Thursday, February 20, 2025

Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine prescriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic soared far above pre-pandemic levels

University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

U.S. outpatient prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin increased 2- to 10-fold above pre-pandemic rates, respectively, to treat COVID-19, despite strong evidence disproving their effectiveness, new UCLA-led research shows.

Nearly three million COVID-related prescriptions were issued in the three and a half years between January 30, 2020 and June 30, 2023, totaling $272 million in estimated spending. Usage was three times higher among adults aged 65 and older compared with those aged 18 to 64. Ivermectin use in particular was higher among people living in the most socially vulnerable neighborhoods and markedly higher in the Southern United States.

These findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs, may inform future policies aimed at reducing the harms caused by reliance on non-evidence-based treatments, especially among vulnerable communities.

“Our findings underscore the urgent need for policy reforms to combat misinformation and mistrust in scientific institutions. Eliminating undue industry influence in government, enhancing transparency around scientific uncertainty, and earmarking public funding for clinical trials of new drugs are good places to start,” said Dr. John Mafi, associate professor-in-residence in the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research and the study’s senior author.

The researchers used insurance claims listed in the Milliman MedInsight Emerging Experience Research Database for 8.1 million patients from across all 50 states to assess utilization and spending for the two medications from January 30, 2020 to June 30, 2023.

Among the findings were:

Nearly three million COVID-related prescriptions in outpatient settings during the study period, totaling $272 million.
Hydroxychloroquine use peaked in March 2020 to 133% of pre-pandemic rates
Ivermectin use surged in 2020 and throughout 2021, and by August 2021 peaked at more than 10 times higher than pre-pandemic rates
After FDA-authorized COVID-19 medications (e.g., Paxlovid) became available, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine use dropped by 93% in outpatient settings from March 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.
Of the estimated $272 million spent for COVID-19-related hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, approximately $18 million was spent after March 2022 when FDA-authorized COVID medications became available.
Limited availability of COVID-19 medications does not appear to explain the wide geographic variation in ivermectin prescribing, particularly in the South.

There are some limitations to the study. The cohort included what is called a “convenience sample,” meaning that the researchers used data from a group that was easy, or convenient, to sample rather than randomly chosen. While the findings may thus not be generalizable, prior work confirms that the demographics in the dataset the researchers used reflect the U.S. population as a whole. In addition, medications that patients obtained without insurance or a prescription were not included in the analysis; variations in the price of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine around the country may not have been captured in the researcher’s spending estimates for the drugs. Additionally, the researchers attributed the increase in the drugs’ usage rate to their utilization for COVID treatment although not all the claims in the data noted that.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to report on trends in ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine utilization and spending in U.S. outpatient settings throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic. This utilization represents wasteful spending and potentially avoidable harm. Our findings highlight the complex drivers of non-evidence based care, particularly in a time of uncertainty and distress. Multilevel efforts to enhance equitable, high-value care while minimizing non-evidence-based care are needed,” said Dr. Michelle Rockwell, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of family & community medicine at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.

Study co-authors included Sitaram Vangala and Dr. Katherine Kahn of UCLA; Jonathan Cantor and Cheryl Damberg of RAND Corporation; Michael Hadfield, Dale Skinner and Melody Craff of Milliman MedInsight, and Dr. A. Mark Fendrick of the University of Michigan.

This study was funded by the Commonwealth Fund, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (KL2TR003016 and UL1TR003015), and the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health (K76AG064392).

Journal

Health Affairs

DOI

10.1377/hlthaff.2024.00452

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Demographic Variation In US Outpatient Hydroxychloroquine And Ivermectin Use During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Article Publication Date

19-Feb-2025

Paxlovid’s impact on hospitalization and death in COVID-vaccinated older adults far weaker than previously thought

University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

Paxlovid does not significantly reduce COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality among vaccinated older adults, according to new UCLA-led research.

