Associate - Public Health
The Public Health Associate is a diagnostic reminder tool as well as an electronic reference resource. Designed and edited by Norman C. Ronald, PhD, a parasitologist and epidemiologist, and Dr. Craig N. Carter, Associate developer, Public Health Associate presents human infectious and parasitic disease information in a consistent and concise manner. This tool is for use by physicians, nurses, physician assistants, veterinarians and other public health professionals and students.
In order to have a complete biosecurity tool, you'll also receive access to the Foreign Animal Disease Associate.
These diseases are organized in chapters. The chapters are divided such that the diseases are either a disease of a system or causal diseases. Furthermore, the etiologies, clinical findings, procedures, and procedure findings are part of a standardized lexicon so that the same finding will be used in all the diseases where it is found. This is what allows the Associate knowledge bases to be used as a clinical decision support tool. Each disease description contains the following headings:
- Disease name
- Disease synonyms
- Etiologies
- Epidemiology (Etiological agent, reservoir hosts, portal of escape, transmission/dissemination, portal of entry, susceptible hosts, incubation period, seasonal distribution, geographical distribution, epidemiological variables, mortality, zoonotic classification).
- Relationship to immunodeficiency
- Clinical picture in animals
- Clinical signs, symptoms, epidemiological indicators
- Diagnostic procedures and results
- Geographical distribution
- Vectors/Invertebrate Hosts
- Antibiotic/anti-parasitic drugs of choice
- Treatment/management/prevention
- Differential diagnosis
- Bibliographic citation list
Some diseases may include an image of a map in the top right corner of the disease discription. The red areas on the map represent the geographical distribution of the disease. Click on the map to see a larger version.