Ireland and Northern Ireland's Population Health Observatory (INIsPHO)

Ireland and Northern Ireland's Population Health Observatory (INIsPHO) is housed in  The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) and is part of the Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO). The Observatory supports those working to improve health and reduce health inequalities by producing, disseminating and supporting the use of relevant health knowledge and strengthening the research and information infrastructure on the island of Ireland.

IPH response to DSD Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework Consultation

The Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework for Northern Ireland sets out for DSD and its partners, clear priorities for urban regeneration and community development programmes, both before and after the operational responsibility for these is transferred to councils under the reform of local government. Four policy objectives have been developed, which will focus on the underlying structural problems in urban areas and also help strengthen community development throughout Northern Ireland. The policy objectives are as follows: Policy Objective 1 – To tackle area-based deprivation: Policy Objective 2 – To strengthen the competitiveness of our towns and cities: Policy Objective 3 – To improve linkages between areas of need and areas of opportunity: and Policy Objective 4 –To develop more cohesive and engaged communities. Key points from IPH response Urban regeneration and community development provide a basis for addressing the social determinants of health and reducing inequalities in health. This policy framework presents an opportunity for coherence and complementarity with ‘Fit and Well - Changing Lives’ as part of government’s overall approach to tackling health inequalities. It is now well established that a focus on early years’ interventions and family support services yields significant returns, so prioritising action in these areas is essential. Defined action plans on child poverty are essential if this policy framework is to make a real and lasting difference in deprived urban areas. Development of the environmental infrastructure to improve health in deprived areas should be supported by well-planned monitoring and evaluation. Linking the policy framework to economic development and local community plans will enhance effectiveness in the areas of education, job creation, commercial investment and access to services, which in turn are critical for the economic growth and stability of urban communities. Community profile data and health intelligence (as available through IPH Health Well) could usefully inform central and local government in terms of resource allocation and targeted service delivery.

IPH response to Building an Active Travel Future for Northern Ireland

IPH responded to the Department for Regional Development consultation Building an Active Travel Future for Northern Ireland, March 2012 The draft Active Travel strategy seeks to set out how to increase active travel by demonstrating that walking and cycling are safe, healthy, flexible, inexpensive and social means of travel and by setting out ways in which opportunities for active travel can be significantly improved.IPH welcomes the new Active Travel Strategy and highlights the need for a truly integrated approach to the strategy which has the potential to positively influence health in areas such as obesity, mental health and cardiovascular health.  IPH suggest a health impact assessment is undertaken on each of the Active Travel Demonstration projects to fully maximise the potential health outcomes of developing the required infrastructure for active travel.

IPH response to Department, Trade and Investment (NI) draft strategic energy framework

The draft Framework set out the proposed priorities for Northern Ireland's energy future over the next ten years or so and illustrates the key energy goals in term of competitiveness, security of energy supply, sustainablilty and infrastructure investment. It also proposes new and ambitious renewable electricity and renewable heat targets by 2020, which reflect the need for effected action against climate change and the need to address other policy goals in terms of security and sustainability of supply and costs.

Lassa virus entry in antigen presenting cells and evaluation of a novel nanoparticle vaccine platform against arena viruses

Arenaviruses are a large and diverse family of viruses that merit significant attention as causative agents of severe hemorrhagic fevers in humans. Lassa virus (LASV) in Africa and the South American hemorrhagic fever viruses Junin (JUNV), Machupo (MACV), and Guanarito (GTOV) have emerged as important human pathogens and represent serious public health problems in their respective endemic areas. A hallmark of fatal arenaviruses hemorrhagic fevers is a marked immunosuppression of the infected patients. Antigen presenting cells (APCs) such as macrophages and in particular dendritic cells (DCs) are early and preferred targets of arenaviruses infection. Instead of being recognized and presented as foreign antigens by DCs, arenaviruses subvert the normal mechanisms of pathogen recognition, invade DCs and establish a productive infection. Viral replication perturbs the DCs' ability to present antigens and to activate T and B cells, contributing to the marked virus-induced immunosuppression observed in fatal disease. Considering their crucial role in the development of an anti-viral immune response, the mechanisms by which arenaviruses, and in particular LASV, invade DCs are of particular interest. The C-type lectin DC-specific Intercellular adhesion molecule-3-grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN) was recently identified as a potential entry receptor for LASV. The first project of my thesis focused therefore on the investigation of the role of DC-SIGN in LASV entry into primary human DCs. My data revealed that DC-SIGN serves as an attachment factor for LASV on human DCs and can facilitate capture of free virus and subsequent cell entry. However, in contrast to other emerging viruses, of the phlebovirus family, I found that DC-SIGN does likely not function as an authentic entry receptor for LASV. Moreover, I was able to show that LASV enters DCs via an unusually slow pathway that depends on actin, but is independent of clathrin and dynamin. Considering the lack of effective treatments and the limited public health infrastructure in endemic regions, the development of protective vaccines against arenaviruses is an urgent need. To address this issue, the second project of my thesis aimed at the development of a novel recombinant arenavirus vaccine based on a nanoparticle (NPs) platform and its evaluation in a small animal model. During the first phase of the project I designed, produced, and characterized suitable vaccine antigens. In the second phase of the project, I generated antigen-conjugated NPs, developed vaccine formulations, and tested the NPs for their ability to elicit anti-viral T cell responses as well as anti-viral antibodies. I demonstrated that the NPs platform is able to activate both cellular and humoral branches of the adaptive anti-viral immunity, providing proof-of-principle. In sum, my first project will allow, in a long term perspective, a better understanding of the viral pathogenesis and contribute to the development of novel antiviral strategies. The second project will expectidly offer a new treatment option against arenaviruses.

