Use of Interrupted Time Series Analysis in Understanding the Course of the Congenital Syphilis Epidemic in Brazil

Pinto, Rafael; Valentim, Ricardo Alexsandro de Medeiros; Silva, Lyrene Fernandes da; Souza, Gustavo Fontoura de; Lima, Thaisa Santos; Oliveira, Carlos Alberto Pereira de; Santos, Marquiony Marques dos; Miranda, Angélica Espinosa; Cunha-Oliveira, Aliete; Kumar, Vive; Atun, Rifat

doi:10.1016/j.lana.2021.100163

Cited by 31 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Local actions were carried out through direct public health interventions in 100 municipalities considered priorities—chosen by the MoH for having the highest syphilis incidences in Brazil). Universal actions included the distribution of penicillin, syphilis testing, public health communication campaigns, and health education ( 46 , 47 ).…”

Section: Discussion and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The relevancy of massive health education in the Brazilian prison system: The course “health care for people deprived of freedom” and its impacts

Valentim

Dias-Trindade²,

Oliveira³

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionBrazil has one of the largest prison populations globally, with over 682,000 imprisoned people. Prison health is a public health emergency as it presents increasingly aggravating disease rates, mainly sexually transmitted infections (STI). And this problem already affects both developed and developing nations. Therefore, when thinking about intervention strategies to improve this scenario in Brazil, the course “Health Care for People Deprived of Freedom” (ASPPL), aimed at prison health, was developed. This course was implemented in the Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS). Given this context, this study analyzed the aspects associated with massive training through technological mediation and its impacts on prison health.MethodsThis cross-sectional study analyzed data from 8,118 ASPPL course participants. The data analyzed were collected from six sources, namely: (i) AVASUS, (ii) National Registry of Health Care Facilities (CNES), (iii) Brazilian Occupational Classification (CBO), (iv) National Prison Department (DEPEN); (v) Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE); and the (iv) Brazilian Ministry of Health (MoH), through the Outpatient Information System of the Brazilian National Health System (SIA/SUS). A data processing pipeline was conducted using Python 3.8.9.ResultsThe ASPPL course had 8,118 participants distributed across the five Brazilian regions. The analysis of course evaluation by participants who completed it shows that 5,190 (63.93%) reported a significant level of satisfaction (arithmetic mean = 4.9, median = 5, and standard deviation = 0.35). The analysis revealed that 3,272 participants (40.31%) are health workers operating in distinct levels of care. The prison system epidemiological data shows an increase in syphilis diagnosis in correctional facilities.ConclusionsThe course enabled the development of a massive training model for various health professionals at all care levels and regions of Brazil. This is particularly important in a country with a continental size and a large health workforce like Brazil. As a result, social and prison health impacts were observed.

show abstract

Section: Discussion and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The relevancy of massive health education in the Brazilian prison system: The course “health care for people deprived of freedom” and its impacts

Valentim

Dias-Trindade²,

Oliveira³

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…By analyzing the context of educational interventions in the Brazilian Health System (SUS), it was possible to verify the effectiveness in inducing the health system's responses in public health crises. For example, in COVID-19, AVASUS acted as an important tool for inducing resilience, as well as in the syphilis epidemic ( 16 ), where Brazil, after starting the process of massive training at AVASUS ( 15 ), began to register in the same period an increase in testing and the consequent reduction in cases of congenital syphilis ( 20 – 23 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Learning pathways about syphilis should also be emphasized. In 2016, after the Syphilis epidemic was declared in Brazil, the Brazilian government developed a national plan with strategic actions to fight against the infection ( 20 – 23 ). Among these actions, the Education dimension stood out.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS): Efficiency of Results, Impacts, and Contributions

Valentim

Oliveira²,

Oliveira³

et al. 2022

Front. Med.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS) is a free and open distance education platform of the Ministry of Health (MS). AVASUS is a scalable virtual learning environment that has surpassed 800,000 users, 2 million enrollments, and 310 courses in its catalog. The objective of this paper was to assess the impacts of the educational offerings on health services and AVASUS course participants' professional practice. This study analyzed data from AVASUS, the Brazilian National Registry of Health Care Facilities (CNES), the Brazilian Occupational Classification (CBO), and a questionnaire applied to 720-course participants from five regions of Brazil. After acquiring and extracting data, computational methods were used for the evaluation process. Only the responses of 462 participants were considered for data analysis, as they had a formal link to CNES. The results showed that respondents recommended 76.2% of AVASUS courses to peers. Accordingly, the quality of educational offerings motivated 81.3% of such recommendations. In addition, 75.6% of course participants who answered the questionnaire also indicated that AVASUS course contents contribute to enhancing existing health services in the health facilities where they work. Finally, 24.6% of all responses mentioned that courses available in AVASUS were essential in offering new health services in such facilities.

show abstract

“…Confronted by the growing syphilis epidemic, the Ministry of Health (MoH) and governing bodies of Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS) developed a national project for implementing and integrating a syphilis response into healthcare networks ( 9 ). The "Syphilis No!"…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been in progress since 2018 and is built on two cornerstones: (1) actions with a universal scope and (2) specific actions in priority areas. Specific actions were developed in 100 municipalities the Ministry of Health considered a priority due to the high burden of CS ( 9 , 10 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Text Mining Technique Applied to the Analysis of Health Interventions to Combat Congenital Syphilis in Brazil: The Case of the “Syphilis No!” Project

Rocha

Santos

Fontes

et al. 2022

Front. Public Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Congenital syphilis (CS) remains a threat to public health worldwide, especially in developing countries. To mitigate the impacts of the CS epidemic, the Brazilian government has developed a national intervention project called “Syphilis No.” Thus, among its range of actions is the production of thousands of writings featuring the experiences of research and intervention supporters (RIS) of the project, called field researchers. In addition, this large volume of base data was subjected to analysis through data mining, which may contribute to better strategies for combating syphilis. Natural language processing is a form of knowledge extraction. First, the database extracted from the “LUES Platform” with 4,874 documents between 2018 and 2020 was employed. This was followed by text preprocessing, selecting texts referring to the field researchers' reports for analysis. Finally, for analyzing the documents, N-grams extraction (N = 2,3,4) was performed. The combination of the TF-IDF metric with the BoW algorithm was applied to assess terms' importance and frequency and text clustering. In total, 1019 field activity reports were mined. Word extraction from the text mining method set out the following guiding axioms from the bigrams: “confronting syphilis in primary health care;” “investigation committee for congenital syphilis in the territory;” “municipal plan for monitoring and investigating syphilis cases through health surveillance;” “women's healthcare networks for syphilis in pregnant;” “diagnosis and treatment with a focus on rapid testing.” Text mining may serve public health research subjects when used in parallel with the conventional content analysis method. The computational method extracted intervention activities from field researchers, also providing inferences on how the strategies of the “Syphilis No” Project influenced the decrease in congenital syphilis cases in the territory.

show abstract

Use of Interrupted Time Series Analysis in Understanding the Course of the Congenital Syphilis Epidemic in Brazil

Cited by 31 publications

References 17 publications

The relevancy of massive health education in the Brazilian prison system: The course “health care for people deprived of freedom” and its impacts

The relevancy of massive health education in the Brazilian prison system: The course “health care for people deprived of freedom” and its impacts

Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS): Efficiency of Results, Impacts, and Contributions

The Text Mining Technique Applied to the Analysis of Health Interventions to Combat Congenital Syphilis in Brazil: The Case of the “Syphilis No!” Project

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About