Assessing the Congregate Disaster Shelter: Using Shelter Facility Assessment Data for Evaluating Potential Hazards to Occupants During Disasters.

Disaster shelter assessments are environmental health assessments conducted during disaster situations to evaluate the living environment of shelters for hygiene, sanitation, and safety conditions. We conducted a secondary data analysis of shelter assessment records available (n = 108) on ice storms, floods, and tornado events from 1 state jurisdiction. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze results of environmental health deficiencies found in the facilities. The greater numbers of environmental health deficiencies were associated with sanitation (26%), facility physical issues (19%), and food areas (17%). Most deficiencies were reported following ice storms, tornadoes, and flood events. This report describes the first analysis of environmental health deficiencies found in disaster shelters across a spectrum of disaster events. Although the number of records analyzed for this project was small and results may not be generalizable, this new insight into the living environment in shelter facilities offers the first analysis of deficiencies of the shelter operation and living environment that have great potential to affect the safety and health of shelter occupants.

Black Hispanic and Black non-Hispanic breast cancer survival data analysis with half-normal model application.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States. Differences in survival of breast cancer have been noted among racial and ethnic groups, but the reasons for these disparities remain unclear. This study presents the characteristics and the survival curve of two racial and ethnic groups and evaluates the effects of race on survival times by measuring the lifetime data-based half-normal model. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The distributions among racial and ethnic groups are compared using female breast cancer patients from nine states in the country all taken from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End RESULTS cancer registry. The main end points observed are: age at diagnosis, survival time in months, and marital status. The right skewed half-normal statistical probability model is used to show the differences in the survival times between black Hispanic (BH) and black non-Hispanic (BNH) female breast cancer patients. The Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard ratio are used to estimate and compare the relative risk of death in two minority groups, BH and BNH. RESULTS: A probability random sample method was used to select representative samples from BNH and BH female breast cancer patients, who were diagnosed during the years of 1973-2009 in the United States. The sample contained 1,000 BNH and 298 BH female breast cancer patients. The median age at diagnosis was 57.75 years among BNH and 54.11 years among BH. The results of the half-normal model showed that the survival times formed positive skewed models with higher variability in BNH compared with BH. The Kaplan-Meir estimate was used to plot the survival curves for cancer patients; this test was positively skewed. The Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard ratio for survival analysis showed that BNH had a significantly longer survival time as compared to BH which is consistent with the results of the half-normal model. CONCLUSIONS: The findings with the proposed model strategy will assist in the healthcare field to measure future outcomes for BH and BNH, given their past history and conditions. These findings may provide an enhanced and improved outlook for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients in the United States.