The study questions the assumption that Paxlovid’s effectiveness in reducing COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in unvaccinated adults also applies to vaccinated adults. Pfizer’s 2022 clinical trial found reduced COVID-19 hospitalization in unvaccinated middle-aged adults; while a subsequent 2024 clinical trial found no significant reduction in vaccinated middle-aged adults. Since most older Americans have already received two or more COVID-19 vaccines, Paxlovid’s effectiveness on vaccinated older adults has remained an important unanswered question.

“Since the strongest predictor of severe COVID-19 is advanced age, it has been crucial to obtain evidence on whether the results of the Pfizer trials generalized to older and vaccinated populations,” said Dr. John Mafi, an associate professor-in-residence of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s lead author.

“Our study effectively rules out the notion that Paxlovid causes large reductions in COVID-19 hospitalization in vaccinated older adults,” Mafi said. “While we cannot rule out a small reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization, our results indicate that at best, Paxlovid’s potential effect on COVID-19 hospitalization among vaccinated older adults is four times weaker than the effect originally reported in Pfizer’s 2022 clinical trial.”

The findings, to be published in the peer-reviewed JAMA, “are important because Pfizer’s 2022 clinical trial continues to serve as the foundation of evidence supporting Paxlovid’s perceived effectiveness, list price of about $1,650 per treatment course, and widespread global use,” Mafi said.

“Since the study found no significant effect on COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated older adults, our findings underscore the urgent need for further randomized-clinical trials investigating Paxlovid’s effects in higher-risk populations, such as older subgroups who are frail or immunosuppressed,” said Dr. Katherine Kahn, distinguished professor of medicine in the general internal medicine division and the study’s senior author.

To determine the association between Paxlovid and COVID-19-related hospitalizations, all-cause hospitalizations and all-cause mortality outcomes, the researchers exploited a natural experiment in Ontario, Canada. Between April 1 and November 30, 2022, Ontario implemented an age-restrictive policy on access to Paxlovid—reserving it for symptomatic, COVID-19-positive adults aged 70 years and older, unless they were immunocompromised or had other risk factors. The researchers used data from several Ontario health databases linked by ICES, the major steward of Ontario health data.

They compared outcomes of patients who were just below vs just above 70-years-old who were plausibly similar except for their exposure to Paxlovid. The researchers found that among 1.6 million highly vaccinated older Ontarians, the policy to restrict Paxlovid to those aged 70, increased the rate of Paxlovid prescriptions by 118% at age 70. This doubling in the prescription rate did not, however, translate into improved COVID-19-related hospitalization, all-cause hospitalization, or all-cause mortality outcomes.

By restricting Paxlovid access by age, the policy created a rare natural experiment that the study analyzed to evaluate Paxlovid’s impact on key health outcomes, effectively avoiding the common observational research pitfall known as unobserved confounding. “Unobserved confounding is a problem because the decision to use Paxlovid is not random, and the factors that influence its use are able to influence the risk of hospitalization or mortality,” said study co-author Sitaram Vangala, biostatistician in the Department of Medicine Statistics Core.

“Because access to Paxlovid in this study was in effect randomized for those close to the age 70 cutoff, our results are unlikely to reflect unobserved confounding,” Vangala said. “This may explain why our results align with the recent negative 2024 clinical trial among vaccinated middle-aged adults, but not with observational studies showing that Paxlovid is associated with large reductions in hospitalization and mortality in vaccinated older adults.”

The study is limited by a lack of individual patient-level data regarding symptoms, timing of previous COVID-19 vaccinations, receipt of Paxlovid, and medication adherence.

Additional co-authors Manying Cui and Artem Romanov of UCLA, and Dr. Moira Kapral and Dr. Peter Wu of the University of Toronto. Dr. Wu is affiliated with ICES.

The study was funded by the Commonwealth Fund and a National Institute on Aging Beeson Emerging Leaders in Aging Research Career Development Award (K76AG064392-01A1). This study was also supported by ICES, which is supported by an annual grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Long-Term Care (MLTC).