Internal and External Determinants of Radical and incremental Innovation in SMEs: the case of Catalonia

There is a major concern in economic literature about innovation, which is the interaction between internal and external factors.. In this paper those activities are hypothesized as being determined by some territorial characteristics like labour skills, technological infrastructure, educational facilities, agglomeration economies and industrial structure. This assumption allows understanding why those innovative activities are not spread across space and are located into specific areas. We use a detailed survey containing microdata for 497 SMEs located in Catalonia.

Regional Advisory Committee on Cancer - Report on Endocrine Cancer (September 2004) (PDF 144 KB)

There is already a good infrastructure for the management of endocrine cancer in Northern Ireland but to develop and strengthen it we recommend the following: • Increasing the already close cooperation between the individual parts of the service for endocrine cancer by use of shared protocols for assessment and follow up: • The main hub of management should remain at the RGH focussed on The Regional Centre for Endocrinology and Diabetes and the Endocrine Surgery department where there has been a long-term interest in the management of these patients. This includes a close working relationship between the endocrinologists and surgeon at the Belfast City Hospital. • This does not suggest that current developments of shared follow-up should not be encouraged. They should but with the provision of adequately resourced registers to allow adequate audit and to ensure adequate assessment of follow-up attendance. The issues regarding informed consent for such registers are currently being discussed for all forms of cancer. In the rarer conditions follow-up should remain central to allow adequate numbers and experience to maintain internationally recognisable outcomes and to allow training of future specialists to continue åÊ

An efficient use of virtualization in grid/cloud environments

Grid is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to high-end computational resources. Grid enables access to the resources but it does not guarantee any quality of service. Moreover, Grid does not provide performance isolation; job of one user can influence the performance of other user’s job. The other problem with Grid is that the users of Grid belong to scientific community and the jobs require specific and customized software environment. Providing the perfect environment to the user is very difficult in Grid for its dispersed and heterogeneous nature. Though, Cloud computing provide full customization and control, but there is no simple procedure available to submit user jobs as in Grid. The Grid computing can provide customized resources and performance to the user using virtualization. A virtual machine can join the Grid as an execution node. The virtual machine can also be submitted as a job with user jobs inside. Where the first method gives quality of service and performance isolation, the second method also provides customization and administration in addition. In this thesis, a solution is proposed to enable virtual machine reuse which will provide performance isolation with customization and administration. The same virtual machine can be used for several jobs. In the proposed solution customized virtual machines join the Grid pool on user request. Proposed solution describes two scenarios to achieve this goal. In first scenario, user submits their customized virtual machine as a job. The virtual machine joins the Grid pool when it is powered on. In the second scenario, user customized virtual machines are preconfigured in the execution system. These virtual machines join the Grid pool on user request. Condor and VMware server is used to deploy and test the scenarios. Condor supports virtual machine jobs. The scenario 1 is deployed using Condor VM universe. The second scenario uses VMware-VIX API for scripting powering on and powering off of the remote virtual machines. The experimental results shows that as scenario 2 does not need to transfer the virtual machine image, the virtual machine image becomes live on pool more faster. In scenario 1, the virtual machine runs as a condor job, so it easy to administrate the virtual machine. The only pitfall in scenario 1 is the network traffic.

