Environmental Informatics and OneHealth: important venues to consider

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Environmental Informatics and OneHealthimportant
venues to consider
InForMID -Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting
and Modeling of Infectious Diseases

• Elena N. Naumova
• Tufts University School of Engineering, Medford
  MA USA
• TELI May 21, 2013

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Important venues to consider

• New disciplines
• One Health, Environmental Informatics
• New Information technologies
• GIS, Remote Sensing
• New environmental challenges
• Climate change, complex emergencies
• Inter-disciplinarity is a common theme in
• research, practice, decision making

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Global (One)Health Surveillance

• Serves one of the most essential functions in
  global health
• Provides real-time information about potential
  outbreaks and epidemics of (re)emerging
  infections at the global scale
• Initiates as a loose framework of formal,
  informal ad ad-hoc arrangements characterized as
  a network of networks to disseminate relevant
  information
• Transformed in a last decade by a more systematic
  mechanisms to investigate, assess and declare
  when and where there is a new public health
  emergency of international concerns is emerging
  for dissemination information

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Measures of (One)Health

• Specificity/Sensitivity
• Population Coverage
• The main issues are
• Completeness
• Compatibility
• Convertibility
• Accessibility

Epidemiological Cohorts
Hospitalization Records
Regional Registries
Surveillance Systems
Mortality Databases
Time Series Analysis
Meta-Analysis
GIS-driven dynamic mapping
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Data Dilemma too little or too much?

• no published data
• very little is known
• sparse evidence

Convert data into useful information!
data explosion massive databases data
mining
Supercomputing and visual analytics
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Milestones of evidence-based research

• Data Presentation
• Comprehension Sharing

• Data Analysis
• Complexity
• Interpretability

• Data Validation
• Completeness Quality

Milestones of evidence-based tracking of health

• Data Collection
• Availability Access

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Environmental informatics (EI)

• EI provides methodology for information
  processing and the development of communication
  infrastructure aiming at data, information and
  knowledge integration, the application of
  computational intelligence to environmental data.
  
• EI is the "research and system development
  focusing on the environmental sciences relating
  to the creation, collection, storage, processing,
  modeling, interpretation, display and
  dissemination of data and information.

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When it rains, it pours
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
- Joseph Kennedy
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Complex Emergencies

• Scarce resources
• Limited monitoring
• Difficult terrain

Immediate Response
EVENT
Delayed Responses
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Remote Sensing for Disaster Management
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Pretoria, Malawi
Land cover
NDVI 8 km resolution
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Blantyre, Malawi
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Pretoria, South Africa
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Research Collaborations
Epidemiology Public Health OneHealth EcoHealth

• Mathematics
• Biostatistics
• Bioinformatics

GIS Dynamic Mapping Remote Sensing Visualization
Devices Sensors Experimental Platforms
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What we can do better?

• Plan for better data collection in complex
  emergencies
• Focus on vulnerable populations
• Use novel information technologies
• Remote Sensing
• Crowdsourcing
• Visual Analytics
• Develop and implement GIS-enabled (one)health
  databases
• Enforce ethical standards and policies for data
  gathering and sharing
• Engage citizen scientists
• Train students in interdisciplinary and
  project-oriented settings

"It always seems impossible until it's done."
Nelson Mandela
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EI Course Objectives

• Learn how to
• formulate basic research hypotheses
• justify selected research hypotheses with the
  proper evidence and support from the literature
• prepare data for analyses
• perform statistical/analytical techniques
• Understand
• the principles of research ethics
• the main concepts of research design
• the main concepts of critical review of results
  interpretation
• Competent in the use of standard analytical tools
  (e.g., software programs) to test basic
  statistical hypotheses and visualize results
• Obtain knowledge of and articulate underlying
  principles of data analysis with respect to the
  environment and health

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Projects

• Focus on Research and Environmental Health
  Applications (Internships in WHO, UN, UNESCO,
  Summer Scholars, TIE/WSSS funding support)
• Semester-long Project
• develop a research hypothesis,
• perform an appropriate literature review,
• conduct secondary data analysis,
• prepare visual aids,
• synthesize results,
• discuss findings.

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MCM 589 Project Management and Communication

• This course covers
• communication skills that will enhance
  collaboration and dissemination of information to
  stakeholders (the public, government agencies,
  etc.) as well as the practical skills needed to
  initiate, fund and manage research projects
• strategies for funding opportunities searching
  and the main elements of proposals preparation
• styles and strategies for publication in lay
  journals, delivery of legislative briefings, and
  use of other media.

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Learning Objectives

• Formulate and propose strategies for managing a
  team of experts and skilled staff to address a
  conservation medicine research question or
  develop a health application/program in a
  particular setting.
• Develop strategies for seeking government,
  foundation and corporate funding for conservation
  projects.
• Write competitive grant proposals for both
  government and non-governmental funding targets,
  including configuring realistic budgets and
  corresponding budget justifications and
  developing a plan for dissemination of results.
• Develop effective communication materials,
  including lay literature and methods of
  communicating with non-scientific audiences.
• Understand behavior change communication and
  develop an effective campaign designed to address
  a conservation medicine strategy, prevention
  program, or response.

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Group/Individual Activities

• Project development topics include
• Team building
• Elevator Pitch
• Self-assessment
• Professional and research ethics
• Data Use Agreement reviews
• IRB (CITI) training
• Seeking funders
• Grant writing
• Peer-review and assessment
• Project development and management
• Program and policy evaluation

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• Sessions on the following topics that support the
  case study final project
• Collaborative writing
• Data visualization
• Team management and leadership.
• Grading
• Final grades for the course are based on
• oral class participation (20),
• writing exercises (60),
• final presentation (20).
• Delivery a complete portfolio

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Acknowledgements

• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
  Diseases
• National Institute of Environmental
• Health Sciences, R01 ES013171
• (PI - Dr. Elena N. Naumova, Tufts University,
  Boston USA)
• Tufts University Master in Conservation Medicine
  Program
• (Students and faculty Drs. Gretchen Kaufman,
  Joanne Lindenmayer, Alison Robbins)

TIE TELI 2008, 2012, 2013