Identifying Trusted Sources of Lyme Disease Prevention Information Among Internet Users Connected to Academic Public Health Resources: Internet-Based Survey Study.

Background: Misinformation about Lyme disease and other tick-transmitted pathogens circulates frequently on the internet and can compete with, or even overshadow, science-based guidance on tick-borne disease (TBD) prevention.

Objective: We surveyed internet users connected to academic tick-related resources to identify trusted sources of Lyme disease prevention information, explore confidence in tick bite prevention information, and examine associations of these responses with answers to commonly disputed issues.

Methods: The survey was conducted through social media and website pages for Western Connecticut State University Tickborne Disease Prevention Laboratory and the University of Rhode Island TickEncounter Resource Center.

Current and Future Habitat Suitability Models for Four Ticks of Medical Concern in Illinois, USA.

The greater U.S. Midwest is on the leading edge of tick and tick-borne disease (TBD) expansion, with tick and TBD encroachment into Illinois occurring from both the northern and the southern regions.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of veterinary professionals towards ticks and tick-borne diseases in Illinois.

Objective: A lack of standardized surveillance or reporting of tick-borne diseases (TBDs) in Illinois creates uncertainty for veterinarians regarding TBDs occurring within their practice geography or which TBDs may be encroaching on their area from neighboring territories. Therefore, the objective of this study was to gauge the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of veterinary professionals in Southern and Central Illinois to establish a foundation for targeting educational and outreach programs that address knowledge gaps.

Sample: 72 veterinary professionals in Central and Southern Illinois.

Tick-Borne Disease Prevention Behaviors Among Participants in a Tick Surveillance System Compared with a Sample Of Master Gardeners.

Theory-based approaches to health communication and behavior are increasingly applied to interventions that address poor public tick-borne disease prevention knowledge and practices. We sought to understand the tick-borne disease prevention behaviors among participants in a crowdsourced passive tick surveillance system that employs theory-based messages about tick bite risk and prevention strategies. We administered an electronic survey to a randomly selected sample of passive surveillance system users and compared their responses to those from a nationwide sample of Master Gardeners (MG), a group with heighten tick exposure due to outdoor activity.

An analysis of companion animal tick encounters as revealed by photograph-based crowdsourced data.

Background: Community science is increasingly utilized to track important vectors of companion animal disease, providing a scalable, cost-effective strategy for identifying new foci, changing phenology, and disease prevalence across wide geographies.

Objectives: We examined photographs of ticks found attached to predominately dogs and cats reported to a photograph-based tick surveillance program to identify potential areas for improvements in tick prevention education and risk intervention.

Methods: We compared estimated days of tick attachment using a Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance, and a Pearson's chi-square analysis of variance on the number of submissions by host type submitted for each season.

Crowdsourced Tick Image-Informed Updates to U.S. County Records of Three Medically Important Tick Species.

Burgeoning cases of tick-borne disease present a significant public health problem in the United States. Passive tick surveillance gained traction as an effective way to collect epidemiologic data, and in particular, photograph-based tick surveillance can complement in-hand tick specimen identification to amass distribution data and related encounter demographics. We compared the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) code of tick photos submitted to a free public identification service (TickSpotters) from 2014 to 2019 to published nationwide county reports for three tick species of medical concern: Ixodes scapularis Say (Ixodida: Ixodidae), Ixodes pacificus Cooley and Kohls (Ixodida: Ixodidae), and Amblyomma americanum Linneaus (Ixodida: Ixodidae).

Assessing Public Tick Identification Ability and Tick Bite Riskiness Using Passive Photograph-Based Crowdsourced Tick Surveillance.

Tick identification is critical for assessing disease risk from a tick bite and for determining requisite treatment. Data from the University of Rhode Island's TickEncounter Resource Center's photo-based surveillance system, TickSpotters, indicate that users incorrectly identified their submitted specimen 83% of the time. Of the top four most commonly submitted tick species, western blacklegged ticks (Ixodes pacificus Cooley & Kohls [Ixodida: Ixodidae]) had the largest proportion of unidentified or misidentified submissions (87.

Crowdsourced Photographs as an Effective Method for Large-Scale Passive Tick Surveillance.

As tick vector ranges expand and the number of tickborne disease cases rise, physicians, veterinarians, and the public are faced with diagnostic, treatment, and prevention challenges. Traditional methods of active surveillance (e.g.