Since its reappearance in the 1990s, periodic outbreaks of syphilis remain a challenge to Canadian public health staff in charge of this infectious disease management. In Manitoba, a new outbreak of syphilis affecting primarily men who have sex with men occurred in Winnipeg in 2012, and re-emerged in 2014.

In addition to significant public awareness campaigns across the city, new public health approaches were necessary to control this infectious syphilis. An interdisciplinary team comprising staff of the WRHA, the University of Toronto and Harvard University, collaborated to apply mathematical modelling to manage the syphilis outbreak in Winnipeg, as part of an initiative supported by NCCID.

Lessons shared by the interdisciplinary team members helped to better understand the concept “modelling” and also to demonstrate how important collaborations between modellers and public health staff are.

In case you missed it, this new video titled “Mathematical Modelling in Public Health”, released by NCCID, in partnership with NCCMT, is helpful to become more familiar with practical applications of mathematical modelling in public health.
 

Across the Web
 

Embracing complexity in social epidemiology / Karien Stronks, Mary Nicolou . The Lancet Public Health, 17 July 2018.

Authors of this article, published inx2Kivimäki, M, Vahtera, J, Tabák, AG et al. Neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage, risk factors, and diabetes from childhood to middle age in the Young Finns Study: a cohort study. Lancet Public Health. 2018; (published online July 17.)http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(18)30111-7.
PubMed | Google ScholarSee all References The Lancet Public Health, take up the challenge of studying whether health varies according to how long people have lived in a deprived neighbourhood and at what stage of their life they lived there.
 

 

Report from the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System: Heart Disease in Canada, 2018 / PHAC. May 2018.
 

This report presents the most recent data of the fiscal year 2012-2013, as well as data spanning over a decade, available from the surveillance system. Administrative data included are from Canadians Chronic Diseases Surveillance among Canadians adults aged 20 years & older and also heart failure among Canadian adults aged 40 years and older.
 

 

Language barriers restricting access to health care for Indigenous populations / Paul Webster. CMAJ, June 18, 2018. 190 (24).
 

This paper highlights the lack of health services offered in Indigenous language across Canadian aboriginal communities and the necessity to promote health care services in Indigenous language to facilitate its access for Indigenous populations. 

 

The management of chronic hepatitis C: 2018 guideline update from the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver / Hemant Shah, Marc Bilodeau, Kelly W. Burak, Curtis Cooper, Marina Klein, Alnoor Ramji, Dan Smyth and Jordan J. Feld; for the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver. CMAJ, June 04, 2018. 190 (22).
 

The guideline on the management on chronic HCV provides to physicians and health care professionals evidence-based information essential to the management of adults patients with chronic HCV infection, recommendations on the assessment, evaluation and management of HCV-infected persons, and treatment recommendations for specific populations.