Foster Care - A Child Centred Partnership

Many people involved in the foster care service, including professionals working in the area, voluntary agencies and foster carers, have expressed concerns over the last number of years that the infrastructure and policies around foster care need urgent review. As a result of these concerns, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children with special responsibility for children established a Working Group in October 1998 to review and make recommendations on all aspects of foster care service Download the Report here Appendices

Primary Care - A New Direction

Primary Care: A New Direction acknowledges the central role of primary care in the future development of our health services and proposes the introduction of an inter-disciplinary team-based approach which will be introduced on a phased basis using existing infrastructure and encouraging the use of public-private partnerships where practical. Download the Report here

Comunicación entre los componentes de un sistema de detección de ataques coordinados

Aquest projecte consisteix en la implementació i avaluació d’una infraestructura de comunicacions per a una plataforma de detecció d’atacs coordinats, basada en el paradigma publicador/subscriptor per a l’intercanvi de missatges IDMEF. Per implementar aquest sistema s’ha fet servir xmlBlaster i s’han desenvolupat les interfícies necessàries per a fer transparent l’accés a la informació de la xarxa de comunicacions. El resultat és una plataforma escalable que permet l’intercanvi eficient de informació entre els diferents elements distribuïts del sistema de detecció.

Recent advances in the diagnosis of Schistosoma infection: the detection of parasite DNA

As Schistosoma sp. control programs are chiefly based on treatment of infected population, adequate case finding has a crucial role. The available diagnostic methods are far from ideal, since the search for eggs in stools and the detection of circulating antigens lack sensitivity in low prevalence and post-treatment situations and antibody detection lacks specificity. In most endemic foci, repeated treatment of infected people leaves a number of non-diagnosed and consequently non-treated persons, enough to maintain a persistent residue of 5 to 10% prevalence. In an attempt to surpass these diagnostic limitations we have developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of Schistosoma sp. in feces that, in a first population study, has shown to be more sensitive than three-repeated stool Kato-Katz examination. The PCR may constitute a valuable tool for the diagnosis of the Schistosoma sp. infection in special situations, when high sensitivity and specificity are required and infrastructure is available.

Exposition environmentale à certains virus

Les virus sont présents dans la plupart des environnements. Grâce aux outils moléculaires, il est maintenant possible de les mettre en évidence facilement, ce qui était difficile auparavant car cela nécessitait une infrastructure relativement complexe (cultures cellulaires ou inoculation à des animaux). En 2002, à l'aide de la métagénomique, une approche expérimentale a permis de montrer la présence de > 5 000 virus différents dans 200 litres d'eau de mer (Breitbart et al., 2002). Tous ces virus étaient essentiellement de nouvelles espèces. Ainsi, les études cherchant à détecter des virus pathogènes dans des échantillons environnementaux se sont multipliées afin de mieux comprendre leurs cycles vitaux, leurs voies de contamination et leur survie dans la nature. L'homme et les animaux contractent des virus essentiellement par ingestion d'eau contaminée ou par voies manuportée et aéroportée. Certains de ces virus (i.e. virus de la grippe aviaire H5N1, SRAS) sont à l'origine de sérieux problèmes de santé publique de par : leur dissémination rapide, leur caractère zoonotique et la difficulté à traiter les personnes atteintes.Les trois articles présentés dans cette note montrent 1) les propriétés de survie étonnantes de l'adénovirus dans les eaux souterraines ; 2) la dynamique saisonnière du norovirus également dans les eaux souterraines et 3) le rôle de la toux dans la dissémination du virus de la grippe. [Auteurs]

Memoria TFM programari lliure

Memòria final del màster programari lliure. Explicació detallada de la migració de tota la infraestructura actual d'un centre escolar basada en programari propietari a programari lliure.

Putting a health inequalities focus on the Northern Ireland cardiovascular service framework

The PHA, supported by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) and other agencies and individuals, has completed a health impact assessment (HIA) on the Cardiovascular Service Framework (CVSFW) for Northern Ireland.The CVSFW is the first in a series of service frameworks developed in Northern Ireland to guide HSC provision from prevention and health improvement over early intervention in communities and general practice into hospital and other institutional settings towards rehabilitation, palliative care and end of life.The CVSFW is relevant to everyone who has a part in HSC services for health improvement, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, diabetes, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease (stroke), peripheral vascular disease and renal disease. This includes patients, carers, families, communities, voluntary and statutory service providers, policy makers and researchers. There are many determinants which impact on cardiovascular disease. Individual lifestyles are major contributors and smoking remains one of the biggest risk factors for the disease alongside sedentary lifestyles and alcohol consumption. Circumstances experienced during the early years influence health and wellbeing into adulthood. Breastfeeding can help protect against obesity, while physical activity and eating habits developed from a young age often form lifelong patterns of behaviour. Living and working conditions also impact on health. Type of job, level of control and employment conditions are major factors. Educational achievement and income are also powerful influences on health. The environment where we live can provide access to open and green space, which plays an important part in physical activity patterns alongside available transport infrastructure. As well as physical health impacts, all of these factors also influence mental health and emotional wellbeing.