International Symposium on Lifecourse Epidemiology and Spatial Science at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, Netherlands, 16–20 July 2018. Its aim was to further an emerging transdisciplinary field: Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology. This field draws from a broad perspective of scientific disciplines including lifecourse epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, community health, spatial science, health geography, biostatistics, spatial statistics, environmental science, climate change, exposure science, health economics, evidence-based public health, and landscape ecology.