Patty Kostkova

University College London | UCL · Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction

This research aims to provide further insight on how to design effective educational games by exploring whether the integration of educational content through game mechanics, text, or a combination of both text and game mechanics is more effective in teaching the learning outcomes in games. The results of the study show that all three methods led t...

Aims Surgical Antibiotic Prophylaxis (SAP) in Nigeria is often not evidence based. The aim of this study is to test if the GADSA application can change prescription behaviour of surgeons in Nigeria. In addition, the study aims to identify AMS strategies and policies for the future. Methods The GADSA gamified decision support app uses WHO and Sanfo...

One of the barriers to performing geospatial surveillance of mosquito occupancy or infestation anywhere in the world is the paucity of primary entomologic survey data geolocated at a residential property level and matched to important risk factor information (e.g., anthropogenic, environmental, and climate) that enables the spatial risk prediction...

Vaccine development against COVID-19 has mitigated severe disease. However, reports of rare but serious adverse events following immunization (sAEFI) in the young populations are fuelling parental anxiety and vaccine hesitancy. With a very early season of viral illnesses including COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, metapneumovi...

The global priority of improving neonatal survival could be tackled through the universal implementation of cost-effective maternal and newborn health interventions. Despite 90% of neonatal deaths occurring in low-resource settings, very few evidence-based digital health interventions exist to assist healthcare professionals in clinical decision-ma...

The monitoring of environmental parameters is indispensable for controlling mosquito populations. The abundance of mosquitoes mainly depends on climate conditions, weather and water (i.e., physicochemical parameters). Traditional techniques for immature mosquito surveillance are based on remote sensing and weather stations as primary data sources f...

Objective: To analyze rates of reported severe adverse events after immunization (sAEFI) attributed to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in the United States (US) using safety surveillance data. Methods: Observational study of sAEFI reported to the vaccine adverse events reporting system (VAERS) between December 13, 2020, to December 13, 2021, and attributed to...

Certain weather conditions are inadvertently related to increased population of various mosquitoes. In order to predict the burden of mosquito populations in the Global South, it is imperative to integrate weather-related risk factors into such predictive models. There are a lot of online open-source weather platforms that provide historical, curre...

This longitudinal study determines the frequency and way of people doing activities from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021 during different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Six online surveys were carried out between April 2020 and July 2021. 4,992 participants were engaged in the cross-sectional study and 203 participants who provided repeat re...

Dwelling fires are attributable to the high public health burden of injury and mortality in England. The statistic shows that from 2010 to 2019, over 5,000 injuries and 200 deaths annually are caused by dwelling fires which accounts for around three-fourths of the total fire-related casualties. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the social risk...

COVID-19 vaccines have been developed and administered at record pace in order to curtail the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy has impacted uptake unequally across different groups. This study explores the drivers for vaccine hesitancy in ethnic minority groups in the UK, the impact of social media on vaccine hesitancy and how vac...

COVID-19 vaccines have been developed and administered at record pace in order to curtail the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy has impacted uptake unequally across different groups. This study explores the drivers for vaccine hesitancy in ethnic minority groups in the UK, the impact of social media on vaccine hesitancy and how vac...

Arboviruses are a group of diseases that are transmitted by an arthropod vector. Since they are part of the Neglected Tropical Diseases that pose several public health challenges for countries around the world. The arboviruses' dynamics are governed by a combination of climatic, environmental, and human mobility factors. Arboviruses prediction mode...

Full text available at: https://theconversation.com/ai-could-help-us-spot-viruses-like-monkeypox-before-they-cross-over-and-help-conserve-nature-182515 . Short abstract: As we push nature to the fringes, we make the world less safe for both humans and animals. That’s because environmental destruction forces animals carrying viruses closer to us, o...

Infectious diseases, as COVID-19 is proving, pose a global health threat in an interconnected world. In the last 20 years, resistant infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), H1N1 influenza (swine flu), Ebola virus, Zika virus, and now COVID-19 have been impacting global health de...

Background In Nigeria, the prescription of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis for prevention of surgical site infection tends to be driven by local policy rather than by published guidelines (e.g. WHO and Sanford). Objectives To triangulate three datasets and understand key barriers to implementation using a behavioural science framework. Methods Su...

Infectious diseases, as COVID-19 is proving, pose a global health threat in an interconnected world. In the last 20 years, resistant infectious diseases such as SARS, MERS, H1N1, Ebola, Zika and now COVID-19 have been impacting global health defences, and aggressively flourishing within the rise of global travel, urbanization, climate change and ec...

PurposeDengue is considered one of the biggest public health problems in recent decades. Climate and demographic changes, the disorderly growth of cities and international trade have brought new arboviruses such as chikungunya and Zika. Control of arboviruses depends on control of the vector: the Aedes aegypti mosquito.Objective In this work, we pr...

In December 2019 an outbreak of a new disease happened, in Wuhan city, China, in which the symptoms were very similar to pneumonia. The disease was attributed to SARS-CoV-2 as the infectious agent and it was called the new coronavirus or Covid-19. In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic of the new coronavirus. We...

