James Orbinski
Biographic Data
| ID | 5410538 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Orbinski |
| GIVEN NAMES | James |
| FAMILY NAME | Orbinski |
| SIGNATURE | ORBINSKI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0186-1406 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Proof-of-concept evaluation at Cox’s Bazar of the Safe Water Optimization Tool
INTRODUCTION: Waterborne diseases are leading concerns in emergencies. Humanitarian guidelines stipulate universal water chlorination targets, but these fail to reliably protect water as postdistribution chlorine decay can leave water vulnerable to pathogenic recontamination. The Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT) models chlorine decay to generate context-specific chlorination targets that ensure water remains protected up to point-of-consumptio…
Risk factors associated with human Mpox infection
Vaccine Hesitancy Hotspots in Africa
Many social media users express concerns about vaccines and their side effects on Twitter. These concerns lead to a compromise of confidence which brings about vaccine hesitancy. In Africa, vaccine hesitancy is a major challenge faced by health policymakers in the fight against COVID-19. Given that most tweets are geotagged, clustering them according to their sentiments could help identify locations that may likely experience vaccine hesitancy fo…
The determinants of Covid-19 case reporting across Africa
Background: According to study on the under-estimation of COVID-19 cases in African countries, the average daily case reporting rate was only 5.37% in the initial phase of the outbreak when there was little or no control measures. In this work, we aimed to identify the determinants of the case reporting and classify the African countries using the case reporting rates and the significant determinants. Methods: We used the COVID-19 daily case repo…
Impact assessment of self-medication on Covid-19 prevalence in Gauteng, South Africa, using an age-structured disease transmission modelling framework
Studies aiming to understand the dynamics of diseases in areas prone to self-medication should account for this practice. There is a need for a campaign against COVID-19-related self-medication, specifically targeting the active population (ages 15-64)
Nowcasting unemployment rate during the Covid-19 pandemic using Twitter data
The global economy has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are experiencing a severe and destructive recession. A significant number of firms and businesses have gone bankrupt or been scaled down, and many individuals have lost their jobs. The main goal of this study is to support policy- and decision-makers with additional and real-time information about the labor market flow using Twitter data. We leverage the data to trace a…
Public sentiments toward Covid-19 vaccines in South African cities
Amidst the COVID-19 vaccination, Twitter is one of the most popular platforms for discussions about the COVID-19 vaccination. These types of discussions most times lead to a compromise of public confidence toward the vaccine. The text-based data generated by these discussions are used by researchers to extract topics and perform sentiment analysis at the provincial, country, or continent level without considering the local communities. The aim of…
Research note
There is a growing need to (1) better understand spaces in which human-animal interactions occur in ways that increase the risk of emerging infectious disease (EID), and (2) identify the opportunities for mitigating EID risk available to urban planning. Peri-urban areas—which are typically under-governed, undergoing significant environmental change and highly susceptible to zoonotic disease transfer--are especially important in this regard. In th…
Management of hospital beds and ventilators in the Gauteng province, South Africa, during the Covid-19 pandemic
We conducted an observational retrospective study on patients hospitalized with COVID-19, during March 05, 2020, to October 28, 2021, and developed an agent-based model to evaluate effectiveness of recommended healthcare resources (hospital beds and ventilators) management strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng, South Africa. We measured the effectiveness of these strategies by calculating the number of deaths prevented by implementin…
Governing Global Antimicrobial Resistance
Climate change‐triggered land degradation and planetary health
Land is a vital natural resource for human socio‐ecological wellbeing. Around the world, land is being degraded due to various natural and anthropogenic factors such as flooding, wind erosion, agriculture and human settlement, and anthropogenic climate change. While significant research has been conducted on the separate dyads of: (1) anthropogenic climate change and land degradation and (2) land degradation and health, limited consideration has …
Development of an Early Alert System for an Additional Wave of Covid-19 Cases Using a Recurrent Neural Network with Long Short-Term Memory
The impact of the still ongoing "Coronavirus Disease 2019" (COVID-19) pandemic has been and is still vast, affecting not only global human health and stretching healthcare facilities, but also profoundly disrupting societal and economic systems worldwide. The nature of the way the virus spreads causes cases to come in further recurring waves. This is due a complex array of biological, societal and environmental factors, including the novel nature…
Melting of Himalayan glaciers and planetary health
Lived experience of a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories, Canada
Indigenous Values and Health Systems Stewardship in Circumpolar Countries
Circumpolar regions, and the nations within which they reside, have recently gained international attention because of shared and pressing public policy issues such as climate change, resource development, endangered wildlife and sovereignty disputes. In a call for national and circumpolar action on shared areas of concern, the Arctic states health ministers recently met and signed a declaration that identified shared priorities for international…
A taxonomy for community-based care programs focused on HIV/Aids prevention, treatment, and care in resource-poor settings
Community-based care (CBC) can increase access to key services for people affected by HIV/AIDS through the mobilization of community interests and resources and their integration with formal health structures. Yet, the lack of a systematic framework for analysis of CBC focused on HIV/AIDS impedes our ability to understand and study CBC programs. We sought to develop taxonomy of CBC programs focused on HIV/AIDS in resource-limited settings in an e…
Corruption in the health care sector
