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At least 19 records

Applying a One Health Approach in Global Health and Medicine: Enhancing Involvement of Medical Schools and Global Health Centers

Multidisciplinary and multisectoral approaches such as One Health and related concepts (e.g., Planetary Health, EcoHealth) offer opportunities for synergistic expertise to address complex health threats. The connections between humans, animals, and the environment necessitate collaboration among sectors to comprehensively understand and reduce risks and consequences on health and wellbeing. One Health approaches are increasingly emphasized for national and international plans and strategies related to zoonotic diseases, food safety, antimicrobial resistance, and climate change, but to date, the possible applications in clinical practice and benefits impacting human health are largely missing.

Catherine Machalaba↗

Biodiversity and Global Health: Intersection of Health, Security, and the Environment

One of the biggest consequences of large-scale environmental change is the loss of biodiversity. Recent studies predict a loss of 1 million species in the near future. Biodiversity loss and land use change through anthropogenic disturbance are known to affect disease exposure, disease severity, and disease impacts. It is becoming increasingly clear that biodiversity loss will lead to an increase in infectious diseases in certain regions. Changes in biodiversity may contain important signatures for prediction of infectious diseases and outbreaks. Here, we argue that areas of high or rapid biodiversity loss will be critical to monitor under the umbrella of global health security. Global Health Security consists of the actions and activities required to reduce the impact of public health events in populations living in different geographic regions and across international borders. Like infectious diseases, climate change and other causes of environmental changes do not respect international borders and are becoming more widespread in all parts of the world. Here, the relationships among biodiversity, climate and environmental changes, and pathogen prevalence are dynamic, context dependent, and complex. Accounting for this complexity requires the inclusion of the environment sector, presently missing, when evaluating the potential of global health security actions for mitigating disease risks.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

An idea to explore: How an interdisciplinary undergraduate course exploring a global health challenge in molecular detail enabled science communication and collaboration in diverse audiences

Abstract Communication and collaboration are key science competencies that support sharing of scientific knowledge with experts and non‐experts alike. On the one hand, they facilitate interdisciplinary conversations between students, educators, and researchers, while on the other they improve public awareness, enable informed choices, and impact policy decisions. Herein, we describe an interdisciplinary undergraduate course focused on using data from various bioinformatics data resources to explore the molecular underpinnings of diabetes mellitus (Types 1 and 2) and introducing students to science communication. Building on course materials and original student‐generated artifacts, a series of collaborative activities engaged students, educators, researchers, healthcare professionals and community members in exploring, learning about, and discussing the molecular bases of diabetes. These collaborations generated novel educational materials and approaches to learning and presenting complex ideas about major global health challenges in formats accessible to diverse audiences.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Meeting Global Health Needs via Infectious Disease Forecasting: Development of a Reliable Data-Driven Framework

Infectious diseases (IDs) have a significant detrimental impact on global health. Timely and accurate ID forecasting can result in more informed implementation of control measures and prevention policies. To meet the operational decision-making needs of real-world circumstances, we aimed to build a standardized, reliable, and trustworthy ID forecasting pipeline and visualization dashboard that is generalizable across a wide range of modeling techniques, IDs, and global locations. We forecasted 6 diverse, zoonotic diseases (brucellosis, campylobacteriosis, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Q fever, tick-borne encephalitis, and tularemia) across 4 continents and 8 countries. We included a wide range of statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models (n=9) and trained them on a multitude of features (average n=2326) within the One Health landscape, including demography, landscape, climate, and socioeconomic factors. The pipeline and dashboard were created in consideration of crucial operational metrics—prediction accuracy, computational efficiency, spatiotemporal generalizability, uncertainty quantification, and interpretability—which are essential to strategic data-driven decisions. While no single best model was suitable for all disease, region, and country combinations, our ensemble technique selects the best-performing model for each given scenario to achieve the closest prediction. For new or emerging diseases in a region, the ensemble model can predict how the disease may behave in the new region using a pretrained model from a similar region with a history of that disease. The data visualization dashboard provides a clean interface of important analytical metrics, such as ID temporal patterns, forecasts, prediction uncertainties, and model feature importance across all geographic locations and disease combinations. As the need for real-time, operational ID forecasting capabilities increases, this standardized and automated platform for data collection, analysis, and reporting is a major step forward in enabling evidence-based public health decisions and policies for the prevention and mitigation of future ID outbreaks.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Communications satellites in the national and global health care information infrastructure: their role, impact, and issues

