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An edited compilation of NCCID Alerts
August 4, 2016
 


What’s buzzing in HIV and Hepatitis C at NCCID?


This is a period of excitement in the world of HIV and Hepatitis C. Important breakthroughs have reached our doorsteps, providing public health specialists and practitioners with a diversity of new effective prevention and treatment strategies. Watch our videos and webinars to learn more about the progress made in HIV and Hepatitis C prevention, screening and treatment and their future implications for public health.
 
  • Listen to Laurie Edminston, Executive Director of CATIE, speaking to the evolution of the HIV and Hepatitis C knowledge over the last decade and taking a look at the future.
  • Listen to Dr. Jordan Feld, clinician-scientist at the Toronto Western Hospital Liver Center and the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, speaking to the new era for Hepatitis C now that we have an effective curative treatment and addressing the need for bringing Hepatitis C screening on the priority list, given the increasing burden in Canada.
  • Listen to Dr. Alexandra King, general internist at the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre and the Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake, British Columbia, explaining how the concept of Indigeneity is foundational in health and why Indigenous-led solutions should be put forward to address the inequities behind the disproportionate HIV and Hepatitis C burden in Canada. 
  • Listen to Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, from the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at McGill University, calling for the embrace of new testing technologies to reach out to marginalized populations and for the development of innovative delivery services to get the undiagnosed into care.
  • Our partners at the Gender and Health Promotion Studies Unit, Dalhousie University have looked at how to deliver youth-oriented HIV and HCV prevention services and how to design prevention programs that are adapted for them. Learn more at GAHPS.

PrEP: Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis
 
How is PrEP perceived among gay men? What are they hearing and saying about PrEP and how do they integrate this information into individual decision-making?
 
  • Watch the webinar, What’s the buzz around PrEP: Why Public Health Is Listening, with San Patten, health research and evaluation consultant, Riyas Fadel, research and planning analyst for the STBBI service of the Quebec ministry of health, and Joshua Edward, knowledge translation manager for Health Initiative for Men (HIM) in Vancouver, to know more about the results of the Resonance project that has explored these questions.
  • Listen to Dr. Darrell Tan, Director of the University of Toronto Clinical Research Unit on HIV Prevention, addressing the need for moving pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) into practices. The use of PrEP to prevent HIV acquisition has proven its effectiveness worldwide and Canada now needs to focus on solving the logistical challenges behind implementation of this strategy.  

 
NEW FROM NCCID

PODCAST
Infectious Questions

A public health podcast produced by NCCID, Infectious Questions connects those with infectious disease questions to those who have answers. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and SoundCloud. Our first run of Infectious Questions focuses on an emerging infection very prominent in the media: Zika virus.
 
AROUND THE WEB
 
EDITORIAL
Zika virus at the games: is it safe?
The Lancet Infectious Diseases 

Editorial in The Lancet outlining "several lines of evidence [that] need to be considered ... to answer the question of risk to games participants from Zika virus" this August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 
BURDEN OF DISEASE:
NCCID RESOURCES

 
The notion of "burden of disease" is fundamental to public health and population health research. But what does it actually mean? NCCID has developed a series of resources for public health nurses, physicians, planners and policy makers to help them make better sense of the concepts and the measures.
NEW FROM NCCID
  • There are other ways to think of burden of disease. Framing Burden of Disease is an overview of literature from a variety of disciplines, illustrating the many ways that burden is considered and some of the critiques of the more traditional models.
  • NCCID has also developed plain-language versions to help explain the kinds of questions public health personnel may ask: More than Just Numbers, and Thinking about Burden with Equity in Mind.

LINKS // PH + ID

ARTICLE
'Texting Helps in Fight Against Foodborne Illnesses in Evanston, Ill.'

In light of the "one in six Americans ... infected with foodborne illnesses" every year,  this story shares how one US city integrated its restaurant inspection scores with an automated system of text message alerts: "Diners just text 'food' to the city’s 311 number, and after a prompt, enter a restaurant name and they’re returned the recent score and inspection date." Source: Government Technology magazine
 
ARTICLE
'Zika Data From the Lab, and Right to the Web'

New York Times report on "a unique experiment in scientific transparency" at the University of Wisconsin’s primate center: "instead of saving their data [related to Zika virus research] for academic journals, the researchers have posted it almost immediately on a website anyone can visit. The openness of the process thrills scientists, who say it fosters collaboration and speeds research."