BACKGROUND: Globally, injuries cause approximately as many deaths per year as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 90% of injury deaths occur in low- and middle- income countries. Given not all injuries kill, the disability burden, particularly from orthopaedic injuries, is much higher but is poorly measured at present. The orthopaedic services and orthopaedic medical devices needed to manage the injury burden are frequently unavailab…
Health and historical levels of freedom
BACKGROUND: The link between political freedom and health is unclear. We aimed to determine the association by exploring the relationship of historical and cumulative freedom levels with important health outcomes. METHODS: We obtained countrywide health indicators for life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality ratio, % low birth weight babies, Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth inequality) and various markers of freedom based on pol…
Users' guides to the medical literature
The accurate interpretation of mortality surveys in humanitarian crises is useful for both public health responses and security responses. Recent examples suggest that few medical personnel and researchers can accurately interpret the validity of a mortality survey in these settings. Using an example of a mortality survey from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we demonstrate important methodological considerations that readers should keep i…
Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America
CONTEXT: Adherence to antiretroviral therapy is a powerful predictor of survival for individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS. Concerns about incomplete adherence among patients living in poverty have been an important consideration in expanding the access to antiretroviral therapy in sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate estimates of antiretroviral therapy adherence in sub-Saharan Africa and North America. DATA SO…
Dangerous Journey
Objectives. Since the 1950 invasion of Tibet by China, Tibetan refugees have attempted to flee into Nepal over the Himalayan mountains. We documented the experiences of a group of refugees making this journey. Methods. We conducted semistructured interviews with 50 recent refugees at the Tibetan Refugee Transit Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal. Results. Participants ranged in age from 8 to 56 years, and 21 were female. The average length of their journ…
Global Health Watch Canada
Drug development for neglected diseases
Health Impact of Rights Violations in Conf1ict Zones and the Humanitarian Imperative
I will address the health impact of rights violations in conflict situations and the link between health and human rights. I will do this using Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) experience in Rwanda as a starting point, and I hope to draw generic principles from this case in order to look at the nature and mechanisms of the humanitarian imperative in today's global context, and what this could mean for further efforts to define humanitarianism in t…
Lived experience of a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories, Canada
Dangerous Journey
Objectives. Since the 1950 invasion of Tibet by China, Tibetan refugees have attempted to flee into Nepal over the Himalayan mountains. We documented the experiences of a group of refugees making this journey. Methods. We conducted semistructured interviews with 50 recent refugees at the Tibetan Refugee Transit Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal. Results. Participants ranged in age from 8 to 56 years, and 21 were female. The average length of their journ…
Governing Global Antimicrobial Resistance
Melting of Himalayan glaciers and planetary health
Health Impact of Rights Violations in Conf1ict Zones and the Humanitarian Imperative
I will address the health impact of rights violations in conflict situations and the link between health and human rights. I will do this using Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) experience in Rwanda as a starting point, and I hope to draw generic principles from this case in order to look at the nature and mechanisms of the humanitarian imperative in today's global context, and what this could mean for further efforts to define humanitarianism in t…
Drug development for neglected diseases
Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America
CONTEXT: Adherence to antiretroviral therapy is a powerful predictor of survival for individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS. Concerns about incomplete adherence among patients living in poverty have been an important consideration in expanding the access to antiretroviral therapy in sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate estimates of antiretroviral therapy adherence in sub-Saharan Africa and North America. DATA SO…
Dangerous Journey
Objectives. Since the 1950 invasion of Tibet by China, Tibetan refugees have attempted to flee into Nepal over the Himalayan mountains. We documented the experiences of a group of refugees making this journey. Methods. We conducted semistructured interviews with 50 recent refugees at the Tibetan Refugee Transit Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal. Results. Participants ranged in age from 8 to 56 years, and 21 were female. The average length of their journ…
Global Health Watch Canada
Users' guides to the medical literature
The accurate interpretation of mortality surveys in humanitarian crises is useful for both public health responses and security responses. Recent examples suggest that few medical personnel and researchers can accurately interpret the validity of a mortality survey in these settings. Using an example of a mortality survey from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we demonstrate important methodological considerations that readers should keep i…
Health and historical levels of freedom
BACKGROUND: The link between political freedom and health is unclear. We aimed to determine the association by exploring the relationship of historical and cumulative freedom levels with important health outcomes. METHODS: We obtained countrywide health indicators for life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality ratio, % low birth weight babies, Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth inequality) and various markers of freedom based on pol…
Corruption in the health care sector
BACKGROUND: Globally, injuries cause approximately as many deaths per year as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 90% of injury deaths occur in low- and middle- income countries. Given not all injuries kill, the disability burden, particularly from orthopaedic injuries, is much higher but is poorly measured at present. The orthopaedic services and orthopaedic medical devices needed to manage the injury burden are frequently unavailab…
