Interesting surveillance approach described in this article

Hollerith, Billings, and the 1890 US Census

A note on Hollerith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Hollerith . Reading it, I learned another connectivity lesson. Hollerith worked for John Shaw Billings, whose name I recognized as someone connected to Hopkins who had worked out Vital Statistics for the US Censuses in the 19^th century. Apparently it was Billings who urged Hollerith to develop the punch card approach for the US Census of 1890. That census report is remarkable in that it apparently no longer exists (due to a fire and perhaps to some neglect). This is too bad because it included questions on disablement of household members and counted those affected by life-long cognitive problems (‘idiots’) and with other problems.

 

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1890-census-1.html

NYT Editorial: States Show the Way on the Opioid Epidemic

States Show the Way on the Opioid Epidemic

Who will do the state-level analysis that expresses this year’s opioid casualty attack rates as a function of state-level characteristics, including X-terms for what the NYTimes think is making a difference?

Ethnographic research in complement with survey and administrative records research

There is a podcast to listen to, but if you want to view the video of the session, it is here:

https://www.aei.org/events/using-ethnographic-research-to-understand-barriers-to-opportunity/

Features Robert Moffitt, Johns Hopkins professor, among other notables.

Podcast is here:

http://www.aei.org/multimedia/using-ethnographic-research-to-understand-barriers-to-opportunity/

Ethnographic storylet about a path to heroin problems can be heard, starting at about the 48 minute mark as shown on the image below:

Special treat day for Dr. Madhur Chandra

Cocaine Decisions

Lyrics

Performance

Enjoy!

Remember this day!

Extra treat I ran across: Unevaluated anti-drug PSAs that Frank Zappa performed for the Do It Now Foundation.

DIT Foundation also ran a mail service free anonymous drug testing lab.

Mail in specimen with code, anonymously.

They would post code and contents, dosages when possible.

Often showed contaminants.

Australian service of this type was described at CPDD2018

(Program and anstracts book at www.cpdd.org)

Many now are focused on NPS: ‘New Psychoactive Substances.’

[Why not ‘New Psychoactive Drugs’? In a word, politics (not science)].

Fingers crossed Madhur!

Heroin in Africa ?

Link to article

We have been discussing race and ethnicity question in the US Census (as well as citizen questions).

An interesting perspective: link

Lawsuits as a tool in dealing with drug crises

Link to transcript and podcast

Emergency Room Intervention Protocol

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/health/opioid-addiction-treatment.html

Old news on Exhibit about Neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal and his Drawings

https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2014/12_05_2014/story1.htm

Martin I. Wilbert and Murray G. Motter, ‘Pioneer’ Drug Dependence Epidemiologists Responsible for Initial USPHS(NIH) Contributions to Our Field

Few scientists or practitioners in our field know about the United States Public Health Service “Laboratory of Hygiene” set up on Staten Island, New York, in 1887 with Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun, Marine Hospital Service physician-bacteriologist, at the helm, and with a scientific staff restricted to medically trained physicians. The history of the US National Institutes of Health traces its roots back to this Hygienic Laboratory and indicates that the laboratory was moved to Washington, D.C., in 1891. In 1902 the laboratory received an appropriation that expanded its mission and allowed employment of non-physician scientists (https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/history/index.html)

Photo of JJ Kinyoun as a younger man, and Laboratory of Hygiene colleagues:

[Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US)].

Photo of oil portrait of JJ Kinyoun as an older man:

CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (US)

 

In the 1902 appropriation, the US Congress allowed the Hygienic Laboratory to expand and include new Divisions, including a Division of Pharmacology. The staffing restriction was removed to permit employment of non-MD scientists as professional staff members (https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/history/docs/page_02.html). Two of these scientists were Martin Inventius Wilbert, Phar.D., and Murray Galt Motter, who together became responsible for what appear to be the first US Public Health Service and possibly the first NIH contributions to the epidemiological study of the now-internationally regulated drugs (IRD) formerly mis-labeled as ‘narcotic drugs’ and including compounds as diverse as cocaine, cannabis, and opium.

< URL to link to the following article >

This is the earliest of Motter’s contributions I’ve been able to find:

< URL link to Motter, 1915 >

The earliest of Wilbert’s ‘firsts’ I’ve been able to find:

The elimination of the nostrum traffic, an evident duty of American physicians

 The record of Wilbert’s USPHS/(NIH) ‘firsts’ of this type also appears to be an initial early note in ‘occupational epidemiology’ or ‘occupational toxicology’ which concerning occupational intoxications:

Photo of MI Wilbert as a young adult. This photo accompanied his obituary in 1916, cited below:

Wilbert’s contributions were not limited strictly to pharmacology. They also covered legal issues, preventive medicine, and public health initiatives in the domain of prevention:

JSTOR link to this article from 1916.

D. Burkholder wrote a historical note about Wilbert, and published it in the American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy in 1968.

A Wilbert obituary was written in 1916 by George McCoy, who was then the Director of the laboratory.

< URL to link to the following article >

As is regrettably true for some contemporary epidemiologists and practitioners in our field, Wilbert sometimes used hyperbolic language and went ‘over the top’ in a fashion that tends to heap stigma upon affected individuals. Alas!

< URL link to the following article >

San Francisco opioids outreach 2018

San Francisco opioids outreach 2018

US national mental health and substance use policy laboratory

Enabling legislation

First and current director:

Chris Jones

P.s. A goof in that fentanyl article?

A large government telephone survey suggests that around 2.1 millionAmericans had opioid use disorders in 2016, but that number may be an undercount because not all drug users have telephones and some may not mention their drug use because of the stigma.

Link from “2.1 million” in article takes us to the NSDUH report from 2016.

Telephone survey?

Fentanyl overdoses but some signs of encouragement

Overdose update

Michigan’s Marihuana Advisory Panel

Members listed here.

A Possible Patient-Oriented Post-Marketing Surveillance Approach

Tracking system for cannabis inventory in Michigan

Hope over heroin

link

Opioids: Can’t we do better than this?

https://www.aft.org/news/opioids-come-campus-helping-students-stay-clean

America’s Worst Drug Problem?

Book review

Listen to it and Let your freak flag fly!

Let your freak flag fly!