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City plays tribute to Hepatitis A victims in video which shows best use of GPS technology to save lives
Toronto’s creative campaign shows it’s heroic to get vaccinated
To stop the spread of hepatitis A, a big needle drop – and lots of prevention.
Last month, an outbreak of hepatitis A was reported in Toronto’s west end and the area known as the Dog Pound.
People who use public bathrooms are at risk for hepatitis A – a bacterium transmitted by exposure to an infected person, usually through the use of contaminated fecal matter.
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The city rolled out a campaign featuring a yellow (usually seen in blood donation sites) doorstop in which 1,500 needles were displayed in pairs.
Advertising Age reports that Toronto’s public health authority has sent 6,500 flyers to public area, promoted Hepatitis A vaccination and restocked its public cleaning stations with needles and other prevention supplies.
Part of a wider campaign to reduce the spread of hepatitis A and other communicable diseases through virus spread, the overdose prevention strategy has made great strides in two years – although a Toronto public health agency (SPHA) is looking to eliminate hepatitis A and hepatitis B by 2020.
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The city has a big needle drop program, but the most advanced and blood-tested tool on hand is its medical and geographic data, which can be used to track outbreaks.
Led by Bev Brown, who focuses on epidemiology, the project capitalised on a 2015 decision to bring its geographic response system (GRS) data to Google Maps.
“We had access to some of the most effective weather data [in Canada] plus data on disease outbreaks,” she said.
A first year experiment – analyzing data from the original assignment – showed a reduced risk of life-threatening hepatitis A infections in areas where people go to use common safe injection sites.
Brown’s team used Google Street View, where she mapped out places where needles were stashed in support of the needle exchange program in the Dog Pound.
“I can map the locations of all these needles – even the small ones where people put them in bushes so their families aren’t thinking about them – and maybe it prevents someone from using a drug that can carry hepatitis A,” she said.
But Brown made a mistake, which led to a hitch that gummed up the ballast for two years.
In 2016, the city became the first municipality in Canada to take advantage of Google Street View through its Street Sense program. However, after more than 30,000 searches, Brown noticed a blip. “People were going to the Wrong Track. They had clicked on the wrong needle drop site and were getting a busy signal or a ‘not available’ message,” she said.
“One of the primary tenets of our program is we want to give our users the best experience possible. We are analyzing why these locations have not been working. I can’t let that get in the way of all the other great work that we’re doing to combat hepatitis A.”
The Vancouver-based company Scio Metrics, which raised $1.2m this year for the humanitarian service GPS Platform, provided Google with the GPS data for Toronto’s GRS application, and the community participation group, 311 Toronto was instrumental in making the entire campaign happen.
Beav Brown, director of epidemiology at the Toronto Public Health Authority. Photograph: Greg Williams
Brown is now analyzing the data for errors that could help the city and its partners better track and respond to outbreaks.
“It’s been a fantastic tool to help us find contaminated areas,” she said. “All of this was done in just a few months to catch up to where we thought we’d be by this point.”
Pete Scott, the GRS program manager, says the new tools have helped reduce the amount of funding that must be spent on it. “All of this could be done using last year’s funding,” he said.
• This article was amended on 4 November 2017 to clarify the role played by 311 Toronto.