8
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Framework for a Community Health Observing System for the Gulf of Mexico Region: Preparing for Future Disasters

      research-article
      1 , * , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 2 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 23 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 28 , 12 , 19
      Frontiers in Public Health
      Frontiers Media S.A.
      health observing system, disasters, Gulf of Mexico, cohort studies, stress, COVID-19, allostatic load, health surveillance

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human health consequences of future disasters requires establishment of a comprehensive, sustained community health observing system, similar to the extensive and well-established environmental observing systems. We propose a system that combines six levels of health data domains, beginning with three existing, national surveys and studies plus three new nested, longitudinal cohort studies. The latter are the unique and most important parts of the system and are focused on the coastal regions of the five GoM States. A statistically representative sample of participants is proposed for the new cohort studies, stratified to ensure proportional inclusion of urban and rural populations and with additional recruitment as necessary to enroll participants from particularly vulnerable or under-represented groups. Secondary data sources such as syndromic surveillance systems, electronic health records, national community surveys, environmental exposure databases, social media, and remote sensing will inform and augment the collection of primary data. Primary data sources will include participant-provided information via questionnaires, clinical measures of mental and physical health, acquisition of biological specimens, and wearable health monitoring devices. A suite of biomarkers may be derived from biological specimens for use in health assessments, including calculation of allostatic load, a measure of cumulative stress. The framework also addresses data management and sharing, participant retention, and system governance. The observing system is designed to continue indefinitely to ensure that essential pre-, during-, and post-disaster health data are collected and maintained. It could also provide a model/vehicle for effective health observation related to infectious disease pandemics such as COVID-19. To our knowledge, there is no comprehensive, disaster-focused health observing system such as the one proposed here currently in existence or planned elsewhere. Significant strengths of the GoM Community Health Observing System (CHOS) are its longitudinal cohorts and ability to adapt rapidly as needs arise and new technologies develop.

          Related collections

          Most cited references138

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China

          Abstract Background Since December 2019, when coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) emerged in Wuhan city and rapidly spread throughout China, data have been needed on the clinical characteristics of the affected patients. Methods We extracted data regarding 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 from 552 hospitals in 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in mainland China through January 29, 2020. The primary composite end point was admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the use of mechanical ventilation, or death. Results The median age of the patients was 47 years; 41.9% of the patients were female. The primary composite end point occurred in 67 patients (6.1%), including 5.0% who were admitted to the ICU, 2.3% who underwent invasive mechanical ventilation, and 1.4% who died. Only 1.9% of the patients had a history of direct contact with wildlife. Among nonresidents of Wuhan, 72.3% had contact with residents of Wuhan, including 31.3% who had visited the city. The most common symptoms were fever (43.8% on admission and 88.7% during hospitalization) and cough (67.8%). Diarrhea was uncommon (3.8%). The median incubation period was 4 days (interquartile range, 2 to 7). On admission, ground-glass opacity was the most common radiologic finding on chest computed tomography (CT) (56.4%). No radiographic or CT abnormality was found in 157 of 877 patients (17.9%) with nonsevere disease and in 5 of 173 patients (2.9%) with severe disease. Lymphocytopenia was present in 83.2% of the patients on admission. Conclusions During the first 2 months of the current outbreak, Covid-19 spread rapidly throughout China and caused varying degrees of illness. Patients often presented without fever, and many did not have abnormal radiologic findings. (Funded by the National Health Commission of China and others.)
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: found

            Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science

            Summary The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health and physical health. We explore the psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects of COVID-19 and set out the immediate priorities and longer-term strategies for mental health science research. These priorities were informed by surveys of the public and an expert panel convened by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the mental health research charity, MQ: Transforming Mental Health, in the first weeks of the pandemic in the UK in March, 2020. We urge UK research funding agencies to work with researchers, people with lived experience, and others to establish a high level coordination group to ensure that these research priorities are addressed, and to allow new ones to be identified over time. The need to maintain high-quality research standards is imperative. International collaboration and a global perspective will be beneficial. An immediate priority is collecting high-quality data on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the whole population and vulnerable groups, and on brain function, cognition, and mental health of patients with COVID-19. There is an urgent need for research to address how mental health consequences for vulnerable groups can be mitigated under pandemic conditions, and on the impact of repeated media consumption and health messaging around COVID-19. Discovery, evaluation, and refinement of mechanistically driven interventions to address the psychological, social, and neuroscientific aspects of the pandemic are required. Rising to this challenge will require integration across disciplines and sectors, and should be done together with people with lived experience. New funding will be required to meet these priorities, and it can be efficiently leveraged by the UK's world-leading infrastructure. This Position Paper provides a strategy that may be both adapted for, and integrated with, research efforts in other countries.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Mental Health and the Covid-19 Pandemic

