Tag Archives: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

US Public Health Alphabet Soup Explained: What is the IHS?

The Indian Health Service (IHS) is the federal agency in the United States in charge of reservation health.

“What is the IHS?” is a reasonable question to ask, because there are a few things that are very special about the IHS and its healthcare facilities. At first glance, these special characteristics may seem positive, but they actually have devastating unintended consequences, as I describe in my blog post.

US Public Health Alphabet Soup Explained: What is the VA?

Veterans in the United States can choose healthcare from a public system after leaving the active duty military.

What is the VA – which stands for Veterans Affairs? This United States federal agency is tasked with ensuring veterans receive their benefits – especially health benefits. Unfortunately, as my blog post explains, the VA is facing a myriad of challenges today, including funding problems as well as corruption.

Referring to Variables in Processing Data is Different in SAS Compared to R

When doing data processing, especially extract-transform-load (ETL) into a data warehouse, you might need to refer to the variables in your code, and it's done differently in SAS vs. R.

Referring to variables in processing is different conceptually when thinking about SAS compared to R. I explain the differences in my blog post.

US Public Health Alphabet Soup Explained: What is the BPHC?

The Bureau of Primary Healthcare is a United States federal agency that ensures safety net services to poor individuals

The United States (US) Bureau of Primary Healthcare (BPHC) is the federal agency that funds our safety net infrastructure serving patients who can’t get on Medicare or Medicaid. I explain how all that works, and the relationship of BPHC to the rest of the public health infrastructure.

Why COVID-19 is Overrunning the US in Late 2020: Overlapping Epicurves

Data in simulated epicurves show frequencies and explain outbreak timing

While other countries have found a way to control their community spread of COVID-19 while waiting for the vaccine program to be implemented, the United States has totally failed at this. An epicurve is a diagram of the timing of an outbreak, and in other countries, this curve has been flattened. But in the United […]

Here is the Statistical Reason why Calculating the Coronavirus Mortality Rate is so Difficult

Purple top test tubes held by a hand with purple gloves in a lab

Since the coronavirus (COVID-19) registered on our public health radar as a communicable infectious disease amongst humans, countries try to calculate their coronavirus mortality rate (otherwise known as case fatality rate). As a result, many different mortality rates have been reported, causing confusion. This article from Business Insider reports country-wide mortality rates that range from […]

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