In an effort to provide local health officials with an overview of regional health trends and to enable diagnosis of a possible bioterrorism attack on Western New York, UB is collaborating with the Erie County Department of Health to form the Western New York Population Health Observatory.
According to Maurizio Trevisan, dean of the School of Public Health and initiator of the collaboration, the plan is to establish a network for the centralization, analysis and exchange of local health data.
"Much of what PHO will try to accomplish is drawing correlations between certain local regions and illnesses to see if we pinpoint some kind of causal relationship," said Christopher Sempos, director of the Population Health Observatory. "One of the major local problems we plan on investigating is the prevalence of heart disease and infant death in Niagara County."
Sempos said the observatory will utilize health data available at area hospitals and health departments from various counties throughout Western New York, as well as initiating its own studies through UB's School of Social and Preventative Medicine and the School of Public Health. Such organization of data was one of the reasons Trevisan said he wanted to start the system.
"I wanted to create a system for organizing information so it is useful," said Trevisan.
Trevisan said he was motivated by his experience working with national health systems in European countries. Gathering regional health data is difficult in the United States, he said, because health care is fragmented between hospitals, health maintenance organizations, and the state and federal governments.
According to Sempos, the creators of the observatory also considered the significance of a local health observatory system in the event of a terrorist attack.
"What we're actually going to be looking for are widespread cases of general symptoms that resemble the flu, but which may also indicate other pathogens including infectious agents used by bio-terrorists," said Sempos.
Paul Lester, a senior history major and resident of Orchard Park, said the system is a "progressive, beneficial idea" and that he is glad to see university involvement with the community.
"They're bound to find some kind of trend; the Buffalo area has historical ties to pollution and industrial waste. It's about time someone started putting two and two together," Lester said. "I am waiting for typhoid fever to make a comeback."
Sempos said the Calspan UB Research Center and the Department of Geography will also contribute to the observatory. He said the university is heavily involved in the project because Erie County does not have the expertise or the resources to conduct regional health surveillance on its own.
Mike Moskal, the principle engineer with the project, said the research center was recruited to facilitate the collection of health data.
"Our job is to build technologies that make data abstraction, data gathering and data transfer electronically easy," said Moskal.
Peter Rogerson, a geography professor involved in the observatory, said the geography department's primary role would be using geographic information systems technology to provide a "visual picture" of Western New York health data.
"We'll take data broken down by zip code or county and produce maps that indicate levels of statistical concentration that can be analyzed for emerging national trends," said Rogerson.
Although the costs for initiating the collaboration have been absorbed by the university, Trevisan said the observatory will cover future expenses through grant money from the state and private institutions.
"The PHO was designed to be self-sufficient, operating on the funding it generates for itself," he said.
Gary Smith, a representative from the Erie County Department of Health, said he expects the first findings from the collaboration will be released by October 2004 to meet a deadline set by New York State, which requires a detailed report on the state of public health in Erie County.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
