Bioweapons and Epidemiology – Choose Anthrax or Flu Virus

For this part of the assignment, you will develop your weapon from the ground up. Discuss nearly all of the epidemiological criteria related to it, and justify and discuss why it is used and how effective it is. This agent could be a hybrid of other biological pathogens or an entirely new one. If the agent is newly created, there must be some basis and epidemiological support of a similar agent by which you can base your justification. In other words, it will be unrealistic to create an airborne virus that inoculates and kills within one hour. There must be a realistic exposure and incubation time and must be supported through current agent biology or biochemistry (for example, influenza exposure and incubation takes 1–4 days).

• Name of Agent: Explain why you chose the name. If it is a biological agent, be sure to provide a taxonomic name
• Etiology: This will talk about the genesis of your agent. Where was it discovered? How was it made? How long has it been around? Why was this agent created? What were the social and economic factors of your rogue nation that made Dr. Madness focus on this element of the agent? What are the environmental precursors to this agent? Discuss the interaction among agent, host, and environment.
• Identification: This will describe the basics of the agent. Is it a bacteria, virus, toxin, parasite, hybrid, or something else? Discuss how your agent presents within the human population. What are the symptoms in humans? What are the (zoonotic)  symptoms in animals? How does the disease progress? Are there stages? Discuss the various stages including length of infection, severity, and the like. What are the diagnostic indicators? How would a doctor be able to identify this agent in a clinic or emergency room?
• Laboratory Analysis: How will the agent be identified? Can it be grown in media? What type of laboratory methods can be used to identify the agent (microscopy, chromatography, PCR, and so on)?
• Occurrence: This is the epi: who, what, when, where, how, and why of the disease. Where does it happen? When can it be found? Who is most and least susceptible to the agent (risk factors). More exotic and hard to find agents are harder to prevent and control but are also more difficult to initiate an epidemic or pandemic, whereas more generalized and known agents may be easier to cure, but have a much wider swath of causing pandemics. How do socioeconomic factors foster or inhibit the spread of disease?
• Reservoir: What is the natural reservoir of the agent? Are there other organisms where this agent can reside without causing disease? Increasing the reservoir can enhance transmission but can also allow for easier identification and treatment in response to it.
• Mode of Transmission: Consider inhalation, absorption, digestion, contact, and so forth. If you use multiple modes, justify your selections.
• Incubation Period: Provide the range with an average (median) day of disease onset. Does the period change in different socioeconomic status identifiers (sex, age, race, creed, and so on)? Why or why not?
• Period of communicability: How long is a person with this agent contagious? Increasing this period also increases the opportunity for study and thus treatment and control.
• Susceptibility: Is the agent susceptible to reinfection of the same person? Allowing for this increases morbidity but usually mortality wanes in subsequent infections.

Taking on the role of Dr. Madness, generate your superweapon and describe the weapon using the above mentioned criteria. Remember, the focus in on creating something that becomes difficult to identify, monitor, or treat with prophylaxis. You will write out the proposal as Dr. Madness submitting this to his lead researcher to develop. This proposal should be approximately 6–8 pages in length, but some submissions may be longer.

Standards and Guidelines for Healthcare Facilities in Emergency

Search the Internet for information on standards and guidelines for healthcare facilities in emergency situations. You can search for accrediting agencies, emergency response plans, National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), or various real-life scenarios to aid you in answering the questions for the given scenario:

You are the administrator of a 100-bed nursing home with a special 25-bed Alzheimer’s care wing. You are told that your nursing home must be evacuated due to a possible hazardous material found close to the nursing home. As part of the standard operating procedure for the emergency management of the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), notification procedures are to be established, both internally and externally for communicating the need for evacuation.

Based on your understanding of the above topic, answer the following questions:

• What are the issues you may face in evacuating the residents? What specific needs of the Alzheimer’s patients would you need to keep in mind?
• Would your evacuation plan be different if you did not have the Alzheimer’s patients? Why or why not?
• What is the importance of ensuring there are procedures in place for communicating, both within the organization and with other entities involved in a disaster? Which internal and external entities would you notify in case of a disaster? Why?

Now, read the following statements and answer the related questions:

Decontamination of individuals exposed to a contaminant is a critical aspect of a disaster plan. However, there are no clear-cut guidelines for deciding how and when to perform the decontamination. Due to lack of any universally accepted standards related to management of specific disaster scenarios, agencies perform decontamination based on standards they have adopted. In the light of above situation, answer the following questions:

• What is decontamination? What, in your opinion, is the best way to decontaminate an individual? Why?
• When should the decontamination be done? Why?

Please write a response to each discussion.

