iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I will forever be grateful to my team of mentors and coauthors for their counsel, advice and opportunity to present this work in multiple fora as it progressed. @rebeccakatz.bsky.social @heatherswadley.bsky.social @gucghss.bsky.social @colincarlson.bsky.social + entire AMP EID team

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What does this tell us? -diversity in policy characteristics may reflect cultural perceptions of disease + role of the state -smallpox vaxx mandate & penalties in obsolete currency suggest lack of enforcement in some places -layered enforcement mechanisms = more opportunities to ensure compliance

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87.7% (93/106) of countries with legally-enforceable routine vaccination policies include specific enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with immunization requirements, though there was significant diversity in enforcement mechanisms.

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Diseases w/ historically high morbidity & mortality, for which vaccines have long been available (e.g., diphtheria, measles, polio), were most universally included in policy. Recently emergent (e.g., COVID-19) and regionally endemic diseases (e.g., Japanese Encephalitis) were less commonly included.

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We find that: 54.6% (106) of countries studied currently have legally-enforceable policies at the national level requiring childhood vaccination against at least one disease, yet there was significant variation in the number of diseases for which vaccines are required.

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To date, relatively few studies have evaluated the efficacy of childhood vaccine policies, primarily in high-income countries. Broader evaluations of policy characteristics & impacts have been limited by the lack of a comprehensive global policy database-so we spent the last two years building one.

Strengthening health security through routine vaccination policy: A comprehensive analysis of childhood vaccination laws across 194 countries

NEW 🧪🦠😷🚨 Vaccine-preventable diseases pose a resurgent threat, yet enforceable policies offer a chance to boost routine vaccination when paired with healthcare access. Here, we identify and analyze vaccination policies from 194 nations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Vaccine preventable diseases (VPD) present a resurgent threat to global health security and jeopardize decades of advancements in public health and ec…

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 26/03/2025

Trump administration to cut vaccination funds. "The loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result," reports @stephanienolen.bsky.social Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/h...

nytimes.com

U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries (Gift Article)

A 281-page spreadsheet obtained by The Times lists the Trump administration’s plans for thousands of foreign aid programs.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

🧪New! Access & Benefits Sharing (ABS) has implications for international scientific collaboration, medical countermeasure development, and the equitable exchange of samples & sequence data. We examined domestic policies relevant to ABS in all UN Member States: bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...

Heat map figure demonstrating the percentage of countries with applicable domestic policy in each of the 8 policy categories. Lighter colors indicate a lower percentage of countries in the corresponding region have policies applicable to the category, while darker indicates a larger percentage of countries with policy. Exact percentages are listed in the center of each box.

3 stacked bar graphs and corresponding maps to the right of each bar graph. The top graph/map represents the global and regional heterogeneity of policy pertaining to genetic resource access, the middle graph/map shows the categories of sanctions used to enforce ABS policies by country and WHO region, while the bottom graph/map combination demonstrates countries and regions with policy relevant to digital sequence information. The corresponding legend is located immediately below each portion of the figure.

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Another way to put this: Musk and his twerps have exposed us to pandemics, broken science, stolen all your data, endangered the U.S. payments system, threatened air traffic control, and cut off HIV medication to 20m people in order to save ::checks notes:: 2/10th of a percent of the federal budget.

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Charles Ornstein @charlesornstein.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

This is a big deal, y'all. Federal health websites are being stripped of content or removed in their entirety. Stick with this thread for a look at what's disappeared so far! 1/x

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As always, a huge thank you to my coauthors for the guidance, mentorship, and collaboration on this piece. @colincarlson.bsky.social @haileyrobertson.bsky.social @rebeccakatz.bsky.social (& other coauthors who have not yet migrated over here 🦋)

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The WHO has improved transparency around decision-making for DON report publication recently, underscoring the value of the DON as a tool for highlighting potential health emergencies and understanding the challenges faced when reporting high-consequence information under time constraints

Surprisingly, neither Covid-19 nor mpox featured heavily in the DON, and most reports occurred before the declaration of a PHEIC. Info was then disseminated through periodic situation reports - except when novel variants emerged. Notably, no DON report was released regarding the Omicron variant 🦠

Two epidemic curves with dots denoting when Disease Outbreak News reports regarding each disease were published. The solid black line shows the date at which the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) was declared, while the dashed line shows the date at which it was declared over. Green dots in the top frame are Covid-19 DON reports, orange dots denote mpox clade II reports, and the dot shows the lone mpox clade I DON report

Studying reports from the WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) between 2020-2023, we find that outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers and the avian influenza panzootic dominate the DON. We also find an increase in reports of climate-sensitive diseases, especially those that are vector- or water-borne 🦟💧

A country-level choropleth (world map) demonstrates that the greatest number of Disease Outbreak News reports came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but reports were spread across 89 countries. Bar graphs along the bottom show the top 5 diseases reported by the DON, top 5 countries from which reports were received, and top 5 disease-location outbreak clusters. Ebola virus, the DRC and Ebola in the DRC were the most frequent disease, location, and outbreak reported in the DON.