Dataset Information

Monitoring of the Venezuelan exodus through Facebook's advertising platform.

ABSTRACT: Venezuela is going through the worst economical, political and social crisis in its modern history. Basic products like food or medicine are scarce and hyperinflation is combined with economic depression. This situation is creating an unprecedented refugee and migrant crisis in the region. Governments and international agencies have not been able to consistently leverage reliable information using traditional methods. Therefore, to organize and deploy any kind of humanitarian response, it is crucial to evaluate new methodologies to measure the number and location of Venezuelan refugees and migrants across Latin America. In this paper, we propose to use Facebook's advertising platform as an additional data source for monitoring the ongoing crisis. We estimate and validate national and sub-national numbers of refugees and migrants and break-down their socio-economic profiles to further understand the complexity of the phenomenon. Although limitations exist, we believe that the presented methodology can be of value for real-time assessment of refugee and migrant crises world-wide.

SUBMITTER: Palotti J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7034953 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Monitoring of the Venezuelan exodus through Facebook's advertising platform.

Palotti Joao J Adler Natalia N Morales-Guzman Alfredo A Villaveces Jeffrey J Sekara Vedran V Garcia Herranz Manuel M Al-Asad Musa M Weber Ingmar I

PloS one 20200221 2

Venezuela is going through the worst economical, political and social crisis in its modern history. Basic products like food or medicine are scarce and hyperinflation is combined with economic depression. This situation is creating an unprecedented refugee and migrant crisis in the region. Governments and international agencies have not been able to consistently leverage reliable information using traditional methods. Therefore, to organize and deploy any kind of humanitarian response, it is cru ...[more]

PMID: 32084178

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Project description:Zoonotic viruses circulate as swarms in animal reservoirs and can emerge into human populations, causing epidemics that adversely affect public health. Portable, safe, and effective vaccine platforms are needed in the context of these outbreak and emergence situations. In this work, we report the generation and characterization of an alphavirus replicon vaccine platform based on a non-select agent, attenuated Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus vaccine, strain 3526 (VRP 3526). Using both noroviruses and coronaviruses as model systems, we demonstrate the utility of the VRP 3526 platform in the generation of recombinant proteins, production of virus-like particles, and in vivo efficacy as a vaccine against emergent viruses. Importantly, packaging under biosafety level 2 (BSL2) conditions distinguishes VRP 3526 from previously reported alphavirus platforms and makes this approach accessible to the majority of laboratories around the world. In addition, improved outcomes in the vulnerable aged models as well as against heterologous challenge suggest improved efficacy compared to that of previously attenuated VRP approaches. Taking these results together, the VRP 3526 platform represents a safe and highly portable system that can be rapidly deployed under BSL2 conditions for generation of candidate vaccines against emerging microbial pathogens.IMPORTANCE While VEE virus replicon particles provide a robust, established platform for antigen expression and vaccination, its utility has been limited by the requirement for high-containment-level facilities for production and packaging. In this work, we utilize an attenuated vaccine strain capable of use at lower biocontainment level but retaining the capacity of the wild-type replicon particle. Importantly, the new replicon platform provides equal protection for aged mice and following heterologous challenge, which distinguishes it from other attenuated replicon platforms. Together, the new system represents a highly portable, safe system for use in the context of disease emergence.

Project description:BackgroundThe use of digital biomarkers through remote patient monitoring offers valuable and timely insights into a patient's condition, including aspects such as disease progression and treatment response. This serves as a complementary resource to traditional health care settings leveraging mobile technology to improve scale and lower latency, cost, and burden.ObjectiveSmartphones with embedded and connected sensors have immense potential for improving health care through various apps and mobile health (mHealth) platforms. This capability could enable the development of reliable digital biomarkers from long-term longitudinal data collected remotely from patients.MethodsWe built an open-source platform, RADAR-base, to support large-scale data collection in remote monitoring studies. RADAR-base is a modern remote data collection platform built around Confluent's Apache Kafka to support scalability, extensibility, security, privacy, and quality of data. It provides support for study design and setup and active (eg, patient-reported outcome measures) and passive (eg, phone sensors, wearable devices, and Internet of Things) remote data collection capabilities with feature generation (eg, behavioral, environmental, and physiological markers). The back end enables secure data transmission and scalable solutions for data storage, management, and data access.ResultsThe platform has been used to successfully collect longitudinal data for various cohorts in a number of disease areas including multiple sclerosis, depression, epilepsy, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer disease, autism, and lung diseases. Digital biomarkers developed through collected data are providing useful insights into different diseases.ConclusionsRADAR-base offers a contemporary, open-source solution driven by the community for remotely monitoring, collecting data, and digitally characterizing both physical and mental health conditions. Clinicians have the ability to enhance their insight through the use of digital biomarkers, enabling improved prevention, personalization, and early intervention in the context of disease management.

Dataset Information

Monitoring of the Venezuelan exodus through Facebook's advertising platform.

Publications

Monitoring of the Venezuelan exodus through Facebook's advertising platform.

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