*Funded by DIMACS and the UMDNJ Academic Partnership for Environmental Public Health Tracking (1 U19 EH000 CDC grant).
The goal of this conference is to bring together representatives of communities, government and academia to begin a discussion on innovative strategies for addressing and investigation disease clusters. It is hoped that through this series of lectures, discussions, and workgroup sessions, we will be able to identify topics and activities based on past experience that make use of new ideas, methods and technology to better address this vexing problem.
Day 1: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 2 PM - 5 PM
An introductory workshop on cluster investigation for those less familiar with how clusters are defined, the nuts and bolts of how clusters are identified, and how investigation results are interpreted.
Day 2: Wednesday, May 7, 2008 9 AM - 5 PM
A community/government/academia dialogue on the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities with the current practice in cluster investigations
Day 3: Thursday, May 8, 2008 9 AM - 12:30 PM
A summary of the latest methodologic and statistical developments in cluster investigations, from improved and expanded scan statistics to broad-scale surveillance to comparisons of methods and identification of when best to use each.
Funded by DIMACS and the UMDNJ Academic Partnership for Environmental Public Health Tracking.
Tuesday May 6, 2008
1:00 - 2:00 Registration
2:00 - 5:00 Pre-Workshop Training: The Investigation of Disease Clusters
Dan Wartenberg
Dona Schneider
Andrew Lawson
1. Introduction to Clusters: History and Context
2. The Practice of Cluster Investigation
3. The Analytic Methods of Cluster Investigations
4. The Media and Community Perspectives on Cluster Investigations
5. Some Statistical Considerations and Ideas for More Effective Responses to Clusters
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
8:15 - 9:00 Breakfast and Registration
9:00 - 9:15 Welcome
Dan Wartenberg, Chief, Division of Environmental Epidemiology, UMDNJ and EOHSI
Mel Janowitz, DIMACS Associate Director
9:15 - 9:30 Scope of Goals of the Conference
Dan Wartenberg, UMDNJ
Credibility for community/government/academia collaboration to review cluster
investigation strategies and recommend improvements
Facilitate dialogue between scientists, community representatives and health
department staff to encourage innovative and creative thinking and appropriate methods
PART 1: Getting Oriented on Cluster Investigations
9:30 - 9:45 Cluster Investigations: A Community View
Jane Williams, Exec. Dir., California Coalition Against Toxics
9:45 - 10:00 The Need and Benefits of a Government-community
Partnership Response Model to Excessive Environmental Disease Concentrations
Dee Lewis, National Disease Cluster Alliance (NDCA)
10:00 - 10:15 Cluster Investigations: A Health Department View
Jerald Fagliano, New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services
10:15 - 10:30 Cluster Investigation: Logistic and Methodologic Challenges
Geoff Jacquez, Biomedware, Inc.
10:30 - 11:00 Discussion
11:00 - 11:15 Coffee Break
11:15 - 12:00 From the Headlines: 'Eight Cancer Clusters Discovered in
Delaware (April 24, 2008)
Allison Shevock, Delaware Division of Public Health
12:00 - 1:00 LUNCH
PART 2: Critical Issues for Improving Cluster Response/Investigation
1:00 - 1:20 Community and Health Department Perception of Cluster Related Information
Caron Chess, Rutgers University
1:20 - 1:30 Discussion
1:30 - 1:50 Parsing Cluster Activities: Response, Surveillance and Etiology
Dan Wartenberg, UMDNJ
1:50 - 2:00 Discussion
2:00 - 2:20 Cluster Detection by Active Assessment of Regional or National
Incidence Data
Richard McNally, University of Newcastle
2:20 - 2:30 Discussion
2:30 - 3:00 Coffee Break
3:00 - 3:20 Using P-Values for Making Cluster Investigation Decision:
Appropriate Prioritization or Misrepresentation
Dan Wartenberg, UMDNJ
3:20 - 3:30 Discussion
3:30 - 3:50 A Brief Overview of Geospatial Methods and Software for Cluster Evaluation
Eric Roberts, California Department of Health Servces
3:50 - 4:00 Discussion
4:00 - 4:20 Replacing Old Paradigms with New Frontiers for Investigation
Jane Williams, Exec. Dir., California Coalition Against Toxics
Amy Kyle, Univ. of California, Berkeley
4:20 - 5:00 Discussion
5:00 - 6:00 Wine and Cheese Reception
6:00 Dinner on your Own (form groups/we'll suggest restaurants)
Thursday, May 8, 2008
8:30 - 9:00 Breakfast and Registration
PART 3: New Developments in Analytic Methodology for Cluster Investigations
9:00 - 9:30 An Overview of the Most Effective Methods
Andrew Lawson, University of South Carolina
9:30 - 9:40 Discussion
9:40 - 10:00 Developments in Scan Statistics
Lan Huang, NCI
10:00 - 10:10 Discussion
10:10 - 10:40 Adjustments for Local Multiplicity with Scan Statistics
Ron Gangnon, University of Wisconsin
10:40 - 10:50 Discussion
10:50 - 11:10 Coffee Break
11:10 - 11:20 Are Disease Cluster Investigations Biased Towards False Positives?
The Shape of Things to Come
Geoff Jacquez, Biomedware
11:20 - 11:40 Discussion
11:40 - 12:20 Methods for Analysing Global Clustering of Disease
Richard McNally, University of Newcastle
12:20 - 12:30 WRAP UP
Dan Wartenberg
12:30 ADJOURNMENT and LUNCH
Links to Newspaper Articles
Posters
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