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“Since asthma surveillance data were not available at the census tract level for most of Louisiana, we estimated asthma burden using the inpatient discharge data available through LDH.”  (4)

“Case counts are not provided for CTs with a 2018 population of less than 800 to safeguard privacy.” (4)

“To minimize the need for suppression, inpatient discharge data was aggregated for the three most recent years available (2017–2019) and average annual crude rates were calculated for cases where asthma (ICD-10 code J45) was the primary diagnosis, as well as where asthma was any diagnosis.” (4)

“Spearman’s Rank Correlation was utilized to analyze the correlation between various social and environmental vulnerability factors, COVID-19 incidence, and the measures of asthma risk by CT.” (4)

“This was performed by first ranking the values in each dataset using RANK.AVG function in MS Excel 2016, followed by applying the PEARSON function to compare two datasets. Significance was set at alpha less than 0.05 (α < 0.05), with degrees of freedom (df) equal to two less than the total number of data points represented in both datasets” (4)

The research team works for the Section of Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology, Office of Public Health, Louisiana Department of Health in Baton Rouge. Team members included Arundhati Bakshi; Shanon Soileau; Collete Stewart; Kate Friedman; Collete Maser; Alexis Williams; Kathleen Aubin; and Alicia Van Doren. 

“Currently, much of the environmental focus of the pandemic remains on PM2.5 levels; however, we noted that higher levels of ozone was consistently associated with higher incidence rates of COVID-19, and it was the only environmental factor that appeared to have an additive effect over SVI on COVID-19 incidence (Fig 1).” (11)

“Specifically, our data show a moderately strong positive correlation between SVI due to minority status/language barrier and three health data variables: asthma hospitalization; estimated asthma prevalence; and cumulative COVID-19 incidence at 3 months (Table 2). Interestingly, SVI measures were either negatively or not significantly correlated COVID-19 incidence at the 9-and 12-month time points, indicating that social vulnerability factors may have played a greater role in COVID-19 spread early in the pandemic, but may have been of diminishing importance as the pandemic wore on (Fig 1 and Table 2).” (9)

Bakshi A, Van Doren A, Maser C, Aubin K, Stewart C, Soileau S, et al. (2022) Identifying Louisiana communities at the crossroads of environmental and social vulnerability, COVID-19, and asthma. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0264336. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264336. 

This document uses data resources from the Center for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC/ATSDR), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH).

These data resources include the Social Vulnerability Index (2018 - CDC/ATSDR), the NATA Respiratory Hazard Index (EPA 2014), PM2.5level (average annual concentration in ug/m3, EPA 2016), ozone level (summer seasonal average of daily maximum 8-hour concentration in air in parts per billion, EPA 2016), indoor mold concerns reported to IEQES program (average annual number of calls, LDH 2017-2019), cumulative COVID-19 incidence rate at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12-month increments (LDH March 2020 - March 2021), asthma hospitalization (average annual crude rate, where asthma was a primary diagnosis among hospitalization cases, LDH 2017-2019), and estimated asthma prevalence (average annual crude rate, where asthma was any diagnosis among hospitalization cases, LDH 2017-2019).

This organizations aims to provide a support system for returning veterans, more specifically to ensure access to any type of medical support they may need and assist them in readapting to society after extended periods of time in the military.

The organization membership includes two subsets, first the organization membership includes any and all active serviceman, veterans, and limited membership for their families. The other portion of membership includes administrators, doctors, and public health workers who work to provide the services needed.

This organization does not respond to disasters, but rather provides long term assistance to members of the military and their families. The issues faced by veterans, both medical and social, are often chronic and require a lifetime of support. This is in a way a constant emergency for them and their families, and the US Department of Veteran Affairs aims to provide the necessary support.

The US Department of Veteran Affairs is constantly adjusting to new medical research to provide the most effective care possible. This shows a differing approach to emergency response which is only possible due to the long term nature of this organization, most emergency response groups focus on quick response to disasters which does not allow for the same amount of research and adaptation as the Department of Veteran Affairs.

The US government is motivated by both the social necessity of reintegrating thousands of active military servicemen every year, and the responsibility of supporting the veterans who sacrificed for this country.

The organization is fully funded by the government, which is funded itself by taxes. This in part effects their work as it creates a responsibility to be careful with funding and ensure that the care goes directly to those in need. It also requires the organization to be held accountable to the citizens who are funding their efforts.