Combating Infectious Diseases: Eco-Epidemiology, Disease Mapping, and Travel Medicine (2016)
Abstract:
Infectious disease emergence and outbreaks are posing increasing threats to global health. Events are increasing in frequency, magnitude, geographical scale, and speed of global spread. Outbreaks are strongly driven by environmental change including population growth, urbanisation, climate change, and environmental degradation. Travellers also play a major role in transporting pathogens around the world, and have contributed to many global disease outbreaks. Infectious disease ecology is highly complex, and infectious disease eco-epidemiology research has been rapidly gaining momentum globally. A critical challenge is to develop tools that can accurately identify causes, causal pathways, risk factors, triggers, and drivers of outbreaks, and for such tools to improve public health intelligence and be rapidly applied during outbreak response. My research program will consist of two interrelated themes: infectious disease eco-epidemiology and travel medicine. My main project aims to improve understanding of the environmental and socio-demographic drivers of infectious disease emergence and outbreaks. The project is of utmost SIGNIFICANCE because it aims to improve public health intelligence for a serious global health threat. The research is TIMELY considering increasing global epidemics such as Ebola and SARS. The INNOVATION lies in adopting cutting-edge modelling strategies (including geospatial Bayesian networks) to incorporate multiple layers of information to understand causality, and thereby enhance public health intelligence and decision-making for disease control. Project OUTPUTS will include interactive and dynamic tools and predictive risk maps to more effectively combat infectious disease outbreaks. Tools will be applied in the real world of disease control in collaboration with the WHO Emerging Diseases Surveillance & Response Unit. The novel modelling strategies could also produce paradigm shifts for understanding causal pathways in disease transmi...