Journal

JAMA

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Hospitalizations and Mortality Among Older Adults With and Without Restricted Access to Nirmatrelvir-Ritonavir

Article Publication Date

20-Feb-2025

How mosquitos hear may inspire new ways to detect natural disasters

AND OTHER BAD 'VIBES'

Purdue University

image:
Purdue University professor Pablo Zavattieri holds a 3D-printed mosquito head. His team is recreating mosquito antennae to better study their sensitivity to vibrations, which may improve how natural disasters are monitored and detected.
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Credit: Purdue University photo/Drew Stone

One of nature’s most disliked creatures may very well unlock a breakthrough in disaster response.

A multidisciplinary Purdue University research team is recreating mosquito antennae to better study their sensitivity to vibrations. Should the research prove fruitful, it could lead to improvements in monitoring and detecting natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

Research groups under Purdue professors Pablo Zavattieri and Ximena Bernal conducted this work, which is published in the journal Acta Biomaterialia.

“We’re still in the early stages but we’re pretty optimistic that we’ll at least learn a great deal,” said Zavattieri, the Jerry M. and Lynda T. Engelhardt Professor of Civil Engineering in Purdue’s College of Engineering. “Taking inspiration from nature and using it to advance scientific research has been a core feature of engineering since the very beginning.”

Despite lacking traditional ears, mosquitoes rely on their antennae to navigate the auditory landscape, homing in on crucial sounds amid the background noise of their own wingbeats.

Through analysis of the mosquitoes’ antennal features — particularly the arrangement and morphology of sensory hairs — civil and construction engineering PhD candidate and team researcher Phani Saketh Dasika (MSCE ’23) said they have already gained profound insights into how these adaptations enhance the auditory sensitivity and selective response to environmental cues.

“Using advanced micro-CT imaging to create high-fidelity CAD models for finite element analysis, we found that the architectural features of mosquito antennae enable species- and sex-specific acoustic target detection, even amid nontarget signals like their own wingbeats,” Dasika said. “Our findings also suggest that mosquito antennae are capable of detecting a broader range of frequencies than previously thought, though not all of these may be actively utilized.”

The team’s findings have provided key information for determining if a mosquito’s antennae could inform the design of acoustic sensors.

“By modeling and contrasting the response of the antenna of species of mosquito using sound for different purposes, hearing mates or eavesdropping on frogs, we were able to tease apart features modulating hearing sensitivity and tuning,” said Bernal, a professor of biological sciences in Purdue’s College of Science. “Understanding how these structures work is the first step toward developing acoustic sensors inspired by their sensitive antennae.”

In terms of societal impact, insights from mosquito antennae could also inform the development of smart noise-canceling materials, Zavattieri said. These materials, potentially incorporating microfluidic channels or tunable metamaterials, could be used to create soundproofing panels for buildings, noise-canceling headphones or even acoustic cloaking devices.

“Imagine urban environments equipped with bio-inspired sensors, akin to ‘big ears,’ capable of discerning specific sounds amid the hustle and bustle of city life,” Zavattieri said. “In times of crisis — such as earthquakes or other disasters — these sensors become invaluable, swiftly detecting faint signals of distress and guiding rescue efforts to those in need.”

Zavattieri said the team is currently focused on recreating the antennae through 3D printing, using different materials and at varying sizes for frequency testing.

This research is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multi-University Research Initiative (AFOSR-FA9550-15-1-0009) and the National Science Foundation (IOS-2054636).

Writer: Drew Stone, director of marketing and communications, Purdue University Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering

This CT scan is a close-up of the structural features of a male mosquito’s antennae. Purdue University researchers are studying these features to see if they could inform the design of acoustic sensors.

Credit

Purdue University image/Phani Saketh Dasika

Studying mosquitos that eavesdrop on frogs

Purdue University professor Ximena Bernal studies how natural enemies shape animal communication systems, focusing on mosquitoes that eavesdrop on frogs.

Credit

Purdue University photo/Alisha Willett

Journal

Acta Biomaterialia

DOI

10.1016/j.actbio.2024.12.031

Article Title

Mechanistic insights into mosquito antennal architecture for auditory adaptations

Child ADHD risk linked to mother’s use of acetaminophen

The risk of developing ADHD was three times higher among children whose mothers used the pain-relief drug during pregnancy

University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine

Fetal acetaminophen exposure increases the likelihood that a child will develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a study published Feb. 6 in Nature Mental Health.