Arboviruses are diseases transmitted by viruses which are maintained in the wild through a vertebrate host and a hematophagous arthropod, such as a mosquito. The transmitter vector of an arbovirus is the arthropod which transmits the virus from one vertebrate to the other through a bite. The biological transmission usually occurs when the hematopha...

Purpose: Aedes aegypti is a mosquito responsible for transmitting mainly dengue, zika, and chikungunya. In low- and middle-income countries, controlling the spread of this mosquito poses a major public health challenge. Currently, Aedes aegypti control policies are extremely important for lowering the risk of potential arbovirus outbreaks. One of t...

It is widely acknowledged that vaccine hesitancy is a multifaceted problem that cannot be addressed by a single strategy. Behavior change theories and social media tools may together help to guide the design of interventions aimed at improving vaccination uptake. This systematic review aims to identify the breadth and effectiveness of such theories...

In Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC), one of the causes of maternal and child mortality is a lack of medical knowledge and consequently the inability to seek timely healthcare. Mobile health (mHealth) technology is gradually becoming a universal intervention platform across the globe due to ubiquity of mobile phones and network coverage. MANTR...

Mosquito surveillance is a crucial process for understanding the population dynamics of mosquitoes, as well as implementing interventional programs for controlling and preventing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. Environmental surveillance agents who performing routine entomological surveys at properties in areas where mosquito-borne diseases...

Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread rapidly over the last decades. The emergence chikungunya fever and zika in South America poses new challenges to vector monitoring and control. This situation got worse from 2015 and 2016, with the rapid spread of chikungunya, causing fever and muscle...

Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread rapidly over the last decades. The emergence chikungunya fever and zika in South America poses new challenges to vector monitoring and control. This situation got worse from 2015 and 2016, with the rapid spread of chikungunya, causing fever and muscle...

This paper explores the main factors for mosquito-borne transmission of the Zika virus by focusing on environmental, anthropogenic, and social risks. A literature review was conducted bringing together related information from this genre of research from peer-reviewed publications. It was observed that environmental conditions, especially precipita...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, information is being rapidly shared by public health experts and researchers through social media platforms. Whilst government policies were disseminated and discussed, fake news and misinformation simultaneously created a corresponding wave of “infodemics.” This study analyzed the discourse on Twitter in several langu...

The problem of arboviruses such as dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and zika has become a growing issue in the Americas in recent years, with Aedes Aegypti being one of the main vectors of this type of disease. Several studies have been carried out to try to understand the dynamics and possible enhancers of the transmission of the mosquito, being...

Background: In order to prevent spread and improve control of infectious diseases, public health experts need to closely monitor human and animal populations. Infectious disease surveillance is an established, routine data collection process essential for early warning, rapid response, and disease control. The quantity of data potentially useful fo...

Engaging citizens with digital technology to co-create data, information and knowledge has widely become an important strategy for informing the policy response to COVID-19 and the 'infodemic' of misinformation in cyberspace. This move towards digital citizen participation aligns well with the United Nations' agenda to encourage the use of digital...

Background: Digital data sources have become ubiquitous in modern culture in the era of digital technology but often tend to be under-researched because of restricted access to data sources due to fragmentation, privacy issues, or industry ownership, and the methodological complexity of demonstrating their measurable impact on human health. Even th...

Background: Periodically, humanity is often faced with new and emerging viruses that can be a significant global threat. It has already been over a century post—the Spanish Flu pandemic, and we are witnessing a new type of coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for Covid-19. It emerged from the city of Wuhan (China) in December 2019, and...

Background: Periodically, humanity is often faced with new and emerging viruses that can be a significant global threat. It has already been over a century post—the Spanish Flu pandemic, and we are witnessing a new type of coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for Covid-19. It emerged from the city of Wuhan (China) in December 2019, and...

Background Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally and is projected to be responsible for up to a quarter of AMR-associated deaths in the future. Management of DR-TB is increasingly decentralised to primary healthcare settings, and simultaneously becoming more complex due to a growing ra...

Background Hospital antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes are multidisciplinary initiatives to optimize antimicrobial use. Most hospitals depend on time-consuming manual audits to monitor clinicians’ prescribing. But much of the information needed could be sourced from electronic health records (EHRs). Objectives To develop an informatics met...

Resumo: O SARS-CoV-2, novo tipo de coronavírus, se espalhou para países de todos os continentes do mundo. Esta doença tem como sintomas febre, tosse, dor de garganta e, em casos graves, falta de ar e morte. A predição de números de casos e óbitos pode auxiliar na avaliação das estratégias para a tomada de decisão. Para isso propomos um sistema para...

Resumo—O combate à doença causada pelo novo coronavírus, a Covid-19, tornou-se um grande desafio de saúde pública mundial. Com cerca de 219 países afetados pela pandemia, mais de 42 milhões de casos foram confirmados em todo mundo e mais de 1 milhão de óbitos causados pela doença. O monitoramento e predição da distribuição espacial da doença é esse...

Gender has received increased attention in disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies and practices over the past three decades. However, a critical analysis raises a number of questions: has the attention to gender brought transformative change to the lives of people, especially women and sexual minorities in all their diversity? To what extent has th...

