Leveraging environmental drivers to predict vector-borne disease transmission

Stanford University, Stanford CA

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Abstract

Project Summary The overarching goal of my research program is to understand the dynamics of ecological systems and their influence on diseases in humans, plants, and animals to improve the health and wellbeing of humans and ecosystems. Vector-borne diseases are a growing public health problem that are intimately linked to climate, land use, and other environmental changes. Our current and future research is focused on understanding changes in vector-borne disease burdens in response to global change. Predictive approaches that mechanistically link environmental change to disease dynamics are necessary to disrupt transmission and to sustainably control outbreaks. Research in my lab uses a diverse quantitative toolkit and emerging sources of data to predict disease dynamics, uncover environmental mechanisms for transmission, attribute impacts of global change, and forecast changes in the landscape of infectious disease. In the next five years, we will build on our understanding of climatic drivers of vector-borne diseases to study the impacts of climate extremes, the limitations on and drivers of vector species range expansions, and the role of adaptive (co)evolution. We will disentangle the multidimensional effects of land use change on vector-borne diseases by combining hypothesis testing, novel causal inference methods, and geospatial datasets to uncover the land use niches for disease transmission. Our focal systems include dengue, malaria, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, yellow fever, Lyme disease, and their mosquito, sandfly, and tick vectors. Our work combines publicly available environmental and epidemiological data and partner-engaged research with vector control and health agencies. We apply mechanistic mathematical models, machine learning, econometric causal inference, empirical dynamic modeling methods, and other quantitative tools. We also conduct primary empirical research on mosquito and parasite thermal adaptation on the Western treehole mosquito and its ciliate parasite. We are now witnessing unprecedented impacts of anthropogenic climate and land use change alongside expansions and resurgences of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. At the same time, expanding technological and computational capacity are accelerating the pace of infectious disease dynamics research. This is an exciting and critical time to study linkages between human and planetary health, and my research program is at the forefront of this emerging field. By discovering mechanistic linkages between environmental change and disease transmission, we can design more proactive control measures, develop policy that benefits people and the environment, and prevent and reverse the worst impacts of anthropogenic change on health and their disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations.