Professors Elizabeth Matsui, Professor of Public/Population Health at Johns Hopkins University, and Roger Peng, Biostatistics Professor at Johns Hopkins University, talk about life in the academic trenches, telling it like it is. Topics typically cover data science, public health, medicine, and academia.

In 1895, the German physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen, showed his wife Anna an X-ray of her hand. “I have seen my death,” she said. Medical imaging broke paradigms when it first began more than 100 years ago, and deep learning medical applications that have evolved over the past few years seem poised to once again take us beyond our current reality and open up new possibilities in the field.

Find monthly FNS Program data in pdf and xls formats from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Food Distribution Programs, School Meals, and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program.

In 1854 there was a massive cholera outbreak in Soho, London – in three days over 120 people died from the disease. Famously, John Snow plotted the locations of the deaths on a map and found they clustered around a pump in Broad Street – he suggested that the pump be taken out of service – thus helping to end the epidemic. This then helped him formulate his theory of the spread of cholera by dirty water.

Snow’s work is often used as a case study in courses in GIS and the geographies of health. So, I thought – why not convert Snow’s data into a format that will work with modern GIS systems to allow students (and others, of course) to analyse the data themselves with all of the capabilities of modern tools.

So, that’s what I did – and the data is available to download as SnowGIS.zip.

ProMED - the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases - is an Internet-based reporting system dedicated to rapid global dissemination of information on outbreaks of infectious diseases and acute exposures to toxins that affect human health, including those in animals and in plants grown for food or animal feed. Electronic communications enable ProMED to provide up-to-date and reliable news about threats to human, animal, and food plant health around the world, seven days a week.

ProMED is open to all sources and free of political constraints. Sources of information include media reports, official reports, online summaries, local observers, and others. Reports are often contributed by ProMED subscribers. A team of expert human, plant, and animal disease moderators screen, review, and investigate reports before posting to the network. Reports are distributed by email to direct subscribers and posted immediately on the ProMED web site. ProMED currently reaches over 70,000 subscribers in at least 185 countries.

By providing early warning of outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases, public health precautions at all levels can be taken in a timely manner to prevent epidemic transmission and to save lives.

Project Tycho is a project at the University of Pittsburgh to advance the availability and use of public health data for science and policy making. Currently, the Project Tycho® database includes data from all weekly notifiable disease reports for the United States dating back to 1888. These data are freely available to anybody interested. Additional U.S. and international data will be released twice yearly.

CDC’s WISQARS™ (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) is an interactive, online database that provides fatal and nonfatal injury, violent death, and cost of injury data from a variety of trusted sources. Researchers, the media, public health professionals, and the public can use WISQARS™ data to learn more about the public health and economic burden associated with unintentional and violence-related injury in the United States.

A comprehensive index of data and statistics available by topic as well as computational tools and resources for finding and evaluating data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER online databases utilize a rich ad-hoc query system for the analysis of public health data. Reports and other query systems are also available. Databases include birth and mortality statistics, specific disease statistics (e.g., AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis), vaccine adverse event reports, environmental climate data, and more.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recognized as the lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of people - at home and abroad, providing credible information to enhance health decisions, and promoting health through strong partnerships. The CDC serves as the national focus for developing and applying disease prevention and control, environmental health, and health promotion and education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States.

The CMS Data Navigator application is an easy-to-use, menu-driven search tool that makes the data and information resources of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) more easily available. Use the Data Navigator to find data and information products for specific CMS programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, or on specific health care topics or settings-of-care.

The 2015 Medicare drug spending data files present drug spending and utilization information on Medicare Part B drugs (drugs administered in doctors’ offices and other outpatient settings) and Medicare Part D drugs (drugs patients generally administer themselves). These data files are the basis for the 2015 Medicare Drug Spending Dashboard and include annual data for 2011 to 2015.