It’s a conundrum of modern publishing – how to achieve the high standards of “peer-review” in a timely manner. This is a particularly important issue when it comes to public health topics.
Take H1N1, for instance. What is the best way to quickly disseminate authoritative information about the disease? PLoS (Public Library of Science), a leader in open-access, peer-reviewed publishing, to the rescue!
“PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable.”
While the postings are not subject to the same rigorous peer-review process as formally published scientific journals use, “inappropriate” submissions are being screened out by two experts in the fields of microbiology and infectious disease. While many of the articles listed are focused specifically on the biology of the virus, other topics can be found here as well, such as “Swine origin influenza A (H1N1) virus and ICU capacity in the US: Are we prepared?” and “Reducing influenza spreading over the airline network“, which uses different models to determine the most effective method for containing the spread of disease through air travel.
I’m away next week, so I won’t be blogging, but this week has been a banner one for interesting items.
The National Library of Medicine maintains a collection of more than 30 environmental health websites under the auspices of the Environmental Health and Toxicology SIS (Specialized Information Services). Topics covered range from the specific (Health effects from the collapse of the World Trade Center) to the general (Tornadoes). The links contained within each page vary, but most begin with a set of ‘Overview’ links, all from US Government sites, and then may go on to include links to glossaries, data and research sites, and law and policy. Almost all include links to specialized research from the National Library of Medicine’s databases, such as Pubmed, Toxline, Hazardous Substances Data Bank, ChemID Plus, Household Products Database, Tox Town and Medline Plus.
New hurricane guides available “The Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and VDEM have redesigned the Virginia Hurricane Guide. As part of the Ready Virginia public information campaign, the guide contains essential hurricane season information, such as evacuation routes, traffic reversal plans along Interstate 64, bridge/tunnel/ferry closure plans in the Hampton Roads area and family preparedness.
New sections of the guide explain staying in place versus evacuation, the importance of storm surge, and how public shelters are designed to help evacuees. The revised evacuation route section clarifies that I-64 is only one of many evacuation routes, and the guide gives detailed instruction about how to make a family emergency plan, get an emergency supply kit and stay informed during emergencies.
For the 2009 hurricane season, 250,000 copies of the guide were printed; most will be distributed by state and local agencies, private businesses and nonprofit organizations. Any organization interested in distributing the guides should contact the VDEM Public Affairs Office at (866) 782-3470. An interactive, Web-based version is also available at www.ReadyVirginia.gov. A federal homeland security grant paid for the printing costs.”
Here’s a bright spot in the increasingly depressing ‘jobs and payroll‘ numbers, from CNN and CareerBuilder.com:
“Seven Emerging Job Poised for Growth”
5. Emergency management
Since the September11 terrorist attacks, jobs in the anti-terrorism field have grown. The required skills for positions in the anti-terrorism field are demanding, but a more attainable (yet still in-demand) career option is in emergency planning.
Not only do emergency planners prepare and plan for terrorist attacks, they also train and prepare for responses and procedures for other disasters such as fires, floods, hostage situations or pandemics.
Industry umbrella: Management, business and financial operations Job growth: 7 – 13 percent Salary: $48,386
Two of my ‘worlds’, that is: libraries and emergency management. Louisville Free Public Library has sustained terrible damage in a sudden flood, and this Library Journal article does a nice job of highlighting how, even with emergency plans in place, unexpected things can happen. The good news is that the management did an excellent job of keeping people safe, even at the cost of losing the bookmobiles (and the director’s car).
Here’s my favorite quote from the story:
“To what extent did you have a disaster plan to follow?
We would never have anticipated this disaster. This particular water occurrence was unprecedented. My belief, and it’s probably going to catch me a lot of flak in library circles: you have really good people assigned to high level of responsibility, coordinate well, and that you buy insurance.
You have a phone tree, right?
Yes, but any kind of disaster planning we would’ve had would’ve told us what to do with different materials and the vehicles as water was rising and, in reality, what we had was 15 minutes to save everybody’s life. That doesn’t give you time to reflect on and refer to your disaster plan. We’re not in hurricane territory, we’re not in tornado territory, and this site has not been under water since 1937. The thing I’d do going forward is to make sure evacuation is up to date, for human safety, and it was and it is. getting people out was Job Number 1.”
