Sharing anonymized hospital data prevents violence
Research: Effectiveness of anonymized information sharing and use in health service, police, and local government partnership for preventing violence related injury: Rxperimental study and time series analysis
2011-06-17
(Press-News.org) Combining information from hospitals and police can prevent violence and make communities safer, according to a study published on bmj.com today.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified interpersonal violence as a global public health issue. In 2008-9, police recorded over 900,000 violent incidents in England and Wales, yet a substantial proportion of violence which results in treatment by doctors is not known to the police.
Targeted police work prevents violence, but depends on knowledge of when and precisely where violence occurs. So a team led by Professor Jonathan Shepherd at Cardiff University set out to investigate whether using information about the precise location and times of injury, derived from injured patients, can prevent more violence than police effort alone.
They analysed the impact of the Cardiff Violence Prevention Programme (CVPP), a data-sharing strategy for violence prevention implemented in Cardiff in 2001.
Anonymised data on precise violence location, time, days and weapons used, derived from patients treated for violent injury at hospital emergency departments, were shared over 51 months with police and local authority partners and used to target resources for violence prevention.
Results were compared with 14 similar cities in England and Wales without the intervention.
Information sharing and use of this information to target violence 'hot spots' was associated with a significant (42%) reduction in violence-related hospital admissions relative to the comparison cities. In Cardiff, rates fell from seven to five a month per 100,000 people compared with an increase from five to eight in comparison cities.
There was also a significant increase in minor assaults (those not resulting in injuries) recorded by the police, from 15 to 20 a month per 100,000 people in Cardiff compared with a decrease from 42 to 33 in comparison cities, suggesting that more accurate targeting led to faster and more frequent police intervention.
This data sharing model is currently being implemented in the UK (there is a coalition government commitment to information sharing by hospitals in England for violence prevention) and is advocated by WHO, say the authors.
"Our findings suggest that communities can achieve substantial reductions in the public health burden of violence through organised data driven partnerships between health, law enforcement agencies, and local government," they conclude.
Furthermore, it is likely that the main conclusions of this study are applicable outside the UK, they add.
In an accompanying editorial, Alexander Butchart from WHO, says he hopes the Cardiff model will be emulated by other cities in developing and developed countries. He concludes that, if subsequent studies also find the significant reductions in violence shown in Cardiff, "it would increase confidence in the value of this new tool to prevent violence."
INFORMATION: END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2011-06-17
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A brain implant developed at the University of Michigan uses the body's skin like a conductor to wirelessly transmit the brain's neural signals to control a computer, and may eventually be used to reactivate paralyzed limbs.
The implant is called the BioBolt, and unlike other neural interface technologies that establish a connection from the brain to an external device such as a computer, it's minimally invasive and low power, said principal investigator Euisik Yoon, a professor in the U-M College of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering ...
2011-06-17
New research by faculty at Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota finds that men's conspicuous spending is driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. And, gentlemen, women can see right through it.
The series of studies, "Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System," was conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects and published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, ...
2011-06-17
People often talk about "boosting" their immunity to prevent and fight colds. Nutritional supplements, cold remedies and fortified foods claim to stave off colds by augmenting the immune system.
A new University of Michigan study shows this strategy might actually be flawed. The results may hold important implications for individuals with asthma, who often experience life-threatening flare-ups due to infections with cold viruses.
The study, using a novel mouse model, shows that, in the airways, the immune response to the common cold is actually maladaptive. Mice ...
2011-06-17
Cells in the human body are constantly being exposed to stress from environmental chemicals or errors in routine cellular processes. While stress can cause damage, it can also provide the stimulus for undoing the damage. New research by a team of scientists at the University of Rochester has unveiled an important new mechanism that allows cells to recognize when they are under stress and prime the DNA repair machinery to respond to the threat of damage. Their findings are published in the current issue of Science.
The scientists, led by biologists Vera Gorbunova and Andrei ...
2011-06-17
EDMONTON (National Access & Privacy Conference 2011) – June 16, 2011 – Canadian privacy experts have issued a new report (link will go live after embargo lift) today that strongly backs the practice of de-identification as a key element in the protection of personal information. The joint paper from Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian, and Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the University of Ottawa and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, comes as some privacy policy makers ...
2011-06-17
HOUSTON--Patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms that lead to acute aortic dissections are 12 times more likely to have duplications in the DNA in a region of chromosome 16 (16p13.1) than those without the disease, according to a study led by genetic researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
The results of the innovative study, which included researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, are published in the June 16 issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
In human DNA, there are regions of the DNA that are deleted or ...
2011-06-17
Menlo Park, CA.--Glass, by definition, is amorphous; its atoms lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal.
It's the first time researchers have glimpsed this hidden property in a glass. The discovery, reported June 17th in Science, offers a new window into the atomic structure and behavior of metallic glasses, which have been used for decades in products such as anti-theft tags and power transformers ...
2011-06-17
The first roadmap to mathematical modeling of a powerful basic "decision circuit" in breast cancer has been developed and published in Nature Reviews Cancer.
The preliminary mathematical model is the first result of a $7.5 million federal grant, awarded to scientists at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and collaborators at Virginia Tech and Fox Chase Cancer Center, to develop a systems approach to understanding and treating one of the most common forms of breast cancer.
"A cell is an information processing system ...
2011-06-17
On May 25, 2011, Ocean City DWI Attorney John W. Tumelty was successful in getting Vanessa Camacho found not guilty of a DWI "for drugs" charge following a two day trial.
The Ocean City Police arrested Ms. Camacho several months ago for speeding over the 9th Street Bridge-Causeway. She was stopped for doing 76 mph in a 30 mph speed zone. The police ordered Ms. Camacho out of the vehicle, had her perform field sobriety tests, and placed her under arrest for DWI. The arresting officer stated that the defendant failed the field sobriety tests that where performed ...
2011-06-17
Structural biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have obtained a precise molecular map of the binding site for an allosteric inhibitor in a subtype of the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor, which is commonly expressed in brain cells.
The newly discovered binding site -- a docking port within the receptor -- is important because it is a potential target for drugs that can modulate NMDA receptors, dysfunctions of which have been implicated in depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases as well as stroke-related brain injuries.
Allosteric ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Sharing anonymized hospital data prevents violence
Research: Effectiveness of anonymized information sharing and use in health service, police, and local government partnership for preventing violence related injury: Rxperimental study and time series analysis
