Welcome Ben Cooper – Manager of the Public Health Data & Training Center! Ben’s role as the Center Manager at the Public Health Data & Training Center at the Institute for Public Health is to help develop and build public health data capacity, with a particular focus on health and social services data. A St. […]
Tag: Data
Data Infrastructure Part III – Data sharing in the era of COVID-19: Transforming public health
Public health experts and health systems agree that data sharing in the era of COVID-19 is
critical for understanding the reach and impact of the virus.
Data Infrastructure Part I: The unseen fabric that connects information
Wrangling the ebb and flow of medical data is a tireless job but members of the Data Center and the St. Louis Regional Data Alliance are making it happen.
Modeling tool informs local epidemiological projections
The end of shelter-in-place policies in Missouri has led to a new wave of uncertainty about the future: Will the epidemic get worse? If so, how quickly? And if it gets worse, how quickly will we know and how bad will it get? LEMMA is a simple compartmental model using an Approximately Bayesian Computation approach […]
COVID-19: What the Public Health Data & Training Center is reading
As part of its effort to create opportunities to share important public health information with the community, the Public Health Data and Training Center at the Institute for Public Health shares the following articles and books during this period of COVID-19 virus and sheltering at home. Here’s what we’re reading. We hope you find these […]
Data Center Publications: 2019 in Review
2019 was a productive year for the Public Health Data & Training Center (Data Center) at the Institute for Public Health, particularly for multidisciplinary student trainees, Data Center colleagues and Faculty Scholars who collaborated on written contributions to national journals and other publications. Center Manager Anne Trolard supervised trainees Eleanor Bergquist (Public Health), Branson Fox […]
Next steps in sexual health
Sexual health is now a regional priority for St. Louis, as identified by the regional coalition, St. Louis Partnership for a Healthy Community. Rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to increase in St. Louis as well as nationally, while public health funding continues to decline. Missouri’s congenital syphilis rates have increased 218 percent (from […]
Patients seeking sexual health care more likely to visit emergency rooms despite clinics being located closer to home, study says
Written by Kim Furlow, communications manager for the Institute for Public Health Gonorrhea and chlamydia infections are prevalent here in St. Louis and across the county, and left untreated can result in serious complications such as infertility and pelvic inflammatory disease. These infections are transmitted through sexual contact, and can be diagnosed at a clinic, […]
How funding and collaboration can address violence: Lessons from the past
According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Justice report, the City of St. Louis experienced a notable decrease in homicides in the year 2003 but the rate has subsequently rebounded. As we continue to see violence in our city and search for what works to prevent it, can we learn from the past? A community-academic […]
The intersection of precision medicine and public health
Written by Sarah Wishloff, undergraduate student at Amherst College and participant in the Institute for Public Health Summer Research Program This past week, Dr. William Powderly, the Larry J. Shapiro Director of the Institute for Public Health, led a seminar on the intersection of precision medicine and public health. Precision medicine is a medical model […]
Driving data in precision medicine
Written by Philip Payne, PhD, FACMI, the Robert J. Terry Professor and founding director of the Institute for Informatics at the School of Medicine When I am asked to speak to the general public about the emerging role of informatics, I often start with an unusual example: buying an airline ticket. If I were to […]
Learning more about precision medicine
Written by Anne Trolard, manager for the Public Health Data and Training Center at the Institute for Public Health An article in my inbox on precision medicine caught my eye recently, reminding me I had wanted to learn more about this buzz-word in healthcare. The article, in WUSTL’s The Source, describes precision medicine (PM) as […]
Participating in a clinical trial
Written by Shea Roesel, clinical research coordinator I at Volunteer for Health at the School of Medicine As a clinical research coordinator with the Volunteer for Health (VFH) office at Washington University School of Medicine over the past 15 years, I have noticed that each participant’s situation is distinctive and the motivation to participate in […]
Tackling the high rates of STIs in the St. Louis region with data
Approximately 3,000 people are tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital emergency department (ED) each year, and until recently 70-80% were lost-to-follow-up. A number of factors contributed to this high rate, including the lack of a robust mechanism in the ED for follow-up care and incorrect contact information. With funding from the Barnes-Jewish […]
Taking a closer look: New study examines health data at sub-county level
Written by April Houston, MSW, MPH, Communications Assistant, Institute for Public Health Your zip code can mean more than your genetic code when it comes to your personal health. In the St. Louis area, that message was clearly articulated through the For the Sake of All project. Unfortunately, it is often not possible to see […]
Data visualization skill lab
The university offered a class this fall that combined data visualization with real-world crime data. This class was the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art’s course “Capstone in Design 1: Form and Function.” It included a Data Visualization Skill Lab in which students formed interdisciplinary teams to explore crime data from St. Louis City. […]
Data center presents on collaborations at APHA
Ben Cooper, MPH, manager of the Institute’s Public Health Data and Training Center, recently attended the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and offered two presentations on recent collaborative projects. The first, “Novel approaches to obesity surveillance using population level data,” involved a partnership with the St. Louis City Department of Health […]
Meet FRED
Written by Keith G. Taylor, FRED data officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED® is a web-based aggregator of economic and social science time series data operated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which provides a set of tools to find, download, analyze, visualize, and otherwise understand these data. Let’s deconstruct that […]
Studying St. Louis, sexually-transmitted infections, and superusers
Written by Ben Cooper, MPH, manager of the Public Health Data and Training Center at the Institute for Public Health St. Louis is known for many things… our beloved Cardinals, frozen custard, and toasted ravioli to name a few. Regrettably, another thing we are known for are the high rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), […]
OKCupid and digging in to big data
Written by Ben Cooper, MPH, manager of the Public Health Data & Training Center at the Institute for Public Health We’ve all heard the term “big data” tossed around a lot lately. As someone who has been working with data of all shapes and sizes for nearly two decades, I’ve learned that it isn’t the […]
Data center to work with faculty scholar on Sickle Cell Project
The Public Health Data and Training Center at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis will work with Allison King, MD, MPH, institute scholar and assistant professor in the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, on a project to help improve care to patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). […]