John S Brownstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 1733514 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John S Brownstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | John S |
| FAMILY NAME | Brownstein |
| SIGNATURE | BROWNSTEIN J S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston Children's Hospital |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8568-5317 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Parental Factors Associated With Measles–Mumps–Rubella Vaccination in US Children Younger Than 5 Years
Objectives. To determine the association between parental characteristics and MMR (measles–mumps– rubella) vaccination status of children in the United States. Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional study from July 2023 to April 2024 using a digital health survey via OutbreaksNearMe, weighted to target national population characteristics. We analyzed the responses of 19 892 parents of children younger than 5 years to examine the association betw…
Infectious disease surveillance needs for the United States
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to upgrade systems for infectious disease surveillance and forecasting and modeling of the spread of infection, both of which inform evidence-based public health guidance and policies. Here, we discuss requirements for an effective surveillance system to support decision making during a pandemic, drawing on the lessons of COVID-19 in the U.S., while looking to jurisdictions in the U.S. and beyond to …
Changes in Adult Obesity Trends in the US
This cross-sectional study examines US trends in adult obesity prevalence from 2013 to 2023
Identifying Covid-19 Vaccine Deserts and Ways to Reduce Them
A private–academic partnership built the Vaccine Equity Planner (VEP) to help decision-makers improve geographic access to COVID-19 vaccinations across the United States by identifying vaccine deserts and facilities that could fill those deserts. The VEP presented complex, updated data in an intuitive form during a rapidly changing pandemic situation. The persistence of vaccine deserts in every state as COVID-19 booster recommendations develop su…
Knowledge barriers in a national symptomatic-Covid-19 testing programme
Symptomatic testing programmes are crucial to the COVID-19 pandemic response. We sought to examine United Kingdom (UK) testing rates amongst individuals with test-qualifying symptoms, and factors associated with not testing. We analysed a cohort of untested symptomatic app users (N = 1,237), nested in the Zoe COVID Symptom Study (Zoe, N = 4,394,948); and symptomatic respondents who wanted, but did not have a test (N = 1,956), drawn from a Univers…
Exploring discussions of health and risk and public sentiment in Massachusetts during Covid-19 pandemic mandate implementation
As policies are adjusted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic according to public health best practices, there is a need to balance the importance of social distancing in preventing viral spread with the strain that these governmental public safety mandates put on public mental health. Thus, there is need for continuous observation of public sentiment and deliberation to inform further adaptation of mandated interventions. In this study, we explore h…
The Federal Menu Labeling Law and Twitter Discussions about Calories in the United States
Public awareness of calories in food sold in retail establishments is a primary objective of the menu labeling law. This study explores the extent to which we can use social media and internet search queries to understand whether the federal calorie labeling law increased awareness of calories. To evaluate the association of the federal menu labeling law with tweeting about calories we retrieved tweets that contained the term "calorie(s)" from th…
Association of “#covid19” Versus “#chinesevirus” With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter
Objectives. To examine the extent to which the phrases, “COVID-19” and “Chinese virus” were associated with anti-Asian sentiments. Methods. Data were collected from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, which included the hashtags “#covid19” or “#chinesevirus.” We analyzed tweets from March 9 to 23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and the week after President Donald J. Trump’s tweet with the phrase, “Chinese Virus.” Our analysis foc…
Factors Associated With US Adults’ Likelihood of Accepting Covid-19 Vaccination
Importance: The development of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine has progressed at unprecedented speed. Widespread public uptake of the vaccine is crucial to stem the pandemic. Objective: To examine the factors associated with survey participants' self-reported likelihood of selecting and receiving a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine. Design, Setting, and Participants: A survey study of a nonprobability convenience sample of 2000 recruite…
The effect of human mobility and control measures on the Covid-19 epidemic in China
Tracing infection from mobility data What sort of measures are required to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? The rich data from the Open COVID-19 Data Working Group include the dates when people first reported symptoms, not just a positive test date. Using these data and real-time travel data from the internet services company Baidu, Kraemer et al.…
Risk of Covid-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community
BACKGROUND: Data for front-line health-care workers and risk of COVID-19 are limited. We sought to assess risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers compared with the general community and the effect of personal protective equipment (PPE) on risk. METHODS: We did a prospective, observational cohort study in the UK and the USA of the general community, including front-line health-care workers, using self-reported data from the COVID Sym…
Mapping global variation in human mobility
