An Urban Population Health Observatory System to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Preparedness, Response, and Management: Design and Development Study

Abstract

Background COVID-19 is impacting people worldwide and is currently a leading cause of death in many countries. Underlying factors, including Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), could contribute to these statistics. Our prior work has explored associations between SDoH and several adverse health outcomes (eg, asthma and obesity). Our findings reinforce the emerging consensus that SDoH factors should be considered when implementing intelligent public health surveillance solutions to inform public health policies and interventions. Objective This study sought to redefine the Healthy People 2030’s SDoH taxonomy to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we aim to provide a blueprint and implement a prototype for the Urban Population Health Observatory (UPHO), a web-based platform that integrates classified group-level SDoH indicators to individual- and aggregate-level population health data. Methods The process of building the UPHO involves collecting and integrating data from several sources, classifying the collected data into drivers and outcomes, incorporating data science techniques for calculating measurable indicators from the raw variables, and studying the extent to which interventions are identified or developed to mitigate drivers that lead to the undesired outcomes. Results We generated and classified the indicators of social determinants of health, which are linked to COVID-19. To display the functionalities of the UPHO platform, we presented a prototype design to demonstrate its features. We provided a use case scenario for 4 different users. Conclusions UPHO serves as an apparatus for implementing effective interventions and can be adopted as a global platform for chronic and infectious diseases. The UPHO surveillance platform provides a novel approach and novel insights into immediate and long-term health policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and other future public health crises. The UPHO assists public health organizations and policymakers in their efforts in reducing health disparities, achieving health equity, and improving urban population health.

Exploring temporal varying demographic and economic disparities in COVID-19 infections in four U.S. areas: based on OLS, GWR, and random forest models

“…Last but not least, recent studies focused on urbanized regions with high population densities (Brakefield et al, 2021 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Hu & Chen, 2021 ). Few looked at low-density areas since the spread of COVID-19 in low-density areas is anticipated to be slow (Wong & Li, 2020 ).…”

An Urban Population Health Observatory for Disease Causal Pathway Analysis and Decision Support: Underlying Explainable Artificial Intelligence Model

“…Previous studies provided evidence that socially disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected by chronic diseases such as obesity [5][6][7][8], which is a risk factor for developing diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The significance of UPHO lies in its ability to provide a multifaceted surveillance system design that serves as an apparatus for actualizing effective interventions, addressing concerns in health disparities, providing awareness to the public, and equipping health officials with a surveillance system that will improve population health decision-making and planning [24]. Using the semantics layer, the UPHO platform provides contextual knowledge by reusing several ontologies focusing on public health (eg, diseases, transportation, geography).…”

“…Developing a multidimensional scalable surveillance system to monitor and detect trends and deliver rapid early warnings and recommendations could assist health officials, physicians, and researchers in mitigating a health crisis such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [24].…”

Examining the Implementation of Digital Health to Strengthen the COVID-19 Pandemic Response and Recovery and Scale up Equitable Vaccine Access in African Countries

“…Consequently, we propose that the availability and access to real-time health data through digital health technologies (DHTs) in Africa could facilitate (1) the application of rapid predictive monitoring systems, geographic information, and dashboards for disease surveillance, data visualization, and health decision-making; for example, vaccine and masks mandates, lockdowns, and quarantine measures; (2) good governance or policy decision-making and an inclusive regulatory or legal framework to deter excess bureaucracy and minimize the depletion of scarce resources; (3) leveraging of mHealth and social media analytics to obtain data that assess public sentiments, opinions, or information gaps and enable the creation and dissemination of tailored messages that address mis-or disinformation, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine inequity; (4) comprehensive educational or training programs that expand digital literacy, health information-seeking behaviors, and precision health education or promotion. Overall, in this pandemic era, the fast-tracking adoption of digital technologies to collect, share, and analyze socio-behavioral and health data could further transform disease preparedness and response, mitigate the spread of infections, and optimize health care delivery services; for example, vaccine delivery, contact tracing, case containment, and management [11][12][13].…”