P1-S4.14 Does core theory apply in rural environments?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background The expansion of core theory to include geographically defined core areas of elevated infection has been based primarily on spatial investigations into sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in large urban areas. It is uncertain whether core theory is applicable for rural environments. Our objective was to evaluate the concept of geographical core areas for gonorrhoea and syphilis in North Carolina, a rural state with urban pockets. Methods We analysed geomasked gonorrhoea and syphilis cases reported to the North Carolina State Health Department's sexually transmitted disease surveillance program from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2007 for gonorrhoea and from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2007 for syphilis. Incident gonorrhoea and syphilis rates were estimated using census tract level population estimates for the total North Carolina population from the US census. Rates were mapped by census tract and quarter. Rurality was measured at the census tract using two different definitions: percent rural and rural-urban commuting area (RUCA). RUCAs were used to classify North Carolina census tracts into rural, small town, micropolitan, or urban. SatScan was used to identify spatiotemporal clusters of significantly elevated rates of infection. Clusters were classified as outbreak or core based on duration. Clusters lasting the entire study period were considered potential core areas, while clusters of shorter duration were considered outbreak areas. Clusters were overlaid on maps of rurality and qualitatively assessed for correlation. Results On average, gonorrhoea rates are low in the western mountains and higher in the eastern coastal part of the state. Most of the clusters were located in urban RUCAs or very low percent rural. Clusters for rural and small town RUCAs were of short duration and usually covered several census tracts and sometimes more than one county. Consequently, they were considered outbreak areas rather than core areas. Similar results were found for syphilis. Conclusions We found that core areas of elevated STIs were limited to the urban centers in rural environments. Significant clusters of infection in rural environments appear to be due to outbreaks. Rural environments may have core areas but not enough infection to sustain ongoing transmission. Bridge contacts may be more important for STI transmission in rural environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".