Emily Kajita

• County of Los Angeles Public Health

Objective To analyze Los Angeles County’s (LAC) extreme heat season in 2018 and evaluate the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists’ (CSTE) syndrome query for heat-related-illness (HRI) in Los Angeles County (LAC)IntroductionLAC experienced several days of record-breaking temperatures during the summer of 2018. Downtown Los Angeles temper...

Objective To create a hepatitis A virus (HAV) syndrome category with which to monitor emergency department (ED) visits for situational awareness during a currently emerging Hepatitis A community outbreak in Los Angeles County (LAC), and to evaluate its usefulness.IntroductionIn early 2017, HAV outbreaks were identified in San Diego County (490 case...

Introduction: Mass gatherings that attract a large international presence may cause or amplify point-source outbreaks of emerging infectious disease. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health customized its syndromic surveillance system to detect increased syndrome-specific utilization of emergency departments (EDs) and other medical enco...

Objective To detect increases in health complaints resulting from the July2016 Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, CA using syndromic surveillanceand complementary systems.IntroductionOn July 22, 2016, the Sand Fire began burning in the Santa ClaritaValley of Los Angeles County (LAC), CA. This urban-adjacentwildfire breached the city limits of Santa Clar...

In the largest gathering of nations in Los Angeles' history, the 2015 Special Olympics (SO) welcomed approximately 6,500 athletes from 165 countries, as well as 30,000 volunteers and 500,000 spectators from July 25 to August 2, 2015. We describe how Los Angeles County's (LAC's) syndromic surveillance system was used to detect potential emerging hea...

Objective The Los Angeles County (LAC) Emergency Department (ED) Syndromic Surveillance System (SSS) classifies patients into syndrome categories based on stated chief complaints. In an effort to evaluate the accuracy of patient-stated chief complaints and final diagnoses, both " fever " chief complaints and diagnoses were compared with patient bod...

In Los Angeles County, emergency department data is collected from hospitals and classified into syndromes based on chief complaints. To validate this respiratory syndromic surveillance categorization, chief complaint data were compared to discharge diagnoses extracted from electronic health records from one hospital emergency department in Los Ang...

Objective To assess current indicators for situational awareness during heat waves derived from electronic emergency department (ED) and 911 emergency dispatch call (EDC) center data. Introduction Los Angeles County’s (LAC) early event detection system captures over 60% of total ED visits, as well as 800 to 1,000 emergency dispatch calls from Los...

To illustrate the usefulness of mathematical models to the microbiology and medical communities, we explain how to construct and apply a simple transmission model of an emerging pathogen. We chose to model, as a case study, a large (>8,000 reported cases) on-going outbreak of community-acquired meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) i...

We build a stochastic model to analyze the dynamics of HIV in a homosexually active population. In our model, we introduce the effects of a hypothetical campaign that promotes HIV testing as well as the effect of a VEI (Vaccine Efficacy for Infectiousness) type vaccine. We analyze how the efficacy of the vaccine and campaign affect disease dynamics...