Health care services delivered from a distance, known collectively as telemedicine, are being increasingly demonstrated on various transmission media. Telemedicine activities have included diagnosis by a doctor at a remote location, emergency and disaster medical assistance, medical education, and medical informatics. The ability of communications satellites to offer communication channels and bandwidth on demand, connectivity to mobile, remote and under served regions, and global access will afford them a critical role for telemedicine applications within the National and Global Information Infrastructure (NII/GII). The importance that communications satellites will have in telemedicine applications within the NII/GII the differences in requirements for NII vs. GII, the major issues such as interoperability, confidentiality, quality, availability, and costs, and preliminary conclusions for future usability based on the review of several recent trails at national and global levels are presented.

Zuzek, J. E.↗

Flexible Data Fusion for Air Quality Estimation and Forecasting in Google Earth Engine to support Global Health Management Needs

The assessment and forecasting of air quality around the world at high spatial and temporal resolution can be enhanced by integrating data from multiple sources including models, satellites, regulatory monitors, and low-cost sensors. Such integration is subject to numerous technical challenges, however, including heterogeneous data resolution and formatting, different levels of data availability and reliability, and computational and capacity challenges to developing data fusion tools and platforms. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop a data fusion system within the Google Earth Engine platform which integrates these air quality data sources to produce comprehensive assessments and forecasts of key air pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The system is being developed in collaboration with city- and regional-level air quality managers, and will provide them with information to the assess and anticipate the health impacts of poor air quality, track local changes in air quality due to ongoing transportation and land use changes, and identify potential gaps in their current air quality monitoring strategies. The presentation will report advances achieved through the project, including bringing local air quality monitoring data into Google Earth Engine, quantifying uncertainties in air quality estimates and forecasts, and tailored communications tools providing integration into end-user processes to meet their needs.

Carl Malings↗

Flexible Data Fusion for Air Quality Estimation and Forecasting in Google Earth Engine to support Global Health Management Needs

The assessment and forecasting of air quality around the world at high spatial and temporal resolution can be enhanced by integrating data from multiple sources including models, satellites, regulatory monitors, and low-cost sensors. Such integration is subject to numerous technical challenges, however, including heterogeneous data resolution and formatting, different levels of data availability and reliability, and computational and capacity challenges to developing data fusion tools and platforms. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop a data fusion system within the Google Earth Engine platform which integrates these air quality data sources to produce comprehensive assessments and forecasts of key air pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The system is being developed in collaboration with city- and regional-level air quality managers and will provide them with information to the assess and anticipate the health impacts of poor air quality, track local changes in air quality due to ongoing transportation and land use changes, and identify potential gaps in their current air quality monitoring strategies. The presentation will report advances achieved through the project, including bringing local air quality monitoring data into Google Earth Engine, quantifying uncertainties in air quality estimates and forecasts, and tailored communications tools providing integration into end-user processes to meet their needs.

Nathan R. Pavlovic↗

Climate Change Risks to Global Forest Health: Emergence of Unexpected Events of Elevated Tree Mortality Worldwide

Recent observations of elevated tree mortality following climate extremes, like heat and drought, raise concerns about climate change risks to global forest health. We currently lack both sufficient data and understanding to identify whether these observations represent a global trend toward increasing tree mortality. In this work, we document events of sudden and unexpected elevated tree mortality following heat and drought events in ecosystems that previously were considered tolerant or not at risk of exposure. These events underscore the fact that climate change may affect forests with unexpected force in the future. We use the events as examples to highlight current difficulties and challenges for realistically predicting such tree mortality events and the uncertainties about future forest condition. Advances in remote sensing technology and greater availably of high-resolution data, from both field assessments and satellites, are needed to improve both understanding and prediction of forest responses to future climate change.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Introduction