Basically, his “lessons learned”: Hire good people. Thankfully, it seems they have good insurance coverage; they are “confident” they will be back in the space by the end of the year. New computers are already en route!
(*Sorry – I couldn’t resist the INXS reference opportunity – I also was/am a huge Proclaimers and Runrig fan. I went to high school in Scotland, what can I say?)
I’ll just put it out there – I’m a huge fan of nuclear power, and Dominion (our local power company) runs two reactor sites in our region, which generate 30% of their power output. This announcement came through a VA Dept of Emergency Management press release, and I thought it was a great example of public/private partnership in a readiness exercise:
Surry Radiological Emergency Preparedness Exercise Set for Aug. 4
RICHMOND, VA – Response personnel from state and local government and Dominion will demonstrate their ability to protect the public’s health and safety in a full-scale exercise Aug. 4 for the utility’s Surry Power Station. The exercise will involve localities within 10 miles of the power station.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management will lead the Virginia Operations Plan Exercise, or VOPEX, a simulated radiological emergency, to help state and local governments test their response procedures in the unlikely event of a radiological emergency. These annual exercises rotate between the Surry and North Anna nuclear power stations.
Response agencies and local government representatives will role-play their emergency operations functions from the state and local government emergency operations centers. Participating localities include the counties of Charles City, Isle of Wight, James City, New Kent, Surry and York and the cities of Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson and Williamsburg.
Law enforcement personnel will practice traffic control measures in the field. Local and state radiological monitoring teams will take simulated field readings and communicate via radio.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will monitor the progress of the drill and conduct an in-depth analysis of the results, detailing areas needing improvement. FEMA will review the success of the exercise at a public meeting on Aug. 7 at 11 a.m. at the Omni Hotel in Newport News.
In addition, information about emergency plans at Surry and North Anna are available online. (You can also take a cute little animated tour here - anything to get the word out!)
While we’re on the topic of open-source public health items, this special supplement to the AMA’s journal “Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness” (June 2009, Vol. 3) is freely available online. Article topics range from public policy (“National Strategy for Health Care System Preparedness”) to Business Continuity (“Importance of Business Continuity in Health Care”) to NIMS (“Review of Hospital Preparedness Incidents to National Incident Management System Compliance”).
This article, from Inside Higher Ed, is a nice overview of how several colleges and universities are using the summer to better prepare for an outbreak of H1N1 on campus. Seeing this prompted me to investigate what our campus has done about H1N1, as Virginia is one of the handful of states with a recorded “widespread” outbreak.
This follows last month’s H1N1 Summit, hosted at the National Institutes of Health. I can’t seem to find an archived copy of the webcast, which was streamed live, but this blog post by J. Solomon (“In case of emergency, read blog…”) gives a great overview and links to video from several key speakers.
My, how time does fly… It seems like just yesterday, we were bidding adieu to the 2008 season.
From the University of Colorado’s Tropical Meteorology Center:
“EXTENDED RANGE FORECAST OF ATLANTIC SEASONAL HURRICANE ACTIVITY AND LANDFALL STRIKE PROBABILITY FOR 2009
We foresee slightly below-average activity for the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season. We have reduced our seasonal forecast from our early April prediction. We anticipate a slightly below-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.”
(as of 2 June 2009)
It’s been interesting to watch publishers open up their H1N1 articles and resources to the general public. (Disclaimer: I know that part is only interesting to me as a librarian. But the question remains: Is the future of publishing a ‘hybrid’ open-source model? Hmmm….)
Here’s a summary:
Scientific American mainly sums up blog entries from the “60 Second Science” blog. But there’s also a detailed interview transcript with Dr. Chris Olsen, Director of the Olsen Laboratory, a veterinary medicine lab in Wisconsin where Influenza ‘A’ viruses are studied, and a link to the April 2009 cover story called, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic” that describes the work of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.
The Lancet (a British medical journal) has also opened their pages:
“The Lancet’s H1N1 Resource Centre is the result of a collaborative effort by the editors of over 40 Elsevier-published journals and 11 learned societies who have agreed to make freely available on this site any relevant content. All papers have been selected by a Lancet editor, grouped by topic and fulltext pdfs made available to download free of charge.”
(If you haven’t seen an Elsevier price quote, you can’t appreciate the magnitude of this – Elsevier articles are notoriously expensive.)
“PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable.”
