Adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions following COVID-19 vaccination: a federated cohort study.

In pandemic mitigation, strategies such as social distancing and mask-wearing are vital to prevent disease resurgence. Yet, monitoring adherence is challenging, as individuals might be reluctant to share behavioral data with public health authorities. To address this challenge and demonstrate a framework for conducting observational research with sensitive data in a privacy-conscious manner, we employ a privacy-centric epidemiological study design: the federated cohort.

Using EpiCore to Enable Rapid Verification of Potential Health Threats: Illustrated Use Cases and Summary Statistics.

Background: The proliferation of digital disease-detection systems has led to an increase in earlier warning signals, which subsequently have resulted in swifter responses to emerging threats. Such highly sensitive systems can also produce weak signals needing additional information for action. The delays in the response to a genuine health threat are often due to the time it takes to verify a health event.

Longitudinal Participatory Surveillance Highlights Association Between Mask-Wearing and Lower COVID-19 Risk - United States, 2020.

What Is Already Known About This Topic?: Numerous ecological and laboratory studies suggest face masks are an effective non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but cannot otherwise assess individual-level effects.

What Is Added By This Report?: Using a prospective cohort of individuals enrolled in a participatory, syndromic surveillance tool prior to the first case of COVID-19 in the United States, we present a novel longitudinal assessment of the effectiveness of face masks.

What Are The Public Health Implications For Public Health Practice?: Our analysis demonstrates an association between self-reported mask-wearing behavior and lower individual risk of syndromic COVID-19-like illness while adjusting for confounders at the individual level.

Identifying COVID-19 Vaccine Deserts and Ways to Reduce Them: A Digital Tool to Support Public Health Decision-Making.

A private-academic partnership built the Vaccine Equity Planner (VEP) to help decision-makers improve geographic access to COVID-19 vaccinations across the United States by identifying vaccine deserts and facilities that could fill those deserts. The VEP presented complex, updated data in an intuitive form during a rapidly changing pandemic situation. The persistence of vaccine deserts in every state as COVID-19 booster recommendations develop suggests that vaccine delivery can be improved.

Delayed medical care and underlying health in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study.

This study assesses the association between underlying health conditions and delaying medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online cross-sectional survey administered by OutbreaksNearMe.org on Momentive.