OPINION
'Stop treating sexual health as women’s responsibility'

In this commentary, Dr. Andrew Gray of the Residents Council of the Public Health Physicians of Canada critiques the "worryingly narrow" perspectives of various health authorities who, when it comes to advising on "the dangers that might be faced by women and their potential offspring" (as with Zika Virus, for example), these authorities all too often adopt an "exclusive focus on women themselves," with little to no mention of men's roles and responsibilities in preventing the spread of disease or application of violence.he openness of the process thrills scientists, who say it fosters collaboration and speeds research."

WEBINAR
"Staying Ahead of the Curve: Modelling and Public Health Decision-Making"

For public health practitioners and policy-makers who may be less familiar with mathematical modelling and its application to outbreaks and emergencies, this archived CDC Public Health Grand Round session includes a trio of presentations on "what insights models can provide, how modelling has informed responses in public health, and where modelling can lead the public health community in the future."

ARTICLE
"Modelling Epidemics: Back to School"

In this piece published on the website of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), a physicist specializing in complex networks discusses efforts to refine methods and models to better capture patterns of "disease-causing contacts within a population," in order to more effectively "elucidate how [infectious] diseases spread so as to determine and evaluate appropriate ways of fighting them." He cites SocioPattern's use of small wireless sensors, which detect the wearer's physical proximity and face-to-face contacts over the course of a day, as one such promising method.

SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS
Global Role and Burden of Influenza in Pediatric Respiratory Hospitalizations, 1982–2012
PLoS Medicine

"Systematic surveillance and testing for influenza among hospitalized children has expanded globally over the past decade. However, only a fraction of the data has been used to estimate influenza burden. In this analysis, we use surveillance data [drawn from 350 sites in 60 countries] to provide an estimate of influenza-associated hospitalizations among children worldwide. ... Our findings expand knowledge of the impact of severe influenza among children <1 and <5 y, and create an evidence base for both younger (<6 mo) and older (5–17 y) children, for whom, to our knowledge, no global estimates of influenza disease burden have been published to date."
 
STUDY
Impact of pharmacists as immunizers on influenza vaccination coverage in Nova Scotia, Canada
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics

"Immunization coverage in Canada has continued to fall below national goals. The addition of pharmacists as immunizers may increase immunization coverage. This study aimed to compare estimated influenza vaccine coverage before and after pharmacists began administering publicly funded influenza immunizations in Nova Scotia, Canada."
 
SURVEILLANCE
Google Flu Trends in Canada: a comparison of digital disease surveillance data with physician consultations and respiratory virus surveillance data, 2010–2014
Epidemiology and Infection

"The value of Google Flu Trends (GFT) remains unclear after it overestimated the proportion of physician visits related to influenza-like illness in the United States in 2012–2013. However, GFT estimates have not been examined nationally in Canada nor compared with positivity for respiratory viruses other than influenza ... [We] compared GFT estimates for Canada to Public Health Agency of Canada influenza-like illness consultation rates and to positivity for influenza A and B, respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, and rhinoviruses."  
 


STUDY
The determinants of antimicrobial prescribing among hospital doctors in England: a framework to inform tailored stewardship interventions
British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology

“Little is known about the determinants of antimicrobial prescribing behaviour (APB) … yet interventions based on a sound theoretical understanding of APB are more likely to be successful.” This study sought to quantify determinants of APB among hospital doctors in South-west England.
 
SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Gender differences in antibiotic prescribing in the community: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

Do women and men receive the same number of prescriptions for antibiotics? Read more
 
ARTICLE
California mandates antimicrobial stewardship
Drug Topics

In 2014, California required hospitals to have antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) at all general acute-care hospitals. This article offers an overview of how California hospitals have worked to implement programs.
 
NCCID is one of six National Collaborating Centres for Public Health funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
Production of this newsletter has been made possible through a financial contribution from PHAC. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of PHAC.

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