JMIR Public Health and Surveillance

Colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality in those aged 50 years and above have decreased over the past 2 decades. However, there is a rising incidence of CRC among individuals under 50 years of age, termed early-onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC). Patients with EOCRC are diagnosed at an advanced stage and may be in more psychosocial, emotional, and financial distress.

Current societal trends reflecting increased mistrust of science and lowered civic engagement threaten to impair research that is foundational to ensuring public health and advancing health equity. One effective countermeasure to these trends lies in community-facing citizen science applications to increase public participation in scientific research, making this field an important target for AI exploration. We highlight potentially promising citizen science AI applications that extend beyond individual use to the community level, including conversational large language models, text-to-image generative AI tools, descriptive analytics for analyzing integrated macro- and micro-level data, and predictive analytics. The novel adaptations of AI technologies for community-engaged participatory research also bring an array of potential risks. We highlight possible negative externalities and mitigations for some of the potential ethical and societal challenges in this field.

The total fertility rate (TFR) is a biased estimate of population reproductive potential when there is a sex-ratio imbalance at birth, and it does not account for the mortality of women of childbearing age. This study aimed to estimate the reproduction rate (Rt), which adjusts for sex-ratio imbalance and the mortality of women of childbearing age, and to assess the differences in the timing of when the population reached replacement level of TFR and Rt. We first estimated Rt using probability of survival in females and number of female births. Then, using time series analysis, we compared the time series of TFR and Rt in the Korean population between 1975 and 2022. We found the Rt captured a below replacement level of the population a year earlier than the TFR. However, the estimate of the time-series analysis of Rt was not significantly different from the estimates of the TFR. Our finding suggests that the Rt can provide timely information on the adjusted population reproductive potential.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved how sharing of genomic sequences in a timely manner, as well as early detection and surveillance of variants and characterisation of their clinical impacts helped to inform public health responses. However, the area of (re-)emerging infectious diseases and our global connectivity require interdisciplinary collaborations to happen at local, national and international levels and connecting data to understand the linkages between all factors involved. Here, we describe experiences and lessons learned from a COVID-19 pilot study aimed at developing a model for storage and sharing linked laboratory data and clinical-epidemiological (CE) data using European open science infrastructure. We provide insights into the barriers and complexities of internationally sharing linked, complex cohort datasets from opportunistic studies for connected data analyses. An analytical timeline of events, describing key actions and delays in the execution of the pilot, and a critical path, defining steps in the process of internationally sharing a linked cohort dataset are included. The pilot showed how building on existing infrastructure that had previously been developed within the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) at EMBL-EBI for pathogen genomics data sharing, allowed the rapid development of connected ‘data hubs’. These data hubs were required to link human clinical-epidemiological (CE) data under controlled access with open high dimensional laboratory data, under FAIR principles. Based on our own experiences, we call for action and make recommendations to support and to improve data sharing for outbreak preparedness and response.

COVID-19 ended on May 5th 2023 and since then Hong Kong reported increased mental distress, which was speculated to be from the policies implemented during the pandemic. Despite this, longitudinal surveillance of deliberate self-harm (DSH) incidences throughout the pandemic in Hong Kong remained insufficient.

With hypertension emerging as a global public health concern, taking measures to alleviate its burden is urgent. The hypertension management program in China is a standardized policy to help people with hypertension to enhance their health levels and reduce health inequalities. However, studies focusing on participance details of this program remain scarce.

Residual blood donor samples are commonly used in SARS-CoV-2 seroepidemiological studies but their use may introduce bias due to the 'healthy donor effect', where blood donors are generally healthier than the general population. This potential bias is critical for interpreting seroepidemiological data accurately, as blood donors might not fully represent broader population-level infection rates.

The increasing incidence of precocious puberty is one major health challenge for Chinese children, while related risk factors remain less well exploration. Exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a leading environmental hazard in this country. Although certain components of PM2.5 have been reported as endocrine disruptors for sex hormones, population-based evidence still lacks on the association between PM2.5 exposure and precocious puberty in China.

The National Essential Public Health Service Package was launched in 2009 to tackle poor blood pressure control of Chinese people with hypertension. However, effect of The National Essential Public Health Service Package on blood pressure control is still unclear.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is establishing its wastewater surveillance capacities to support national security objectives and promote the public health and medical readiness of U.S. service members. Wastewater surveillance is an emerging technology that has traditionally been utilized for detecting infectious diseases. However, its potential future uses may bring a staggering and unpredictable amount of information that could be used for a wide variety of purposes both health and non-health related. The U.S. military also serves an inimitable role for the country and its citizens, and it exercises significant levels of control over its service members compared to civilian organizations. Further, its presence and potential wastewater surveillance activities may reach far beyond just military installations. As such, there arise unique ethical considerations that must be accounted for by leaders and policymakers to ensure the DoD implements a wastewater surveillance network in a manner that is both impactful in supporting public health and appropriate to the scope and population under surveillance. Therefore, this paper explores important ethical features in conducting wastewater surveillance that are both specific to the DoD experience and applicable for wider public health and environmental science interests.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most challenging public health emergencies in recent world history, causing about 7.07 million deaths globally by September 24, 2024. Accurate, timely, and consistent data are critical for early response to situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young sexual minority men have among the highest rates of HIV in the United States; yet, the use of evidence-based prevention strategies, including routine HIV testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), remains low. Mobile apps have enormous potential to increase HIV testing and PrEP use among young sexual minority men.