Prior research shows that upward of 70% of pregnant women use acetaminophen during pregnancy to control pain or reduce fever. The drug, which is the active ingredient of many pain-relief medications, is one of the few considered safe to take during pregnancy by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The new findings suggest, however, that doctors should reconsider prescribing medications with acetaminophen to mothers during pregnancy, the researchers said.

“Most of the prior studies asked women to self-report whether they had taken Tylenol or anything that contained acetaminophen,” said lead author Brennan Baker, a researcher at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Baker also works in the lab of Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a UW Medicine pediatrician.

“This medication was also approved decades ago, and may need reevaluation by the FDA,” said Sathyanarayana, the paper’s senior author. “Acetaminophen was never evaluated for fetal exposures in relations to long-term neurodevelopmental impacts.”

Acetaminophen is widely used during pregnancy, with 41–70% of pregnant individuals in the United States, Europe and Asia reporting use. Despite acetaminophen’s classification as low risk by regulatory agencies such as the FDA, accumulating evidence suggests a potential link between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes, including ADHD and ADHD autism spectrum disorder, the researchers noted.

This research tracked a cohort of 307 women from 2006 to 2011, who agreed to give blood samples during their pregnancy. The researchers tracked plasma biomarkers for acetaminophen in the samples.

The children born to these mothers were followed for 8 to 10 years. Among the women who did not use acetaminophen during pregnancy, the rate of ADHD was 9%, but for the women who used acetaminophen, the ADHD rate among their offspring was 18%.

Acetaminophen metabolites were detected in 20.2% of maternal plasma samples. Children whose mothers had these biomarkers present in their plasma had a 3.15 times higher likelihood of an ADHD diagnosis compared with those without detected exposure.

The association was stronger among daughters than sons, with the daughters of acetaminophen-exposed mothers showing a 6.16 times higher likelihood of ADHD while the association was weaker and nonsignificant in males. Researchers did not know why the association was stronger in females.

The investigators’ analysis used data from the Conditions Affecting Neurocognitive Development and Learning in Early Childhood (CANDLE) research cohort, which comprised 1,031 pregnant individuals in Memphis, Tenn., who were enrolled between 2006 and 2011. 

By happenstance, and not by design, the study cohort included only Black women, Baker said, adding that the results could be generalized to woman and children of any race or ethnicity.

Mothers often are advised to turn to acetaminophen, the primary agent in Tylenol, rather than ibuprofen, which is more likely to adversely affect the fetal kidney or heart, Baker said.

“(Acetaminophen) is really the only option to control fever or pain during pregnancy,” he said.

So, what is a mother to do?

“There is obviously more work that needs to be done in this area,” he said. “And we need to continually update our guidance.”

For example, he suggested, during prenatal visits, patients should discuss the dosage of a drug that contains acetaminophen or talk about what pain it is intended to help manage, he said. Another drug class, such as triptans, is safe and effective for managing migraines, he added.

More work needs to be done to find out if some people can tolerate acetaminophen during pregnancy with no ill effects on the fetus while others cannot, he said.

He added that research findings on the effects of the drug and its potential risks during pregnancy have not been consistent.

One study recently released in Sweden, showed no link between maternal acetaminophen use and ADHD in their children; while another study out of Norway, did in fact find a link. The study out of Sweden, however, relied on self-reported data, Baker noted.

“The study out of Sweden, however, reported that only 7% of pregnant individuals used acetaminophen,” Baker noted. “And that study could have underestimated the exposure.

“I think it goes back to how the data was collected,” he added. “The conflicting results means that more research is needed.”

Medical societies and the FDA should update guidance on the use of acetaminophen as safety data emerges, Sathyanarayana said.