The geographic variation of human movement is largely unknown, mainly due to a lack of accurate and scalable data. Here we describe global human mobility patterns, aggregated from over 300 million smartphone users. The data cover nearly all countries and 65% of Earth's populated surface, including cross-border movements and international migration. This scale and coverage enable us to develop a globally comprehensive human movement typology. We q…
The relationship between Jim Crow laws and social capital from 1997-2014
Evaluating the Implementation of a Twitter-Based Foodborne Illness Reporting Tool in the City of St. Louis Department of Health
Foodborne illness is a serious and preventable public health problem affecting 1 in 6 Americans with cost estimates over $50 billion annually. Local health departments license and inspect restaurants to ensure food safety and respond to reports of suspected foodborne illness. The City of St. Louis Department of Health adopted the HealthMap Foodborne Dashboard (Dashboard), a tool that monitors Twitter for tweets about food poisoning in a geographi…
Investigating inequities in hospital care among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals using social media
Online surveillance of media health event reporting in Nepal
BACKGROUND: Traditional media and the internet are crucial sources of health information. Media can significantly shape public opinion, knowledge and understanding of emerging and endemic health threats. As digital communication rapidly progresses, local access and dissemination of health information contribute significantly to global disease detection and reporting. METHODS: Health event reports in Nepal (October 2013-December 2014) were used to…
Use of a Digital Health Application for Influenza Surveillance in China
Objectives. To examine whether a commercial digital health application could support influenza surveillance in China. Methods. We retrieved data from the Thermia online and mobile educational tool, which allows parents to monitor their children’s fever and infectious febrile illnesses including influenza. We modeled monthly aggregated influenza-like illness case counts from Thermia users over time and compared them against influenza monthly case …
Internet-based media coverage on dengue in Sri Lanka between 2007 and 2015
BACKGROUND: Internet-based media coverage to explore the extent of awareness of a disease and perceived severity of an outbreak at a national level can be used for early outbreak detection. Dengue has emerged as a major public health problem in Sri Lanka since 2009. OBJECTIVE: To compare Internet references to dengue in Sri Lana with references to other diseases (malaria and influenza) in Sri Lanka and to compare Internet references to dengue in …
Searching the Web for Influenza Vaccines
Objectives. The goal of the HealthMap Vaccine Finder is to provide a free, comprehensive, online service where users can search for locations that offer immunizations. In this article, we describe the data and systems underlying the HealthMap Vaccine Finder (HVF) and summarize the project’s first year of operations. Methods. We collected data on vaccination services from a variety of providers for 2012–2013. Data are used to populate an online, p…
Flu Near You
Objectives. We summarized Flu Near You (FNY) data from the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 influenza seasons in the United States. Methods. FNY collects limited demographic characteristic information upon registration, and prompts users each Monday to report symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) experienced during the previous week. We calculated the descriptive statistics and rates of ILI for the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 seasons. We compared raw and n…
The global distribution and burden of dengue
Human vs. Animal Outbreaks of the 2009 Swine-Origin H1N1 Influenza A epidemic
Measuring the impact of health policies using Internet search patterns
These findings are consistent with published evidence that local restrictions on abortion lead individuals to seek abortion services outside of their area. Further validation of these methods has the potential to produce a timely, complementary data source for studying the effects of health policies
Strengthening the International Health Regulations
The International Health Regulations (2005) [IHR(2005)] represent a potentially revolutionary change in global health governance. The use of the regulations by the World Health Organization (WHO) to respond to the outbreak of pandemic influenza A 2009-H1N1 highlights the importance of the regulations to protecting global health security. As the 2009-H1N1 pandemic illustrated, the IHR(2005) have provided a more robust framework for responding to p…
Digital Disease Detection — Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance
The Internet has become a critical medium for clinicians, public health practitioners, and laypeople seeking health information. Data about diseases and outbreaks are disseminated not only through online announcements by government agencies but also through informal channels, ranging from press reports to blogs to chat rooms to analyses of Web searches (see Digital Resources for Disease Detection). Collectively, these sources provide a view of gl…
Association of “#covid19” Versus “#chinesevirus” With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter
Objectives. To examine the extent to which the phrases, “COVID-19” and “Chinese virus” were associated with anti-Asian sentiments. Methods. Data were collected from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, which included the hashtags “#covid19” or “#chinesevirus.” We analyzed tweets from March 9 to 23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and the week after President Donald J. Trump’s tweet with the phrase, “Chinese Virus.” Our analysis foc…
The relationship between Jim Crow laws and social capital from 1997-2014
Mapping global variation in human mobility
The geographic variation of human movement is largely unknown, mainly due to a lack of accurate and scalable data. Here we describe global human mobility patterns, aggregated from over 300 million smartphone users. The data cover nearly all countries and 65% of Earth's populated surface, including cross-border movements and international migration. This scale and coverage enable us to develop a globally comprehensive human movement typology. We q…
