Objective To describe the characteristics of compatible poliomyelitis cases and to assess the programmatic implications of clusters of such cases in India. Methods We described the characteristics of compatible poliomyelitis cases, identified clusters of compatible cases (two or more in the same district or neighbouring districts within two months), and examined their relationship to wild polio...

Nine districts in West Bengal, India, and 42 districts in Bangladesh have arsenic levels in groundwater above the World Health Organization maximum permissible limit of 50 microg/L. The area and population of the 42 districts in Bangladesh and the 9 districts in West Bengal are 92,106 km(2) and 79.9 million and 38,865 km(2) and 42.7 million, respectively. In our preliminary study, we have ident...

BACKGROUND In 2002, CDC recommended that the nation's schools establish policies that reduce sun exposure to decrease students' risk of skin cancer. PURPOSE A program to convince public school districts to adopt such a policy was evaluated. DESIGN RCT. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS Public school districts in Colorado (n=56) and Southern California (n=56). INTERVENTION Policy information, tools, ...

Redistricting is a necessary and important process in any democratic society. Modern tools used by legislatures for apportionment of districts are heavily outdated and rely on archaic algorithms. Most use manual redrawing of lines, while others use simulators that simply switch neighborhoods between districts at random until constraints are met. In this document, I outline an attempt to provide...

BACKGROUND Botswana is one of eight SADC countries targeting malaria elimination by 2018. Through spirited upscaling of control activities and passive surveillance, significant reductions in case incidence of Plasmodium falciparum (0.96 - 0.01) was achieved between 2008 and 2012. As part of the elimination campaign, active detection of asymptomatic Plasmodium species by a highly sensitive metho...

Economic development in Uttarakhand, a state in India has accelerated in the last decade however; the progress is largely confined to the plains. The study attempts to analyze district level economic disparities in Uttarakhand. The six key economic development variables namely, per capita income, infrastructure, health, education, industrial employment and tourism have been examined and modeled...

BACKGROUND As society continues to focus on the importance of academic achievement, the physical environment of schools should be addressed as 1 of the critical factors that influence academic outcomes. The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2006 provides, for the first time, a comprehensive look at the extent to which schools have health-promoting physical school environment pol...

Models of social influence have explored the dynamics of social contagion, imitation, and diffusion of different types of traits, opinions, and conducts. However, few behavioral data indicating social influence dynamics have been obtained from direct observation in "natural" social contexts. The present research provides that kind of evidence in the case of the public expression of political pr...

The purpose of this study is to examine the Twitter communica­ tion between school districts, superintendents, and the public. Content analysis of the tweets posted by the 100 largest U.S. school districts and those district superintendents was performed to investigate how the districts and the super­ intendents communicated with the public on Twitter. Next, paired sample f-tests were performed...