Journal

Nature Mental Health

DOI

10.1038/s44220-025-00387-6

Method of Research

Case study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Associations of maternal blood biomarkers of prenatal APAP exposure with placental gene expression and child attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Article Publication Date

16-Feb-2025

New solution to help therapy ‘dropouts’

Out of 415 clinical trials, 83% reported positive effects from single-session interventions

Northwestern University

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The most common number of therapy sessions people access is one’

Common in other countries but not in the U.S., single-session interventions are designed to treat patients in just one meeting
Lab at Northwestern offers digital single-session interventions for youth in nine languages

CHICAGO --- Seeking mental health help is a significant step, but that first intake session can often feel more like paperwork than progress, and a significant proportion of people “drop out” or never return for a second visit, previous research has shown.

“The most common number of sessions people access is one,” said Jessica Schleider, associate professor of medical social sciences in the divisions of intervention science and implementation science. “If a therapist is spending their first session with somebody exclusively diagnosing them, they’ve lost the opportunity to take advantage of the first and potentially last encounter to actually do something that helps them.”

In a new, first-of-its-kind review led by Schleider, Northwestern Medicine investigators confirmed that single-session interventions (SSIs) can significantly improve mental health outcomes in both youth and adults. Common in other countries but not the U.S., an SSI is a structured program intentionally designed to provide meaningful support, guidance or treatment in just one meeting, recognizing that many patients may not return for a follow-up appointment.

“We’re often taught that therapy is supposed to be a journey, a lifelong process, and that ‘change never happens overnight,’” Schleider said. “While that’s often true, people can also have meaningful moments or turning points within one session.”

The scientists identified 24 systematic reviews of single-session mental health and behavioral health interventions, which included 415 clinical trials. Of the 24 systematic reviews identified, they found that 83% reported positive effects from SSIs for one or more of the following outcomes: anxiety, depression, externalizing problems, eating problems, substance use, and treatment engagement or uptake.

The findings were recently published in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.

Schleider’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at Northwestern offers four 15-minute digital SSIs available in nine languages that teach one skill or idea per session. Called Project Yes! these SSIs teach youth about self-compassion, the power to change, how to take action and how to cope with minority stress.

While Schleider said she doesn’t believe SSIs should replace other kinds of support that already exist in the mental health care ecosystem, she thinks SSIs — especially digital, self-guided ones — are poised to fill untouched gaps in the mental health care system that high-intensity treatments like weekly psychotherapy delivered by professionals were never built to address.

How prior work led to this umbrella review

A previous meta-analysis led by Schleider found that across 50 randomized-controlled trials evaluating 10,000 youth, SSIs significantly reduced mental health problems including depression and anxiety.

“This was really surprising to me, because I’m trained as a psychotherapist to give treatments that are weeks or months or even years long,” Schleider said. “But ever since that meta-analysis, I’ve been dead set on figuring out how we can optimize and make the most of the first, and often last, clinical encounter that someone might have access to.”

Encouraged by these findings, Schleider and her team aimed to determine if an SSI could not only reduce mental health problems, but also increase engagement in other types of mental health services.

To do this, they conducted an umbrella review, synthesizing all available research on SSIs for mental health problems and service engagement in both youth and adults.

Schleider said she hopes the findings will push the field of mental health forward in making SSIs a core part of mental health care and inform the creation and implementation of new public policy measures.

“One example of a policy direction we’re hoping to pursue is creating new reimbursement codes, so that single-session interventions can be sustainability offered by clinics that accept insurance so that they can more flexibly support people outside of this traditional workflow of clinical services,” Schleider said.

Co-authors include Juan Zapata, research assistant professor of medical social sciences in the division of intervention science, and Erica Szkody, research assistant professor of medical social sciences.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director (grant DP5OD02812); the National Institute of Mental Health (grant R43MH128075); the Upswing Fund for Adolescent Mental Health; the National Science Foundation (grant 2141710); the Health Research and Services Administration (grant U3NHP45406-01-00); the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology; Hopelab; the Child Mind Institute; Alongside; Kooth and the Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation.