Investigating inequities in hospital care among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals using social media
Flu Near You
Objectives. We summarized Flu Near You (FNY) data from the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 influenza seasons in the United States. Methods. FNY collects limited demographic characteristic information upon registration, and prompts users each Monday to report symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) experienced during the previous week. We calculated the descriptive statistics and rates of ILI for the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 seasons. We compared raw and n…
Strengthening the International Health Regulations
The International Health Regulations (2005) [IHR(2005)] represent a potentially revolutionary change in global health governance. The use of the regulations by the World Health Organization (WHO) to respond to the outbreak of pandemic influenza A 2009-H1N1 highlights the importance of the regulations to protecting global health security. As the 2009-H1N1 pandemic illustrated, the IHR(2005) have provided a more robust framework for responding to p…
Searching the Web for Influenza Vaccines
Objectives. The goal of the HealthMap Vaccine Finder is to provide a free, comprehensive, online service where users can search for locations that offer immunizations. In this article, we describe the data and systems underlying the HealthMap Vaccine Finder (HVF) and summarize the project’s first year of operations. Methods. We collected data on vaccination services from a variety of providers for 2012–2013. Data are used to populate an online, p…
Effect of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Risk in North America
Digital Disease Detection — Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance
The Internet has become a critical medium for clinicians, public health practitioners, and laypeople seeking health information. Data about diseases and outbreaks are disseminated not only through online announcements by government agencies but also through informal channels, ranging from press reports to blogs to chat rooms to analyses of Web searches (see Digital Resources for Disease Detection). Collectively, these sources provide a view of gl…
Measuring the impact of health policies using Internet search patterns
These findings are consistent with published evidence that local restrictions on abortion lead individuals to seek abortion services outside of their area. Further validation of these methods has the potential to produce a timely, complementary data source for studying the effects of health policies
Strengthening the International Health Regulations
The International Health Regulations (2005) [IHR(2005)] represent a potentially revolutionary change in global health governance. The use of the regulations by the World Health Organization (WHO) to respond to the outbreak of pandemic influenza A 2009-H1N1 highlights the importance of the regulations to protecting global health security. As the 2009-H1N1 pandemic illustrated, the IHR(2005) have provided a more robust framework for responding to p…
Human vs. Animal Outbreaks of the 2009 Swine-Origin H1N1 Influenza A epidemic
The global distribution and burden of dengue
Searching the Web for Influenza Vaccines
Objectives. The goal of the HealthMap Vaccine Finder is to provide a free, comprehensive, online service where users can search for locations that offer immunizations. In this article, we describe the data and systems underlying the HealthMap Vaccine Finder (HVF) and summarize the project’s first year of operations. Methods. We collected data on vaccination services from a variety of providers for 2012–2013. Data are used to populate an online, p…
Flu Near You
Objectives. We summarized Flu Near You (FNY) data from the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 influenza seasons in the United States. Methods. FNY collects limited demographic characteristic information upon registration, and prompts users each Monday to report symptoms of influenza-like illness (ILI) experienced during the previous week. We calculated the descriptive statistics and rates of ILI for the 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 seasons. We compared raw and n…
Internet-based media coverage on dengue in Sri Lanka between 2007 and 2015
BACKGROUND: Internet-based media coverage to explore the extent of awareness of a disease and perceived severity of an outbreak at a national level can be used for early outbreak detection. Dengue has emerged as a major public health problem in Sri Lanka since 2009. OBJECTIVE: To compare Internet references to dengue in Sri Lana with references to other diseases (malaria and influenza) in Sri Lanka and to compare Internet references to dengue in …
Online surveillance of media health event reporting in Nepal
BACKGROUND: Traditional media and the internet are crucial sources of health information. Media can significantly shape public opinion, knowledge and understanding of emerging and endemic health threats. As digital communication rapidly progresses, local access and dissemination of health information contribute significantly to global disease detection and reporting. METHODS: Health event reports in Nepal (October 2013-December 2014) were used to…
Use of a Digital Health Application for Influenza Surveillance in China
Objectives. To examine whether a commercial digital health application could support influenza surveillance in China. Methods. We retrieved data from the Thermia online and mobile educational tool, which allows parents to monitor their children’s fever and infectious febrile illnesses including influenza. We modeled monthly aggregated influenza-like illness case counts from Thermia users over time and compared them against influenza monthly case …
Evaluating the Implementation of a Twitter-Based Foodborne Illness Reporting Tool in the City of St. Louis Department of Health
