The opioid epidemic in the U.S. is driving a simultaneous epidemic of infectious diseases — including HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and bacterial infections, and sexually transmitted infections — but workforce shortages, stigma, and financial and policy barriers are preventing the integration of opioid use disorder (OUD) and infectious disease services, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

WIRED’s executive editor Greg Williams caught up with Carlo Ratti -- director of MIT Media Lab's SENSEable Cities -- at WIRED2015 as part of the Out of Office series, with the All-New Jaguar XF

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

The opioid epidemic in the U.S. is driving a simultaneous epidemic of infectious diseases — including HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and bacterial infections, and sexually transmitted infections — but workforce shortages, stigma, and financial and policy barriers are preventing the integration of opioid use disorder (OUD) and infectious disease services, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The scientists, including those from the University of Sheffield in the UK, said overuse of antibiotics, high animal numbers, and low genetic diversity caused by intensive farming techniques increase the likelihood of these pathogens becoming a major public health risk.

Singapore and South Korea – partly because of their experience with previous corona virus outbreaks – have managed this pandemic without locking people in their homes or shutting down their economies. How did they do it?

At the most recent MSRI board of trustees meeting on Mar 7 (conducted online, naturally), Nicolas Jewell (a Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at Berkeley, also affiliated with the Berkeley School of Public Health and the London School of Health and Tropical Disease), gave a presentation on the current coronavirus epidemic entitled “2019-2020 Novel Coronavirus […]

As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, leaders are relying on mathematical models to make public health and economic decisions. A new model developed by Princeton and Carnegie Mellon researchers improves tracking of epidemics by accounting for mutations in diseases. Now, the researchers are working to apply their model to allow leaders to evaluate the effects of countermeasures to epidemics before they deploy them.

Intensive farming, characterized by the overuse of antibiotics, large numbers of animals and limited genetic diversity, increases the odds of animal pathogens making the jump to humans and triggering an epidemic.

London : Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1884.

A museum director looks to the past to explain why 'Aloha' is as necessary as ever

For some time Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 virus, something that has changed when the contagion is spreading fast in the US. A Lombardy in the grip of a deadly epidemic might among several Italians give rise to memories of their school days. For almost a century, Alessando […]

The post Public Health and Epidemics appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Countries can minimize the economic risk of epidemics by investing in the tools needed to predict disease emergence.

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate

An American doctor operating out of Philadelphia made clinical observations that where patients lived, not how they lived, was at the root of the problem

The World Health Organisation's chief has warned that most countries are still in the early stages of their coronavirus epidemics and others are starting to see a resurgence in cases.

The number of daily new cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus are finally declining in China. But the number is increasing in the rest of the world, from South Korea to Iran to Italy. However the epidemic unfolds—even if it is soon brought under control globally—it is likely to do much more economic damage than policymakers…

Experience with other outbreaks could compensate for poor healthcare infrastructure

When an epidemic such as Zika threatens to sweep across the country, public-health workers and policy makers need some basic information in order to plan a strategic response to make the best use of limited resources to protect the public from the spread of the disease. Enter the mathematicians and statisticians.

Online Resource

Cambridge, Mass. : National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020

Browsery RA649.H46 2018

Online Resource

Infectious epidemics have always driven change and triggered discrimination in human societies. Frank Snowden, DPhil, Professor Emeritus of History and History of Medicine at Yale University and author of Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present (Yale University Press, 2019), puts the COVID-19 pandemic in historical context.