JMIR Public Health and Surveillance

Hypertension, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease, is a significant public health challenge, with urban India reporting prevalence rates up to 40%. Excessive salt intake, averaging 8 to 11 g/day in India, far exceeds the World Health Organization–recommended limit of 5 g/day and is a key modifiable risk factor. While 24-hour urine collection is the gold standard for measuring 24-hour urinary excreted salt levels, its practicality in large-scale studies is limited, necessitating alternative methods such as spot urine sampling and dietary recall.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading causes of death from a single infectious disease worldwide. In Thailand, persistent gaps in early detection and access to TB care remain important public health challenges, particularly among populations in rural and remote areas.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b, a globally predominant strain, was introduced into poultry in the United States in 2022 via spillover from wild birds, and has since been regularly reported, posing ongoing risks to animal and human health. In 2024, the United States reported the first known HPAI A(H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b infection in dairy cattle, rapidly evolving into a multispecies outbreak among cattle and poultry, with spillover into humans. Publicly available data remained siloed and fragmented, hindering timely response. Innovative multimodal surveillance methods can enhance situational awareness through comprehensive, standardized data collection, integration, and visualization.

The National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is an evidence-based intervention proven to delay or prevent progression to type 2 diabetes, yet most at-risk people do not enroll. In Hawai’i, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) and Filipino adults experience disproportionately high rates of prediabetes and diabetes but have low DPP enrollment. From July to October 2024, the Hawai’i State Department of Health launched Beat Diabetes, a statewide media campaign encouraging DPP enrollment among at-risk adults, with a focus on NHOPI and Filipino communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the potential role of digital health tools in enhancing pandemic preparedness and response. These tools became essential, supporting not only health care delivery but also decision-making, communication, case identification, contact tracing, surveillance, vaccination rollout, and intervention evaluation. The interest in applying digital health tools to pandemic preparedness and response motivated conversations about digital epidemiology—a field of study that aims to provide insight into health and disease determinants by leveraging diverse digital data sources. In a globalized world, effective preparedness and response to pandemics require coordinated global action.

Unlicensed medical practices (UMPs) pose a substantial threat to patient safety and public health, but their clandestine nature makes them difficult to monitor through conventional surveillance systems. Legal epidemiology offers a framework for using judicial data to study hidden health-related misconduct, and machine learning (ML) may help convert unstructured legal texts into analyzable public health information.

By 2015, the emergence and dissemination of multidrug-resistant in the Greater Mekong Subregion threatened regional and global malaria control efforts. In response, Greater Mekong Subregion countries committed to malaria elimination by 2030, with strengthened surveillance as a strategic pillar. In 2017, Cambodia introduced an elimination-oriented digital Malaria Information System (MIS). Its health center app enables real-time, geo-located, case-based malaria reporting across primary health centers, and is fully integrated with the MIS.

Although motorcycle-based food delivery workers face a significant risk of accidents, previous research has primarily focused on traffic accidents, neglecting the multidimensional nature of safety, which includes perceived accident risk, near-miss experiences, and accident-related anxiety.

Aortic pathologies in general and acute aortic syndromes in particular are persistent public health concerns worldwide. Continuous efforts to monitor and update incidence rates are necessary for guided public health interventions and health care policy adaptation.

Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at high risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, and HPV testing can facilitate early detection and timely intervention. However, evidence on the willingness to undergo different HPV testing modalities among MSM remains limited. The information-motivation-behavioral skills model provides a theoretical framework for understanding factors associated with the willingness to undergo HPV testing.

China accounts for more than 40% of new global cases and deaths from esophageal cancer, and has a relatively high rate of past-year alcohol use, reaching up to 27%. The incidence and risk factors of esophageal cancer exhibit marked age-related variation; however, the impact of alcohol consumption on the risk of esophageal cancer across different age groups remains poorly understood.