Journal

Annual Review of Clinical Psychology

DOI

10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081423-025033

Article Title

Single-Session Interventions for Mental Health Problems and Service Engagement: Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

New AI system accurately maps urban green spaces, exposing environmental divides

Team led by NYU’s Rumi Chunara uses satellite imagery and deep learning to reveal stark disparities in Karachi's green spaces, offering cities better tools to track and plan vital cooling spaces

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

A research team led by Rumi Chunara - an NYU associate professor with appointments in both the Tandon School of Engineering and the School of Global Public Health – has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses satellite imagery to track urban green spaces more accurately than prior methods, critical to ensuring healthy cities.

To validate their approach, the researchers tested the system in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city where several team members are based. Karachi proved an ideal test case with its mix of dense urban areas and varying vegetation conditions.

Accepted for publication by the ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies, the team’s analysis exposed a stark environmental divide: some areas enjoy tree-lined streets while many neighborhoods have almost no vegetation at all.

Cities have long struggled to track their green spaces precisely, from parks to individual street trees, with traditional satellite analysis missing up to about 37% of urban vegetation.

As cities face climate change and rapid urbanization, especially in Asia and Africa, accurate measurement has become vital. Green spaces can help reduce urban temperatures, filter air pollution, and provide essential spaces for exercise and mental health.

But these benefits may be unequally distributed. Low-income areas often lack vegetation, making them hotter and more polluted than tree-lined wealthy neighborhoods.

The research team developed their solution by enhancing AI segmentation architectures, such as DeepLabV3+. Using high-resolution satellite imagery from Google Earth, they trained the system by augmenting their training data to include varied versions of green vegetation under different lighting and seasonal conditions - a process they call 'green augmentation.' This technique improved vegetation detection accuracy by 13.4% compared to existing AI methods - a significant advance in the field.

When measuring how often the system correctly identifies vegetation, it achieved 89.4% accuracy with 90.6% reliability, substantially better than traditional methods which only achieve 63.3% accuracy with 64.0% reliability.

"Previous methods relied on simple light wavelength measurements," said Chunara, who serves as the Director of the NYU Center for Health Data Science and is a member of NYU Tandon’s Visualization Imaging and Data Analysis Center (VIDA). "Our system learns to recognize more subtle patterns that distinguish trees from grass, even in challenging urban environments. This type of data is necessary for urban planners to identify neighborhoods that lack vegetation so they can develop new green spaces that will deliver the most benefits possible. Without accurate mapping, cities cannot address disparities effectively."

The Karachi analysis found the city averages just 4.17 square meters of green space per person, less than half the World Health Organization's (WHO’s) recommended minimum of 9 square meters per capita. The disparity within neighborhoods is dramatic: while some outlying union councils – Pakistan’s smallest local government body, a total of 173 were included in the study – have more than 80 square meters per person, five union councils have less than 0.1 square meters per capita.

The study revealed that areas with more paved roads – typically a marker of economic development – tend to have more trees and grass. More significantly, in eight different union councils studied, areas with more vegetation showed markedly lower surface temperatures, demonstrating green spaces' role in cooling cities.

Singapore offers a contrast, showing what's possible with deliberate planning. Despite having a similar population density to Karachi, it provides 9.9 square meters of green space per person, exceeding the WHO target.

The researchers have made their methodology public, though applying it to other cities would require retraining the system on local satellite imagery.

This study adds to Chunara’s body of work developing computational and statistical methods, including data mining and machine learning, to understand social determinants of health and health disparities. Prior studies include using social media posts to map neighborhood-level systemic racism and homophobia and assess their mental health impact, as well as analyzing electronic health records to understand telemedicine access disparities during COVID-19.

In addition to Chunara, the paper’s authors are Miao Zhang, a PhD candidate in NYU Tandon’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and VIDA; and Hajra Arshad, Manzar Abbas, Hamzah Jehanzeb, Izza Tahir, Javerya Hassan and Zainab Samad from The Aga Khan University's Department of Medicine in Karachi. Samad also holds an appointment in The Aga Khan University’s CITRIC Health Data Science Center.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.

Journal

ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies

DOI

10.1145/3716370

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Quantifying greenspace with satellite images in Karachi, Pakistan using a new data augmentation paradigm

Article Publication Date

18-Feb-2025