Day: December 3, 2013

The University of Pittsburgh has released Project Tycho, a collection of surveillance reports about diseases in the United States going back 125 years.

"The researchers obtained all weekly notifiable disease surveillance tables published between 1888 and 2013 – approximately 6,500 tables – in various historical reports, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. These tables were available only in paper format or as PDF scans in online repositories that could not be read by computers and had to be hand-entered. With an estimated 200 million keystrokes, the data – including death counts, reporting locations, time periods and diseases – were digitized. A total of 56 diseases were reported for at least some period of time during the 125-year time span, with no single disease reported continuously."

Details on the methodology, levels of data, and more are available on the Project Tycho website.

This 24-page booklet from The Best Start Resource Centre (Canada) was designed to help service providers consider strategies to reach populations that are at higher risk for maternal, newborn, and child health concerns. It is useful for other types of public health and social welfare interventions, however. It includes information on why and how to focus on higher risk populations, examples, and tips for specific populations. It also includes a chart, "Things that Isolate / Things that Connect." For example, instead of referring to people as "clients," refer to them as "participants;" don’t ask "Do you plan to breastfeed your baby," ask "How have you decided to feed your baby?" The latter facilitates opening the door to discussion.

This guide is freely available at http://www.beststart.org/resources/howto/pdf/HowTOGuide_2c.pdf.