Public health emergency preparedness for infectious disease emergencies: a scoping review of recent evidence.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to demonstrate the risks and profound health impacts that result from infectious disease emergencies. Emergency preparedness has been defined as the knowledge, capacity and organizational systems that governments, response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals develop to anticipate, respond to, or recover from emergencies. This scoping review explored recent literature on priority areas and indicators for public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) with a focus on infectious disease emergencies.

Self-management across chronic diseases: Targeting education and support needs.

Objectives: Among Canadian adults with chronic disease: 1) to identify groups that differ in self-management task frequency and self-efficacy; 2) to compare group characteristics and preferences for self-management support.

Methods: Using data from an online survey, cluster analysis was used to identify groups that differed in self-management task frequency and self-efficacy. Multivariable regression was used to explore relationships with patient characteristics and preferences.

Prevalence and risk factors for seropositivity in small ruminant veterinarians and veterinary students in Ontario, Canada.

is a zoonotic pathogen that causes Q fever in humans. Serological and questionnaire data on were obtained from 32 small ruminant veterinarians and veterinary students in Ontario, Canada, in February 2012. Overall, 59% of participants were seropositive; advanced stage of career and increased age were associated with seropositivity.

WWOSC 2014: research needs for better health resilience to weather hazards.

The first World Weather Open Science Conference (WWOSC, held from 17-21 August 2014 in Montreal, Québec), provided an open forum where the experience and perspective of a variety of weather information providers and users was combined with the latest application advances in social sciences. A special session devoted to health focused on how best the most recent weather information and communication technologies (ICT) could improve the health emergency responses to disasters resulting from natural hazards. Speakers from a plenary presentation and its corresponding panel shared lessons learnt from different international multidisciplinary initiatives against weather-related epidemics, such as malaria, leptospirosis and meningitis and from public health responses to floods and heat waves such as in Ontario and Quebec, Canada.

Evaluation of an inter-professional educational intervention to improve the use of arthritis best practices in primary care.

Objective: To describe the evaluation of a community-based continuing health education program designed to improve the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA), and to examine the results by discipline.

Methods: The Getting a Grip on Arthritis(©) program was based on clinical practice guidelines adapted for the primary care environment (best practices). The program consisted of an accredited inter-professional workshop and 6 months of activities to reinforce the learning.