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Herd Immunity: Jigawa's community-driven approach boosts immunisation coverage

Bashar Abubakar

June 03, 2019 |

Nigeria Health Watch |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Nigeria, Jigawa

Enrolling community members as Volunteer Community Mobilizers (VCMs) dramatically increases the effectiveness of public health campaigns. In Nigeria, the Jigawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency has made progress with regard to immunization rates through its health ambassador program. The VCMs act as links between the localities and the public health services, ensuring that each that child receives vaccinations on schedule. The state has also used VCMs to increase the frequency of home visits and outreach efforts.

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Isolate, trace and respond: How a new emergency operations centre has improved outbreak response in Kebbi

Bashar Abubakar

May 13, 2019 |

Nigeria Health Watch |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Nigeria, Kebbi

Local public health infrastructure makes monitoring and responding to epidemic outbreaks possible. In Nigeria’s Kebbi state, The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) operates Public Health Emergency Operation Centers (PHEOC), which serve as local nodes in the country’s battle against infectious disease. Each PHEOC coordinates with a local committee of leaders in identifying, isolating, and treating cases of infectious disease.

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In Thailand, tracking animal health to prevent outbreaks of human disease

Fred de Sam Lazaro

January 23, 2019 |

PBS NewsHour |

Broadcast TV News |

5-15 Minutes

Response Location: Thailand, Huay Ton Chok

Connecting villagers to local governments and researchers is important to controlling possible disease outbreaks at their source. The One Health disease protection program, also known as PODD, uses funding from Ending Pandemics, a San Francisco nonprofit, to run an app and system through which villagers and local officials can interface with health organizations. A special app developed translates local languages and transmits information back to organizations, agencies, and researchers at local universities.

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Tracking Opioids Beneath the Streets

Kelsey Tsipis

August 22, 2018 |

PBS NOVA |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Cary, North Carolina

The United States is adopting wastewater epidemiology in response to the opioid crisis. Public health officials laud the tool for giving them a clear picture of the opioid crisis in their communities. In the city of Cary, N.C., health officials can track data about opiate use through the BioBot, the first device that can collect data in real time from the sewer—before opiate molecules can break down and become untraceable.

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Treating violence like a disease helped cut Colombia's murder rate by 82%

Edward Siddons

May 15, 2018 |

Apolitical |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Colombia, Cali

Colombia used a public health model of prevention to attack violent crime and has seen the homicide rate drop by 82 percent. The approach required the work of numerous public sectors, not just law enforcement, and a reliance on data to drive strategy. The country still has a higher-that-average murder rate, but the experience of several cities taking this approach offers key lessons for others to follow.

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Tracking The Air We Breathe

Roxanne Patel Shepelavy

January 19, 2018 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Louisville, Kentucky

While asthma has a large impact—including being the most common reason for school absence—data on the disease can be difficult to collect. An app called Propeller has been developed which tracks medication use among people with asthma and analyzes usage against 30 different environmental factors that can impact air quality and respitory health.

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Tracking some of the world's biggest killers, via cellphone

Rae Ellen Bichell

December 25, 2017 |

Public Radio International |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Madagascar

A new project uses cellphones to provide users with information about mosquitos carrying deadly viruses as well as the ability to report sightings of virus carrying mosquitos. Through this reporting system, entomologists are able to more comprehensively and quickly know where work has to be done to keep people safe from disease.

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As emerging diseases spread from wildlife to humans, can we predict the next big pandemic?

Karl Gruber

December 07, 2017 |

Ensia |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Zoonotic outbreaks are increasingly a threat to human populations and other species as they spatially converge in the same environments. In preparation, the project PREDICT has discovered over 1000 distinct diseases and helped guide the development of infrastructure to help protect against outbreaks, while the Global Virome Project is identifying and sequencing the DNA of viruses.

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Pakistan's polio health workers make inroads toward eradication

Fred de Sam Lazaro

October 26, 2017 |

PBS NewsHour |

Broadcast TV News |

5-15 Minutes

Response Location: Pakistan, Karachi

For disease eradication campaigns to succeed, public health officials need to interact with the public. In Pakistan, the front line against polio is comprised of women who reach out to directly to families with young children, often at major transportation centers. The women engage in this type of public health awareness as a way to navigate around extremist violence and the adverse consequences of a US fake vaccination campaign. The women focus on building rapport with families, and then administering vaccines.

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Putting needles to numbers: How they're tracking the heroin epidemic in Summit County

Tara Molina

October 05, 2017 |

WEWS-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

Under 3 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Akron, Ohio

The existence of an opioid abuse crisis is widely acknowledged, however there is a lack of efficient methodologies to collect, analyze, and disseminate data related to the crisis. The Summit County public health department uses EpiCenter—software created for epidemiologists—to collect data on hospitalizations, overdoses, and calls to emergency services and analyze opioid abuse data in the same way as the flu or other diseases. The data is published online and allows for policy makers to better understand where to allocate resources as well as providing insight to county residents on the extent of opioid abus

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