Domestic Preparedness & Response
Healthcare Response to a No-Notice Incident: Lessons Learned from Las Vegas Festival Shooting (
ASPR) On October 1, 2017, during the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip, a gunman opened fired from the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel on the crowd of concertgoers. He fired more than 1,100 rounds leaving 59 dead and 527 injured. Recently, ASPR staff spoke with responding agencies from the Las Vegas shooting to help identify lessons learned that can help other communities, specifically members of the nation's 476 health care coalitions Exit Icon, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these traumatic, no-notice incidents.
Go to article
Government Affairs & National Security
An Inflection Point for Scientific and Technical Intelligence (
War on the Rocks) A seemingly obscure term mentioned in President Donald Trump's National Security Strategy portends a long-overdue shift in the way the US prioritizes intelligence support to national security strategy. This appears to be the first administration to explicitly incorporate the term "scientific and technical intelligence" into its National Security Strategy, according to an initial review performed at the National Intelligence University.
Go to article
The Role of the Federal Government in EMS: An Interview with Gregg Margolis, PhD (
JEMS) When Gregg Margolis, PhD, signed up for an EMT class while studying as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, he had no idea that it would lead him on the path he's taken. Soon after, he became a paramedic and spent several years in the field, including 12 as a flight medic. He later worked in academia at his alma mater and then the George Washington University before a stint at the National Registry of EMTs (NREMT) as an associate director.
Go to article
Global Health Security
Two Years After End of Ebola Crisis, Survivors Sue to Receive Promised Aid (
goats and soda) "Cellal alaa cogu--health has no price," sighs Haja Bah, looking out on a dusty street in the sprawling eastern suburbs of Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital. "But they have forgotten us... and many are still really suffering." Between 2013 and 2016, the Ebola virus claimed more than 11,000 lives across West Africa. Bah is one of about 4,000 Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone.
Go to article
Sheer Number of Attacks on Health Facilities in Syria Shocks Researchers (
goats and soda) Dr. Rohini Haar, a public health researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, led a team that collected ground reports of attacks in 2016 in northern Syria, filed by civilians via cellphone text. Haar wanted to find out if human rights organizations were missing anything in their reports. Sending outside investigators into a country, or monitoring news reports and social media, certainly has merit, she thought. "But that doesn't capture all the stuff that goes on day to day that people don't realize is also a violation of international law," she says.
Go to article
Medicine & Public Health
Combo Antibiotic Found Inferior for MDR Bloodstream Infections (
CIDRAP) The results of a large, international randomized trial indicate that the use of a combination therapy being investigated as a potential alternative to carbapenem antibiotics should be avoided in patients with certain multidrug-resistant bloodstream infections (BSIs), because of increased risk of mortality.
Go to article
The Role of Telehealth in the Medical Response to Disasters (
JAMA Intern Medicine) Use of telehealth, or technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical care, education, and health administration, has increased dramatically in the past decade. Common modalities include live video teleconferencing, store-and-forward technology, remote patient monitoring, mobile health applications, text, and email. The frequency and severity of disasters--or events that cause damage, ecological disruption, loss of human life, or deterioration of health and health services that warrant a response from outside the affected community--have also increased over the same period.
Go to article
Science & Technology
Influenza Virus: Choose Your Enemies Wisely (
Nature Reviews Immunology) Influenza virus has two major surface glycoproteins: haemagglutinin (HA), which promotes viral entry into host cells, and neuraminidase (NA), which facilitates the release of newly formed viral particles. Current influenza vaccines have focused on inducing HA-reactive antibodies; however, Chen
et al. have found that influenza infections in humans induce antibodies against NA that provide protection against divergent virus strains.
Go to article
Other 21st Century Threats
As Water Shortages Grow, 'Day Zero' Becomes Everyday in India (
H5N1) Parched Cape Town, in South Africa, has managed to push back its "Day Zero"--an estimate of when taps in the city could run dry--to 2019 after successful water-saving efforts. But in India, "Day Zero" has come and gone for residents in many parts of the country, where taps failed long ago and people have turned instead to digging wells or buying water.
Go to article
An Expert Collection on the Military Applications of AI (
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) Advances in artificial intelligence, deep-learning, and robotics will have a profound impact on military strategies. The effects of these capabilities will be felt across the spectrum of military requirements - from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to offense/defense balances and even on to nuclear weapons systems themselves.
Go to article
Chemical Weapons Database (
Syrian Archive) Attacks using chemical weapons have been taking place in Syria since 2012. As of April 2018, official reports from the French Foreign Ministry and the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic put the number of chemical attacks at 163. The Syrian Archive has documented 212 chemical weapon attacks through documentation efforts of individuals and groups in Syria. This Chemical Weapons Database, released on 24 April 2018, is the first publicly available collection of open source content documenting chemical weapon attacks in Syria between 2012-2018.
Go to article
