Publications by authors named "J L Taaffe"

Background: Influenza vaccines are an essential tool for influenza prevention, control and preparedness. However, demand for them and their programmatic suitability globally is significantly influenced by their variable effectiveness against influenza illness annually, limited duration of protection and need for yearly updating and vaccination. As such, the World Health Organization and major funders, such as the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have strongly encouraged developing influenza vaccines with increased efficacy, breadth and duration of protection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

India's dense human and animal populations, agricultural economy, changing environment, and social dynamics support conditions for emergence/re-emergence of zoonotic diseases that necessitate a One Health (OH) approach for control. In addition to OH national level frameworks, effective OH driven strategies that promote local intersectoral coordination and collaboration are needed to truly address zoonotic diseases in India. We conducted a literature review to assess the landscape of OH activities at local levels in India that featured intersectoral coordination and collaboration and supplemented it with our own experience conducting OH related activities with local partners.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of real-world data from national TB care programs has great potential to answer key research questions in TB control and is now opportune due to increasing digital data collection and storage. We summarize an expert stakeholder workshop conducted on this topic in October 2019, with perspectives from academics, national TB program officers, and data managers. We discuss challenges and opportunities in the use of TB programmatic data for research and describe digital data availability in two large, high TB burden countries, Brazil and South Africa.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Surgical simulation is an integral component of training and has become increasingly vital in the evaluation and assessment of surgical trainees. Simulation proficiency determination has been traditionally based on accuracy and time to completion of various simulated tasks, but we were interested in assessing clinical judgment during a simulated crisis scenario. This study assessed the feasibility of creating a crisis simulator station for vascular surgery and evaluated the performance of vascular surgery integrated residents (0+5) and vascular surgery fellows (5+2) during a technical testing with an integrated crisis scenario.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) has emerged as a less invasive alternative to open repair for ruptured Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (rAAA), but comparisons to traditional open rAAA repair and late complications leading to readmission are limited.

Materials And Methods: Hospitalizations for patients undergoing repair for rAAA were selected from the Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD). In-hospital mortality, complications, 30-day readmission, readmission diagnoses, and charges were evaluated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF