The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database
The World Health Organization (WHO) notifies the global community about disease outbreaks through the Disease Outbreak News (DON). These online reports tell important stories about both outbreaks themselves and the high-level decision making that governs information sharing during public health emer...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2023-01-01
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| Series: | PLOS Global Public Health |
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10021193/?tool=EBI |
| _version_ | 1797701769498722304 |
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| author | Colin J. Carlson Matthew R. Boyce Margaret Dunne Ellie Graeden Jessica Lin Yasser Omar Abdellatif Max A. Palys Munir Pavez Alexandra L. Phelan Rebecca Katz |
| author_facet | Colin J. Carlson Matthew R. Boyce Margaret Dunne Ellie Graeden Jessica Lin Yasser Omar Abdellatif Max A. Palys Munir Pavez Alexandra L. Phelan Rebecca Katz |
| author_sort | Colin J. Carlson |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The World Health Organization (WHO) notifies the global community about disease outbreaks through the Disease Outbreak News (DON). These online reports tell important stories about both outbreaks themselves and the high-level decision making that governs information sharing during public health emergencies. However, they have been used only minimally in global health scholarship to date. Here, we collate all 2,789 of these reports from their first use through the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (January 1996 to December 2019), and develop an annotated database of the subjective and often inconsistent information they contain. We find that these reports are dominated by a mix of persistent worldwide threats (particularly influenza and cholera) and persistent epidemics (like Ebola virus disease in Africa or MERS-CoV in the Middle East), but also document important periods in history like the anthrax bioterrorist attacks at the turn of the century, the spread of chikungunya and Zika virus to the Americas, or even recent lapses in progress towards polio elimination. We present three simple vignettes that show how researchers can use these data to answer both qualitative and quantitative questions about global outbreak dynamics and public health response. However, we also find that the retrospective value of these reports is visibly limited by inconsistent reporting (e.g., of disease names, case totals, mortality, and actions taken to curtail spread). We conclude that sharing a transparent rubric for which outbreaks are considered reportable, and adopting more standardized formats for sharing epidemiological metadata, might help make the DON more useful to researchers and policymakers. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T04:41:30Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e77bf0413d4e441db0bfaa46bf96d9bb |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2767-3375 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T04:41:30Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLOS Global Public Health |
| spelling | doaj.art-e77bf0413d4e441db0bfaa46bf96d9bb2023-09-03T09:42:43ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLOS Global Public Health2767-33752023-01-0131The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective databaseColin J. CarlsonMatthew R. BoyceMargaret DunneEllie GraedenJessica LinYasser Omar AbdellatifMax A. PalysMunir PavezAlexandra L. PhelanRebecca KatzThe World Health Organization (WHO) notifies the global community about disease outbreaks through the Disease Outbreak News (DON). These online reports tell important stories about both outbreaks themselves and the high-level decision making that governs information sharing during public health emergencies. However, they have been used only minimally in global health scholarship to date. Here, we collate all 2,789 of these reports from their first use through the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (January 1996 to December 2019), and develop an annotated database of the subjective and often inconsistent information they contain. We find that these reports are dominated by a mix of persistent worldwide threats (particularly influenza and cholera) and persistent epidemics (like Ebola virus disease in Africa or MERS-CoV in the Middle East), but also document important periods in history like the anthrax bioterrorist attacks at the turn of the century, the spread of chikungunya and Zika virus to the Americas, or even recent lapses in progress towards polio elimination. We present three simple vignettes that show how researchers can use these data to answer both qualitative and quantitative questions about global outbreak dynamics and public health response. However, we also find that the retrospective value of these reports is visibly limited by inconsistent reporting (e.g., of disease names, case totals, mortality, and actions taken to curtail spread). We conclude that sharing a transparent rubric for which outbreaks are considered reportable, and adopting more standardized formats for sharing epidemiological metadata, might help make the DON more useful to researchers and policymakers.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10021193/?tool=EBI |
| spellingShingle | Colin J. Carlson Matthew R. Boyce Margaret Dunne Ellie Graeden Jessica Lin Yasser Omar Abdellatif Max A. Palys Munir Pavez Alexandra L. Phelan Rebecca Katz The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database PLOS Global Public Health |
| title | The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database |
| title_full | The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database |
| title_fullStr | The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database |
| title_full_unstemmed | The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database |
| title_short | The World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News: A retrospective database |
| title_sort | world health organization s disease outbreak news a retrospective database |
| url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10021193/?tool=EBI |
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