Foodborne illness is a serious and preventable public health problem affecting 1 in 6 Americans with cost estimates over $50 billion annually. Local health departments license and inspect restaurants to ensure food safety and respond to reports of suspected foodborne illness. The City of St. Louis Department of Health adopted the HealthMap Foodborne Dashboard (Dashboard), a tool that monitors Twitter for tweets about food poisoning in a geographi…
Investigating inequities in hospital care among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals using social media
Factors Associated With US Adults’ Likelihood of Accepting Covid-19 Vaccination
Importance: The development of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine has progressed at unprecedented speed. Widespread public uptake of the vaccine is crucial to stem the pandemic. Objective: To examine the factors associated with survey participants' self-reported likelihood of selecting and receiving a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine. Design, Setting, and Participants: A survey study of a nonprobability convenience sample of 2000 recruite…
The effect of human mobility and control measures on the Covid-19 epidemic in China
Tracing infection from mobility data What sort of measures are required to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? The rich data from the Open COVID-19 Data Working Group include the dates when people first reported symptoms, not just a positive test date. Using these data and real-time travel data from the internet services company Baidu, Kraemer et al.…
Risk of Covid-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community
BACKGROUND: Data for front-line health-care workers and risk of COVID-19 are limited. We sought to assess risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers compared with the general community and the effect of personal protective equipment (PPE) on risk. METHODS: We did a prospective, observational cohort study in the UK and the USA of the general community, including front-line health-care workers, using self-reported data from the COVID Sym…
Mapping global variation in human mobility
The geographic variation of human movement is largely unknown, mainly due to a lack of accurate and scalable data. Here we describe global human mobility patterns, aggregated from over 300 million smartphone users. The data cover nearly all countries and 65% of Earth's populated surface, including cross-border movements and international migration. This scale and coverage enable us to develop a globally comprehensive human movement typology. We q…
The relationship between Jim Crow laws and social capital from 1997-2014
Exploring discussions of health and risk and public sentiment in Massachusetts during Covid-19 pandemic mandate implementation
As policies are adjusted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic according to public health best practices, there is a need to balance the importance of social distancing in preventing viral spread with the strain that these governmental public safety mandates put on public mental health. Thus, there is need for continuous observation of public sentiment and deliberation to inform further adaptation of mandated interventions. In this study, we explore h…
The Federal Menu Labeling Law and Twitter Discussions about Calories in the United States
Public awareness of calories in food sold in retail establishments is a primary objective of the menu labeling law. This study explores the extent to which we can use social media and internet search queries to understand whether the federal calorie labeling law increased awareness of calories. To evaluate the association of the federal menu labeling law with tweeting about calories we retrieved tweets that contained the term "calorie(s)" from th…
Association of “#covid19” Versus “#chinesevirus” With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter
Objectives. To examine the extent to which the phrases, “COVID-19” and “Chinese virus” were associated with anti-Asian sentiments. Methods. Data were collected from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, which included the hashtags “#covid19” or “#chinesevirus.” We analyzed tweets from March 9 to 23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and the week after President Donald J. Trump’s tweet with the phrase, “Chinese Virus.” Our analysis foc…
Knowledge barriers in a national symptomatic-Covid-19 testing programme
Symptomatic testing programmes are crucial to the COVID-19 pandemic response. We sought to examine United Kingdom (UK) testing rates amongst individuals with test-qualifying symptoms, and factors associated with not testing. We analysed a cohort of untested symptomatic app users (N = 1,237), nested in the Zoe COVID Symptom Study (Zoe, N = 4,394,948); and symptomatic respondents who wanted, but did not have a test (N = 1,956), drawn from a Univers…
Identifying Covid-19 Vaccine Deserts and Ways to Reduce Them
A private–academic partnership built the Vaccine Equity Planner (VEP) to help decision-makers improve geographic access to COVID-19 vaccinations across the United States by identifying vaccine deserts and facilities that could fill those deserts. The VEP presented complex, updated data in an intuitive form during a rapidly changing pandemic situation. The persistence of vaccine deserts in every state as COVID-19 booster recommendations develop su…
Infectious disease surveillance needs for the United States
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to upgrade systems for infectious disease surveillance and forecasting and modeling of the spread of infection, both of which inform evidence-based public health guidance and policies. Here, we discuss requirements for an effective surveillance system to support decision making during a pandemic, drawing on the lessons of COVID-19 in the U.S., while looking to jurisdictions in the U.S. and beyond to …
Changes in Adult Obesity Trends in the US
This cross-sectional study examines US trends in adult obesity prevalence from 2013 to 2023
Medicine (23 works) · Environmental health (16 works) · Public health (13 works) · Disease (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Data-Driven Disease Surveillance (9 works) · Demography (9 works) · Virology (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works)