Sperry 5.2

Changing criterion is an experimental design in which an initial baseline phase is followed by a series of treatment phases consisting of successive and gradual changing criteria for reinforcement or punishment. For example, a client expresses that they would like to stop smoking because it makes their home smell unpleasant. They state they are smoking a pack a day (baseline). My recommendation would to be cut one cigarette out every week till eventually they are no longer smoking at all. I also recommend that for each week they achieve the goal of cutting one cigarette that they deposit twenty dollars into savings for a new couch. Once, they are no longer smoking they would purchase a new couch.

Alternating treatment design is used when two or more treatments are being used on one dependent variable (Eford, 2015). For example, I want to know if my daughter gets better grades on her homework if she does it right after school, or if she does it immediately after her after-school snack. I alternate weeks for a whole semester and then with the teachers help compare her homework grades.

Multiple baseline design is two or more replicated simple phase changes, duplicated across two or more series categorized by time, setting, participants, or any combination (Eford, 2018). For example, a doctor wanted to know if weight loss support, such as Jenny Craig, would help obese patients to lose more weight over a course of a year. He has three groups with twenty people in each group. For the first 3 months there is no treatment. After the third month only the patients from group one start attending Jenny Craig meetings. After sixth month group two starts attending Jenny Craig meetings, so now both group one and two are attending meetings. After the ninth month group three starts attending Jenny Craig meetings, now all three groups are attending meetings. After the twelfth month the doctor would examine all the results gathered.

 Lendensmith 5.2

Multiple Baseline Design

Multiple baseline designs show the relationship between behavior and intervention by staggering the results of two or more baselines with a single intervention. This intervention allows the researcher not only to see how effective the treatment was for one area but can compare treatment effectiveness across baselines and treatment outcomes. These baselines can be done with multiple behaviors, subjects, or settings.

Child does not want to use the potty at home, school, or in public settings

Setting #1

A: Observed behavior is a three-year old child who does not want to use the potty by themselves anywhere; not at home, not at school, and not in public settings.

B: Intervention is to give the child an M&M when they use the potty at home.

A child starts to go in the potty when at home and is doing well with their reward system of a candy; however, still struggles at school and in public settings.

Setting #2

A: Observed behavior is a three-year old child who does not want to use the potty at school.

B: Intervention is to give the child an M&M when they use the potty at school.

Child continues the intervention at home and is now receiving the same intervention at school with a decrease in the amount of accidents in those two settings; however, the child is still having frequent accidents in public settings.

Setting #3

A: Observed behavior is a three-year old child who does not want to use the potty in a public setting.

B: Intervention is to give the child an M&M when they use the potty in a public setting.

The child continues their intervention at home and school and is, now, receiving the same intervention in public settings with a decrease in a number of accidents across the three settings. There are zero accidents at home, and minimal accidents in other settings. This may show that the parents are more consistent with the candy giving at home than the school or when the parents are out in public. It, also, shows that the intervention works in all settings for the child.

This Assignment is meant to build upon previous assignments from Units 2, 4 & 6 to complete a community health needs assessment in your area, using one of the health concern issues and population you identified.

 All assignments are attached below

1. A title page with the title of your project, your name, name of this course, and Kaplan University. Also a line with “date submitted”

2. Titles for each section (example: U.S. Census data on ____ county in the state of _____) Union county Ga

3. Include questions 1-5 from Unit 4 Assignment (describe your demographics for your

area).

4. Include population identified from Unit 2 Assignment.

5. Include assumptions analyzed from health assessment taken in Unit 6 Assignment.

6. Add the information you have discovered to this point in other projects and compile the

information about your Unit 4 chosen health concern of its relevance in your community (example; youth violence).

7. In using that health concern, describe how you will gather data for your health assessment (interview, focus groups, or whatever methods you feel are appropriate).

8. Using your research on your community up to this point, complete the health assessment information. Describe the results of your chosen method of gathering data (such as that you might gather through interviews or focus groups).

9. After you have completed the health assessment section, evaluate your information and look up a reliable example of a health promotion evaluation on the Internet.) Use the link below for a guidepost for your evaluation. A couple of good informational websites to help with evaluation are http://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/ and http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/downloads/cdc- evaluation-workbook-508.pdf

10. In Doc Sharing and below you will find worksheets to help you think about who your health evaluation will affect. This was taken from http://www.cdc.gov/getsmart/program- planner/Step1.pdf Complete and add this to your assignment. This portion should include a plan of action.

11. A reference page with your sources of information. You should use your textbook as one resource, and include at least 4 other sources.

How exactly you compile the material is up to you, but remember to give details and to submit material that is organized in thought, has a professional look, in a logical order, and is thorough. Check over your work before submitting to assure clarity, order, and accuracy. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation will also be graded. As long as you include the areas above, you may order the information as you wish as long as it “flows” and is rational. Each component of the assignment should be organized in thought, have a professional look, in a logical order, and be thorough.