Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human mobility and infectious disease transmission in the context of market integration

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The transition from subsistence to market-based livelihoods (market integration) is quickly transforming human health. Much of the research on market integration and health has emphasized the shift away from infectious diseases to chronic, non-communicable ones. However, rapid changes in land use that co-occur with shifts to commercial agriculture position rural/low-resource communities at the frontlines of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. It is thus vital to build knowledge of how economic markets connect rural communities with more central towns, potentially facilitating the spread of a local outbreak to a regional (or even global) scale. This doctoral dissertation research contributes to fundamental knowledge on the interactions between market integration, human movement patterns, and infectious disease transmission in local and regional contexts. This research can be shared with key stakeholders and public health decision makers and help build local research capacity through the training of students in network analysis methods. Human movement patterns are complex among the rural/low-resource settings where novel infectious diseases are most likely to emerge. This project uses leading-edge computational and serological methods to develop a richer understanding of how social change transforms disease ecology. The investigators use detailed survey data on individual-level travel behavior to construct a regional network of villages and towns connected by mobility patterns. This network provides a foundation for conducting computer simulations to understand how changes in market-related activities affect the regional spread of infectious diseases. The investigators also use serological assays to quantify individual-level exposure to a diverse range of viruses, which provides insight into how market integration influences the types of viruses people are exposed to and how they spread among communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.