Vector Borne Disease Surveillance Workshop for State Based Health Officials

The Second Vector Borne Disease Surveillance Workshop

On June 18 & 19, 2019, eight state based health officials took the second Vector Borne Disease Surveillance workshop in Providence, Rhode Island. This was the second of two 2-day workshops aimed specifically at tackling the spread of diseases like Dengue fever, West Nile and Zika viruses. As with the first one, this was a Community Health Maps training specifically designed to demonstrate how to collect and work with geographic data related to vector borne diseases, i.e. those that are transmitted to humans via other animals such as mosquitoes. Attendees represented health departments in: Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Virginia and Guam.Again this workshop was a team effort. The training was organized by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). Participants attendance was funded by CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Travel for the trainers was funded by the National Library of Medicine, (funding for the workshop is provided under a sub-award from the National Library of Medicine to ICF International). This particular CHM workshop was taught in conjunction with ASTHO’s State Environmental Health Directors (SEHD) Peer Network Annual Meeting.After an introduction to the Community Health Maps project - it's origins, workflow and examples of past projects - participants learned to create a data collection form and use their smartphones to map features (trees, signs, benches etc...) around the conference site using Fulcrum.For the remainder of the first day, the group took the data they collected earlier and imported into QGIS. In this section they became familiar with QGIS and how to symbolize layers and make a print map.In addition to the data collected on site, we worked with mosquito data acquired courtesy of Dr. Chris Barker  covering Madera County, CA. The data included mosquito trap results over five years, virus testing, mosquito biting complaints, storm drains, parcel boundaries, roads and a hypothetical case of Dengue fever.The second day focused on generating vector borne disease surveillance products. The participants:A) generated trend graphs of mosquito populations through time via the QGIS Data Plotly plugin,B) generated heatmaps of mosquito populations,C) calculated the minimum infection rate per year for West Nile and St. Louis Encephalitis viruses,D) identified potential mosquito sources to be inspected (storm drains) using a combination of a buffer operation (done against mosquito complaints with the distance  the species is known to be able to travel) and select by location against storm drains,E) identified parcels at risk due to their proximity to a fictional outbreak of Dengue Fever,and F) learned to animate temporal data using the QGIS Time Manager plugin. Here the mosquito population (heatmap) is being animated weekly for the year 2018 with mosquito management zones be displayed.All participants received official QGIS certificates for their participation.These workshop materials will part of the suite of https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/resources/ available through the Community Health Maps program in the near future.If you are interested in having this taught for you or your colleagues contact Kurt Menke (kurt@birdseyeviewgis.com)

Vector Borne Disease Surveillance with QGIS - A Series of Two Day Workshops

This spring, with funding provided by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), Kurt Menke developed a two day workshop that combines elements of the standard Community Health Maps workflow with vector borne disease surveillance analyses.The workshop begins with an introduction to Community Health Maps, and learning how to use Fulcrum to develop a data collection form and collect community GIS data with a smartphone. Participants will then be introduced to QGIS. They will learn how to add the field data just collected, and symbolize it. They will then download some open data and create a map.The second day focuses on a suite of mosquito trap data acquired from Madera County, CA, by Dr. Chris Barker at UC Davis. There are 5 years of mosquito trap data and mosquito virus testing data. There are also anonymized data for mosquito biting complaints, mosquito management zones, storm drain locations, parcels and roads.Collectively this provides a rich yet manageable dataset. With it participants will learn to use to create information such as:This workshop represents applied real-world workflows. These are many of the standard products needed by public health officials and typically produced by researchers. Having this sort of analysis and data visualization available via an open source package means anyone willing to take a few days to learn can produce them! This is especially true as the needed input data can be collected via Fulcrum if they don't already exist.This workshop will be taught twice in June. Both workshops will be part of the Community Health Maps project and are partly funded by the National Library of Medicine (funding for the workshop is provided under a sub-award from the National Library of Medicine to ICF International). The first iteration will be taught in conjunction with the Insular Area Climate and Health Summit in Honolulu, HI. This will be attended by public health officials from many of the Pacific Territories.The second workshop will be taught in Providence, RI at the GIS Surveillance Workshop. This will be attended by State based health officials.This material really showcases the analysis and data visualization capabilities of QGIS.  It represents perhaps the greatest potential for applied use of Community Health Maps to date. This workshop will part of the suite of Resources available through the Community Health Maps program in the near future.If you are interested in having this taught for you or your colleagues contact Kurt Menke (kurt@birdseyeviewgis.com).