The 2014 SPIE Sensing Technologies for Global Health, Military Medicine and Environmental Monitoring conference embraced a wealth of state-of-the-art information in basic and applied science. This event covered the latest developments in the following areas: Non-invasive Disease Diagnostics for Global Health- This opening series of two consecutive sessions focused on oral biospecimen based rapid assays and point-of-care devices for the detection of pathogens causing infectious diseases, biomarkers for cancer, and analytes for noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes. They also covered presentations on the human proteasome and microbiome with linkage to human diseases and diagnostic approaches. The sessions were built on the past experience and expertise of the National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Military Medicine I: Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD-This assembly covered oral-biomarker based diagnostics for brain damage and TBI as well as prevention and rehabilitation technologies. Neurorehabilitation and noninvasive neuromodulation were also discussed as critical approaches for effective functioning. Military Medicine II: Physiology and Medicine of Extreme Environments and Spaceflight-This scientific segment showcased physiological, pharmacological and diagnostic sensing methodologies during spaceflight per the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as military-relevant toxicans and future sensing trends per the Department of Defense. It also included latest technologies to determine hydration status in warfighters, eye surgery using the latest laser technologies, and sensing tools for blood analysis.  Sensing Technologies for Disease Diagnostics and Environmental Monitoring-This closing series of two consecutive sessions provided the venues to learn and discuss more results on the next generation of diagnostic tools and field technologies for diseases, including biomarker detection by digital imaging, multiplex technologies, capillary electrophoresis and molecular platforms serving as labs-on-chips. This conference allowed cross-fertilization of ideas, projects and collaborative work by a multidisciplinary audience of national and international colleagues from the academia, industry and federal government: The National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense.

Wotring, Virginia E.↗

How Cooperative Engagement Programs Strengthen Sequencing Capabilities for Biosurveillance and Outbreak Response

The threat of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases continues to be a challenge to public and global health security. Cooperative biological engagement programs act to build partnerships and collaborations between scientists and health professionals to strengthen capabilities in biosurveillance. Biosurveillance is the systematic process of detecting, reporting, and responding to especially dangerous pathogens and pathogens of pandemic potential before they become outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. One important tool in biosurveillance is next generation sequencing. Expensive sequencing machines, reagents, and supplies make it difficult for countries to adopt this technology. Cooperative engagement programs help by providing funding for technical assistance to strengthen sequencing capabilities. Through workshops and training, countries are able to learn sequencing and bioinformatics, and implement these tools in their biosurveillance programs. Cooperative programs have an important role in building and sustaining collaborations among institutions and countries. One of the most important pieces in fostering these collaborations is trust. Trust provides the confidence that a successful collaboration will benefit all parties involved. With sequencing, this enables the sharing of pathogen samples and sequences. Obtaining global sequencing data helps to identify unknown etiological agents, track pathogen evolution and infer transmission networks throughout the duration of a pandemic. Having sequencing technology in place for biosurveillance generates the capacity to provide real-time data to understand and respond to pandemics. We highlight the need for these programs to continue to strengthen sequencing in biosurveillance. By working together to strengthen sequencing capabilities, trust can be formed, benefitting global health in the face of biological threats.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Science and Measurement Requirements for a Plant Physiology and Functional Types Mission: Measuring the Composition, Function and Health of Global Land and Coastal Ocean Ecosystems

This slide presentation reviews the proposed Plant Physiology and Functional Types (PPFT) Mission. The National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey, placed a critical priority on a Mission to observe distribution and changes in ecosystem functions. The PPFT satellite mission provides the essential measurements needed to assess drivers of change in biodiversity and ecosystem services that affect human welfare. The presentation reviews the science questions that the mission will be designed to answer, the science rationale, the science measurements, the mission concept, the planned instrumentation, the calibration method, and key signal to noise ratios and uniformity requirements.

science measurements↗

DOE/SNL/GCBS: Biorisk Management Curriculum for Vietnam One Health University Network

In line with the Global Health Security Agenda for Vietnam SNL has successfully engaged in country by ensuring long term sustainability of its programs and building BRM capacity by engaging with Government Institutions and strengthening the national biosafety and biosecurity and also by engaging with academic institutions through Vietnam One Health University Network to educate the One Health Workforce and promote a shared culture of responsibility, reduce dual use risks, mitigate biological proliferation and deliberate use threats.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Current challenges and future opportunities of phage therapy

ABSTRACT Antibiotic resistance is a major public health challenge worldwide, whose implications for global health might be devastating if novel antibacterial strategies are not quickly developed. As natural predators of bacteria, (bacterio)phages may play an essential role in escaping such a dreadful future. The rising problem of antibiotic resistance has revived the interest in phage therapy and important developments have been achieved over the last years. But where do we stand today and what can we expect from phage therapy in the future? This is the question we set to answer in this review. Here, we scour the outcomes of human phage therapy clinical trials and case reports, and address the major barriers that stand in the way of using phages in clinical settings. We particularly address the potential of phage resistance to hinder phage therapy and discuss future avenues to explore the full capacity of phage therapy.

Pires, Diana P.↗