Serious games, conveying educational knowledge rather than merely entertainment, are a rapidly expanding research domain for cutting-edge educational technology. Digital interventions like serious games are great opportunities to overcome challenges in low-and-middle-income countries that limit access to health information, such as social barriers...

Background: The global burden of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is increasing at an unprecedented rate. The current spread of Covid-19 in Brazil is problematic causing a huge public health burden to its population and national health-care service. To evaluate strategies for alleviating such problems, it is necessary to forecast the number of cases...

Background: The global burden of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is increasing at an unprecedented rate. The current spread of Covid-19 in Brazil is problematic causing a huge public health burden to its population and national health-care service. To evaluate strategies for alleviating such problems, it is necessary to forecast the number of cases...

Background: Mobile technology is increasingly important for delivering public health interventions to remote populations. This research study developed, piloted, and assessed a serious game for mobile devices that teaches geohazard, maternal, and neonatal health messages. This unique mHealth intervention aimed at low-literacy audiences in low reso...

Objective The new kind of coronavirus SARS-Cov2 spread to countries in all continents in the World. The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) causes fever, cough, sore throat, and in severe cases shortness of breath and death. To evaluate strategies, it is necessary to forecast the number of cases and deaths, in order to aid the stakeholders in the p...

Likert scales are a common methodological tool for data collection used in quantitative or mixed-method approaches in multiple domains. They are often employed in surveys or questionnaires, for benchmarking answers in the fields of disaster risk reduction, business continuity management, and organizational resilience. However, both scholars and pra...

Summary: Online health policy debate simulations can engage citizens in exploring policy-making processes and pathways to achieve Global Digital Health.

The panel will address the potential benefits and challenges in applying digital technologies to humanitarian scenarios. Key themes are (1) empowering the individual (or the beneficiary) and informal care-givers with knowledge tools to participate in decision-making related to one's own health (2) building capacity of healthcare professionals, at t...

Geographical maps showing the abundance of the Aedes species (A. Aegypti andA. Albopictus) in Latin America plays a crucial role in the fight against the Zika Virus (ZIKV). They aid in the identification of sites that promotes mosquito breeding and transmission of ZIKV. In the case of Brazil, one of the greatest factors that favours rapid mosquito...

GADSA (Gamified Antimicrobial Stewardship Decision Support App) is a decision support tool to improve evidence-based prescribing, designed to be used at the point-of-care to help clinicians comply with guidelines in their everyday practice. The app represents a novel cross-platform, mobile decision support tool, integrating principles from serious...

With the increase in availability and affordability of digital technology, there has been a proliferation of pilot projects demonstrating the potential and opportunities of digital health interventions to improve public health outcomes. According to a BMJ Open survey, there were over 100,000 health-focused smartphone apps in 2016. However, not all...

Public Health in the European Union is mainly a formal competence of the Member States. EU Treaties and Regulations have given EU gradually more mandate in past decades on issues of surveillance, epidemic intelligence, early warning and cross-border response coordination. In this context, sharing timely information on public health threats (fast an...

This survey study considers the state of the art of participatory research approaches using serious games to improve public health. It provides perspectives on existing research and future directions.

Background Mobile technology is increasingly important for delivering public health interventions to remote populations. This research study developed, piloted, and assessed a serious game for mobile devices that teaches geohazard, maternal, and neonatal health messages. This unique mHealth intervention aimed at low-literacy audiences in low resour...

Background Antimicrobial Resistance is a prominent worldwide threat that is increasing in low-to-middle income countries. Good antibiotic stewardship (AMS) improves compliance with evidence-based antimicrobial prescribing guidelines but just 4% of LMICs have national AMS initiatives in place and only 15% have national policies. As high as 20-50% of...

Background The devastating consequences in neonates infected with Zika virus make controlling the spread of the virus and its vectors (Aedes mosquitoes) an urgent challenge. Mobile technology has been successfully used to support routine surveillance of mosquito populations conducted by the community health workers (health agents). Mobile real-time...

Background Whilst it has long been known that anti-vaccination sentiment is widely disseminated through digital networks, 2019 has seen seismic shifts in the landscape. As viral videos originating on Youtube spread across social networks, HPV vaccine uptake tumbled in a number of countries. In Japan, the government came under sufficient pressure th...

The recent emergence of Big Data in healthcare (including large linked data from electronic patient records (EPR) as well as streams of real-time geolocated health data collected by personal wearable devices, etc.) and the open data movement enabling sharing datasets are creating new challenges around ownership of personal data whilst at the same t...

Whilst it has long been known that anti-vaccination sentiment is widely disseminated through digital networks, 2019 has seen seismic shifts in the landscape. As viral videos originating on Youtube spread across social networks, HPV vaccine uptake tumbled in a number of countries. In Japan, the government came under sufficient pressure that they de-...

Technology enhanced education has been recently established as a new approach for all stages of education. However, among these new IT media it is computer games playing the central role in delivering education in particular to children and teenagers, however, real world sound evaluation is often given little attention. The EU funded e-Bug project...