Hurricane Ike Registry, HikeR, grows to 500

The USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the School of Rural Public Health has created a registry for those who have been affected by Hurricane Ike to share experiences and participate in activities and studies over the next five years.

The Hurricane Ike Registry, also called HikeR, stores information used by the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness to keep in contact with individuals who have opted to be participants in studies that will examine evacuation, sheltering and recovery from Hurricane Ike.

"We hope that through the numerous activities and studies we intend to conduct over the next five years that we are able to improve the response and recovery after hurricanes and other natural disasters," said USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness evaluation manager Jennifer Griffith.

The USA Center has partnered up with different communities and stakeholders to help prepare for natural disasters.

The registry was mainly created as a way to stay in touch with people years after the disaster has occurred, said Griffith.

The studies will be conducted through surveys, interviews and small group discussion.

The registry has grown substantially since its launch in January, said Griffith.

"We have over 500 people in the registry," Griffith said. "We are still recruiting and work primarily through identifying community groups and partners to help us spread the word".

The registry was created by the Knowledge Engineering Center at the School of Rural Public Health to replace the previous, manually done, registration process.

"The CDC designated us as one of their twenty seven Centers for Public Health preparedness," said Barbara Quiram, director of the Office of Special Programs and director of the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the School of Rural Public Health. "Of those 27 centers ours is the only one with a rural focus."

The registry was an extension of the goals that the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness has been implementing since its foundation in 2002, after the events of Sept. 11, said Quiram.

"They chose to go online to be able to track participants for specific studies, participants that were available, and it made it easier to organize the data for managing that flow of information," said Vince Riggins, Lead Software Applications Developer for the Knowledge Engineering Center.

In addition, HikeR allows individuals affected by the hurricane to register for themselves, so information entered is more likely to be accurate, said Riggins.

-Vicky Flores, The Battalion

New heart disease findings from J.M. Griffith and co-researchers published

According to recent research from the United States, "The authors performed a randomized controlled trial to test the effect of 2 different formats of risk reduction information when using conjoint analysis to elicit values about heart disease prevention. Participants ages 30 to 75 were enrolled and presented the same hypothetical scenario: a person with a 13% ten-year risk of heart disease."

"Participants then worked through a values elicitation exercise using conjoint analysis, making pairwise comparisons of hypothetical treatments that differed on 5 attributes. For the attribute ''ability to reduce heart attacks,'' participants were randomized to receive either absolute risk reduction (ARR) or relative risk reduction (RRR) information. Participants selected which attribute they felt was most important. Participants' responses to the pairwise comparisons were then used to generate their most important attribute using ordinary least squares regression. Outcomes included differences between groups in the proportion choosing and generating ability to reduce heart attacks as the most important attribute. In total, 113 participants completed the study: mean age was 51, 29% were male, 52% were white, and 42% were African American. The proportion who selected the ability to reduce heart attacks as the most important treatment attribute did not differ significantly (64% RRR; 53% ARR, Fisher's P = 0.26). For the conjoint-generated most important attribute, those receiving the RRR version were significantly more likely to generate ability to reduce heart attacks as the most important attribute (59% RRR; 35% ARR, Fisher's P = 0.01)," wrote J.M. Griffith and colleagues.

The researchers concluded: "Risk presentation format appears to affect the perceived value of different treatment attributes generated from conjoint analysis."

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