A taxonomy for community-based care programs focused on HIV/Aids prevention, treatment, and care in resource-poor settings
Community-based care (CBC) can increase access to key services for people affected by HIV/AIDS through the mobilization of community interests and resources and their integration with formal health structures. Yet, the lack of a systematic framework for analysis of CBC focused on HIV/AIDS impedes our ability to understand and study CBC programs. We sought to develop taxonomy of CBC programs focused on HIV/AIDS in resource-limited settings in an e…
Indigenous Values and Health Systems Stewardship in Circumpolar Countries
Circumpolar regions, and the nations within which they reside, have recently gained international attention because of shared and pressing public policy issues such as climate change, resource development, endangered wildlife and sovereignty disputes. In a call for national and circumpolar action on shared areas of concern, the Arctic states health ministers recently met and signed a declaration that identified shared priorities for international…
Lived experience of a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories, Canada
Climate change‐triggered land degradation and planetary health
Land is a vital natural resource for human socio‐ecological wellbeing. Around the world, land is being degraded due to various natural and anthropogenic factors such as flooding, wind erosion, agriculture and human settlement, and anthropogenic climate change. While significant research has been conducted on the separate dyads of: (1) anthropogenic climate change and land degradation and (2) land degradation and health, limited consideration has …
Development of an Early Alert System for an Additional Wave of Covid-19 Cases Using a Recurrent Neural Network with Long Short-Term Memory
The impact of the still ongoing "Coronavirus Disease 2019" (COVID-19) pandemic has been and is still vast, affecting not only global human health and stretching healthcare facilities, but also profoundly disrupting societal and economic systems worldwide. The nature of the way the virus spreads causes cases to come in further recurring waves. This is due a complex array of biological, societal and environmental factors, including the novel nature…
Melting of Himalayan glaciers and planetary health
Nowcasting unemployment rate during the Covid-19 pandemic using Twitter data
The global economy has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are experiencing a severe and destructive recession. A significant number of firms and businesses have gone bankrupt or been scaled down, and many individuals have lost their jobs. The main goal of this study is to support policy- and decision-makers with additional and real-time information about the labor market flow using Twitter data. We leverage the data to trace a…
Public sentiments toward Covid-19 vaccines in South African cities
Amidst the COVID-19 vaccination, Twitter is one of the most popular platforms for discussions about the COVID-19 vaccination. These types of discussions most times lead to a compromise of public confidence toward the vaccine. The text-based data generated by these discussions are used by researchers to extract topics and perform sentiment analysis at the provincial, country, or continent level without considering the local communities. The aim of…
Research note
There is a growing need to (1) better understand spaces in which human-animal interactions occur in ways that increase the risk of emerging infectious disease (EID), and (2) identify the opportunities for mitigating EID risk available to urban planning. Peri-urban areas—which are typically under-governed, undergoing significant environmental change and highly susceptible to zoonotic disease transfer--are especially important in this regard. In th…
Management of hospital beds and ventilators in the Gauteng province, South Africa, during the Covid-19 pandemic
We conducted an observational retrospective study on patients hospitalized with COVID-19, during March 05, 2020, to October 28, 2021, and developed an agent-based model to evaluate effectiveness of recommended healthcare resources (hospital beds and ventilators) management strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng, South Africa. We measured the effectiveness of these strategies by calculating the number of deaths prevented by implementin…
Governing Global Antimicrobial Resistance
Vaccine Hesitancy Hotspots in Africa
Many social media users express concerns about vaccines and their side effects on Twitter. These concerns lead to a compromise of confidence which brings about vaccine hesitancy. In Africa, vaccine hesitancy is a major challenge faced by health policymakers in the fight against COVID-19. Given that most tweets are geotagged, clustering them according to their sentiments could help identify locations that may likely experience vaccine hesitancy fo…
The determinants of Covid-19 case reporting across Africa
Background: According to study on the under-estimation of COVID-19 cases in African countries, the average daily case reporting rate was only 5.37% in the initial phase of the outbreak when there was little or no control measures. In this work, we aimed to identify the determinants of the case reporting and classify the African countries using the case reporting rates and the significant determinants. Methods: We used the COVID-19 daily case repo…
Impact assessment of self-medication on Covid-19 prevalence in Gauteng, South Africa, using an age-structured disease transmission modelling framework
Studies aiming to understand the dynamics of diseases in areas prone to self-medication should account for this practice. There is a need for a campaign against COVID-19-related self-medication, specifically targeting the active population (ages 15-64)
Proof-of-concept evaluation at Cox’s Bazar of the Safe Water Optimization Tool
INTRODUCTION: Waterborne diseases are leading concerns in emergencies. Humanitarian guidelines stipulate universal water chlorination targets, but these fail to reliably protect water as postdistribution chlorine decay can leave water vulnerable to pathogenic recontamination. The Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT) models chlorine decay to generate context-specific chlorination targets that ensure water remains protected up to point-of-consumptio…
Risk factors associated with human Mpox infection
Medicine (14 works) · Geography (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (7 works) · Public health (7 works) · Environmental health (6 works) · Nursing (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works)