China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Public Health Education in the United States
Published in Ira Nurmala, Yashwant V. Pathak, Advancing Professional Development through CPE in Public Health, 2019
Ira Nurmala, Yashwant V. Pathak
Public health education is mainly started in 1918 with the establishment of the Johns Hopkins University of Hygiene and Public Health. According to the Council on Education for Public Health, in the next 10 years the number of public health schools may double. Apart from epidemiology and biostatistics, new fields are emerging such as public health informatics, management of clinical trials and human genetics. With public health ascending high on the national plan and a wealth of assets being guaranteed, maybe there is currently a chance, as there has not been for an exceptionally prolonged stretch of time, to shape a future arrangement of general well-being instruction that tends to the issues that have been so regularly depicted and examined. If we talk about the role of a public health educator, it starts with exploring the needs of a community by enquiring about their suffering because of lack primary health care knowledge and providing them with resources. After the phase of exploration then come promotion, implementation, evaluation, management and advocacy of health, and health education. A health advocator is responsible to foster the healthcare profession in the community and works with other people to regulate the standards and to achieve the highest level of health outcomes.
Global health and open source software (OSS): An example of legal considerations impacting technology and global health policy implementation
Published in David L. Blazes, Sheri H. Lewis, Disease Surveillance, 2016
Over the past two decades, there have been significant changes in the fields of global health and information technology. In many ways, the law has not been adept at keeping up with the difficult ethical and policy questions presented by emerging diseases, or the pace of technology that has been developed or adapted to address these new challenges. The insidious spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, new strains of influenza, and most recently, Ebola, have underscored the need for international coordination to effectively respond to these threats. Meanwhile, rapid changes in information technology, and particularly in the field of public health informatics, have altered how we conduct disease surveillance and monitoring. Health data can now be collected from new sources (e.g., social media), combined with myriad other data sets, and analyzed to provide new insights (often referred to as “big data”).
Using technology to enhance learning and practice in collaborative working in public health
Published in Dawne Gurbutt, Jonny Currie, Liz Anderson, Russell Gurbutt, E. Riesen, M. Morley, D. Clendinneng, S. Ogilvie, M.A. Murray, P. Thompson, Lucy Kululanga, Patricia Donovan, Weir Hannele, Collaborative Practice for Public Health, 2018
Russell Gurbutt, E. Riesen, M. Morley, D. Clendinneng, S. Ogilvie, M.A. Murray, P. Thompson
Information comes in many forms, indeed the term data is sometimes used synonymously but strictly speaking information and data are different. In brief, information is data that has been processed in some way (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data). Public health informatics is ‘at the intersection of information science, computer science and healthcare’. It has different dimensions, some of which are indicated below: It deals with the resources, devices and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine.Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems. It is applied to the areas of nursing, clinical care, dentistry, pharmacy, public health and (bio) medical research.Public health informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research and learning.Public health organizations are faced with the challenge of collecting and analyzing data related to the health of a population, and managing this data to maximize efficiency and efficacy. The Certificate in Public Health Informatics is designed to develop experts in the systematic application of information technology to public health practice, research and learning. (For more information follow the link to: www.jhsph.edu/departments/health-policy-and-management/certificates/public-health-informatics/what-is-health-informatics. html)
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Molecular Diagnostics
Published in Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, 2021
While the molecular diagnostics advances have been instrumental in identifying patients and asymptomatic contacts with COVID-19, the tests have not realized their full potential because of inadequacies related to laboratory informatics connectivity and informatics analysis. Typically, 1–2 days pass before individuals present for testing, followed by 2–5 days for testing to be completed in a central laboratory and results returned. This compares with the estimate that each day delay in COVID-19 test results in presence of fully functioning contact tracing, increases cumulative disease incidence by 28% and resource utilization by 33%[1]. It is worthwhile reflecting on this deficiency, its massive costs, and potential solutions. Turnaround times for lab tests have been based on past expectations for health care in hospitals or ambulatory settings, not on population testing needs in a pandemic. Typically, Diagnostic Laboratories are connected electronically to units within hospitals and to particular ambulatory clients but rarely farther afield to public health units or regional governments. While the communications technology is feasible today, barriers to better interconnectivity range from presence of multiple, insufficiently standardized informatics systems in labs, public health units and regions, privacy protection concerns, to debates about which payor should bear connection costs. An option to develop low cost connectivity is to bypass legacy specialized systems and their attendant bureaucracies by using encrypted cell phones directly attached to point of care diagnostics devices and to public health units. Further, the COVID−19 pandemic is a prime example where a vast mountain of molecular diagnostics associated data has been collected, far too much to be analyzed and used most effectively in a timely manner by conventional means. The opportunity presents opportunities, first to revisit this data using artificial intelligence to discern useful patterns for early detection and assessment of Covid−19, and then to embed the algorithms into future public health informatics systems [20].