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Public Health
                Front Public Health
                Front. Public Health
                Frontiers in Public Health
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                2296-2565
                15 October 2020
                2020
                15 October 2020
                : 8
                : 578463
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Center for Coastal Environmental and Human Health, College of Charleston , Charleston, SC, United States
                [2] 2School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University , New Orleans, LA, United States
                [3] 3Master's Program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies, College of Charleston , Charleston, SC, United States
                [4] 4School of Global Public Health, New York University , New York, NY, United States
                [5] 5Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University , Baton Rouge, LA, United States
                [6] 6School of Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences, University of Southern Mississippi , Hattiesburg, MS, United States
                [7] 7Huxley College of the Environment, Western Washington University , Bellingham, WA, United States
                [8] 8Department of Global Health, University of Washington , Seattle, WA, United States
                [9] 9Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina , Chapel Hill, NC, United States
                [10] 10Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , Woods Hole, MA, United States
                [11] 11Rand Corporation , Pittsburg, PA, United States
                [12] 12Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi , Corpus Christi, TX, United States
                [13] 13Scripps Institution of Oceanography , La Jolla, CA, United States
                [14] 14Department of Health and Human Performance, College of Charleston , Charleston, SC, United States
                [15] 15Computational Epidemiology Lab, Harvard Medical School , Boston, MA, United States
                [16] 16Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco , San Francisco, CA, United States
                [17] 17Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System, Texas A&M University , College Station TX, United States
                [18] 18Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Rockefeller University , New York, NY, United States
                [19] 19Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida , Gainesville, FL, United States
                [20] 20Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas , Austin, TX, United States
                [21] 21Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, CA, United States
                [22] 22Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium , Mobile, AL, United States
                [23] 23Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina , Columbia, SC, United States
                [24] 24Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco , San Francisco, CA, United States
                [25] 25National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Silver Spring, MD, United States
                [26] 26David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles , Los Angeles, CA, United States
                [27] 27Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, University of Miami , Coral Gables, FL, United States
                [28] 28Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Atlanta, GA, United States
                [29] 29Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , Silver Spring, MD, United States
                [30] 30SEA Consulting Group , Cape Charles, VA, United States
                [31] 31Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , Bronx, NY, United States
                Author notes

                Edited by: Nur A. Hasan, University of Maryland, United States

                Reviewed by: Richard Kwok, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), United States; Gulnihal Ozbay, Delaware State University, United States

                *Correspondence: Paul Sandifer sandiferpa@ 123456cofc.edu

                This article was submitted to Environmental Health, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health

                Article
                10.3389/fpubh.2020.578463
                7593336
                33178663
                8d85b3bc-5330-4942-a9d2-0151f0d7a209
                Copyright © 2020 Sandifer, Knapp, Lichtveld, Manley, Abramson, Caffey, Cochran, Collier, Ebi, Engel, Farrington, Finucane, Hale, Halpern, Harville, Hart, Hswen, Kirkpatrick, McEwen, Morris, Orbach, Palinkas, Partyka, Porter, Prather, Rowles, Scott, Seeman, Solo-Gabriele, Svendsen, Tincher, Trtanj, Walker, Yehuda, Yip, Yoskowitz and Singer.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 02 July 2020
                : 31 August 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 3, Equations: 0, References: 155, Pages: 18, Words: 15534
                Funding
                Funded by: Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative 10.13039/100007240
                Categories
                Public Health
                Original Research

                health observing system,disasters,gulf of mexico,cohort studies,stress,covid-19,allostatic load,health surveillance

                Comments

                Comment on this article