O'Neill Marty, Poole Michael, Mikler Armin R
University of North Texas Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis, Denton, TX.
Texas Department of State Health Services, Austin, TX.
Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2021 Apr;15(2):232-238. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2019.162. Epub 2020 Mar 9.
Public health practitioners face challenging, potentially high-consequence, problems that require computational support. Available computational tools may not adequately fit these problems, thus forcing practitioners to rely on qualitative estimates when making critical decisions. Scientists at the Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis and practitioners from the Texas Department of State Health Services (TXDSHS) have established a participatory development cycle where public health practitioners work closely with academia to foster the development of data-driven solutions for specific public health problems and to translate these solutions to practice. Tools developed through this cycle have been deployed at TXDSHS offices where they have been used to refine and enhance the region's medical countermeasure distribution and dispensing capabilities. Consequently, TXDSHS practitioners planning for a 49-county region in North Texas have achieved a 29% reduction in the number of points of dispensing required to complete dispensing to the region within time limitations. Further, an entire receiving, staging, and storing site has been removed from regional plans, thus freeing limited resources (eg, personnel, security, and infrastructure) for other uses. In 2018, planners from Southeast Texas began using these tools to plan for a multi-county, full-scale exercise which was scheduled to be conducted in October 2019.
公共卫生从业者面临着具有挑战性、可能产生高后果的问题，这些问题需要计算支持。现有的计算工具可能无法充分适用于这些问题，因此迫使从业者在做出关键决策时依赖定性估计。计算流行病学与反应分析中心的科学家以及得克萨斯州公共卫生服务部（TXDSHS）的从业者建立了一个参与式开发周期，在这个周期中，公共卫生从业者与学术界密切合作，以促进针对特定公共卫生问题的数据驱动解决方案的开发，并将这些解决方案转化为实际应用。通过这个周期开发的工具已部署在TXDSHS办公室，在那里它们被用于完善和增强该地区的医疗对策分发和配给能力。因此，为得克萨斯州北部一个有49个县的地区制定计划的TXDSHS从业者，在限时内向该地区完成配给所需的配给点数量减少了29%。此外，整个接收、集结和存储地点已从区域计划中移除，从而将有限的资源（如人员、安保和基础设施）腾出来用于其他用途。2018年，得克萨斯州东南部的规划者开始使用这些工具为计划于2019年10月进行的多县全面演习做准备。
