Trends and patterns of disparities in diabetes and chronic kidney disease mortality among US counties, 1980-2014.

Introduction: Diabetes and chronic kidney diseases are associated with a large health burden in the USA and globally.

Objective: To estimate age-standardized mortality rates by county from diabetes mellitus and chronic kidney disease.

Design And Setting: Validated small area estimation models were applied to de-identified death records from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and population counts from the census bureau, NCHS, and the Human Mortality Database to estimate county-level mortality rates from 1980 to 2014 from diabetes mellitus and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Predicting the environmental suitability for onchocerciasis in Africa as an aid to elimination planning.

Recent evidence suggests that, in some foci, elimination of onchocerciasis from Africa may be feasible with mass drug administration (MDA) of ivermectin. To achieve continental elimination of transmission, mapping surveys will need to be conducted across all implementation units (IUs) for which endemicity status is currently unknown. Using boosted regression tree models with optimised hyperparameter selection, we estimated environmental suitability for onchocerciasis at the 5 × 5-km resolution across Africa.

Informing Rift Valley Fever preparedness by mapping seasonally varying environmental suitability.

Background: Rift Valley Fever (RVF) poses a threat to human and animal health throughout much of Africa and the Middle East and has been recognized as a global health security priority and a key preparedness target.

Methods: We combined RVF occurrence data from a systematic literature review with animal notification data from an online database. Using boosted regression trees, we made monthly environmental suitability predictions from January 1995 to December 2016 at a 5 × 5-km resolution throughout regions of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

Travel time to health facilities in areas of outbreak potential: maps for guiding local preparedness and response.

Background: Repeated outbreaks of emerging pathogens underscore the need for preparedness plans to prevent, detect, and respond. As countries develop and improve National Action Plans for Health Security, addressing subnational variation in preparedness is increasingly important. One facet of preparedness and mitigating disease transmission is health facility accessibility, linking infected persons with health systems and vice versa.