by Claire McCarthy on October 4, 2011
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
It’s flu shot time again.
Most of the time—and this makes me happy—parents are glad, even relieved, when I tell them that we have the flu shot and I’d like to give it to their child. But every year, there are some that aren’t so glad.
In fact, a study just released in the journal Pediatrics shows that of the 13% of parents who refuse or delay vaccines, it’s the flu shot that is most likely to worry them.
They get a particular look I’ve learned to recognize. It’s a skeptical, hesitant look. They pause for a moment, take a breath, and tell me they don’t want their child to have it.
I pause for a moment myself, take a breath, and ask them why. Full story »
by Tripp Underwood on June 6, 2011
flickr/warrentedarrest
Are you looking to read reviews about the new Greek restaurant that opened up down the street? Google it. In an argument about who drove in the final runs in the Red Sox’s 2004 world series run? Google is right there to let you know it was Trot Nixon. While most of us use Google for seemingly trivial purposes, (I know Sox fans, ’04 was anything BUT trivial in your eyes) researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston are using the powerful search engine to fight disease.
John Brownstein, PhD
A team from the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP), led by John Brownstein, PhD, put their heads together with people from Google and found that web-based search data is a great info sharing source for citizens and public health officials alike. With this in mind, the team recently turned their attention towards tracking outbreaks of dengue, a mosquito-borne virus affecting 500 million people living in tropical parts of the globe. To help accurately record dengue outbreaks as they occur, CHIP and Google have created an online tool called Denguetrends, which collects information on dengue activity as it occurs in real time. The advantage of this type of data aggregation is that it warns people when dengue is being reported in their area and gives public health officials the chance to immediately respond to outbreaks as they happen, instead of waiting for data to be collected and processed. Its creators hope the tool will lead to faster response times and more efficient management of dengue outbreaks.
“By using search data, we’re tapping into a freely-available, instant dataset that can be gathered, analyzed and released much more quickly and at much lower effort and cost than through traditional national surveillance and reporting programs,” said Brownstein, director of the Computational Epidemiology Group in CHIP. “The kind of information the tool provides can help direct public health officials target interventions aimed at mosquito control and disease prevention, such as education campaigns, as early as possible.” Full story »
by Claire McCarthy on September 7, 2010
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Come on, folks, roll up your sleeves—and your kids’ sleeves, too. Summer’s officially over and it’s time for the flu shot.
Every year, I’m caught off guard by how many people don’t want to get a flu shot. There are lots of people who are happy to get them—anxious, even—but I’m always surprised by how much I end up being a flu shot salesman. Full story »
It’s flu shot time again.
