Ecohealth trainer manual

This training manual, and the Field Building Leadership Initiative (FBLI) of which it is one component, is part of a global initiative to build capacity in ecosystem approaches to health. Although several books and journals provide materials for learners about Ecohealth, the FBLI Ecohealth Trainer Manual is intended primarily for lecturers, teachers, and trainers. The focus here is on how to teach Ecohealth, providing teachers and trainers with a starting point from which to explore, improvise, adapt, and develop diverse educational Ecohealth learning experiences for and with their participants

Challenges in dengue research: A computational perspective

This is the final version of the article. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The dengue virus is now the most widespread arbovirus affecting human populations, causing significant economic and social impact in South America and South-East Asia. Increasing urbanization and globalization, coupled with insufficient resources for control, misguided policies or lack of political will, and expansion of its mosquito vectors are some of the reasons why interventions have so far failed to curb this major public health problem. Computational approaches have elucidated on dengue's population dynamics with the aim to provide not only a better understanding of the evolution and epidemiology of the virus but also robust intervention strategies. It is clear, however, that these have been insufficient to address key aspects of dengue's biology, many of which will play a crucial role for the success of future control programmes, including vaccination. Within a multiscale perspective on this biological system, with the aim of linking evolutionary, ecological and epidemiological thinking, as well as to expand on classic modelling assumptions, we here propose, discuss and exemplify a few major computational avenues—real-time computational analysis of genetic data, phylodynamic modelling frameworks, within-host model frameworks and GPU-accelerated computing. We argue that these emerging approaches should offer valuable research opportunities over the coming years, as previously applied and demonstrated in the context of other pathogens.JL, AW and SG received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 268904 - DIVERSITY. MR was supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. NRF by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society (grant number 204311/Z/16/Z). WT has received funding from a doctoral scholarship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Doctoral Training Partnership

Global Effect of Climate Change on Seasonal Cycles, Vector Population and Rising Challenges of Communicable Diseases: A Review

This article explains ongoing changes in global climate and their effect on the resurgence of vector and pathogen populations in various parts of the world. Today, major prevailing changes are the elevation of global temperature and accidental torrent rains, floods, droughts, and loss of productivity and food commodities. Due to the increase in water surface area and the longer presence of flood water, the breeding of insect vectors becomes very high; it is responsible for the emergence and re-emergence of so many communicable diseases. Due to the development of resistance to chemicals in insect pests, and pathogens and lack of control measures, communicable zoonotic diseases are remerging with high infectivity and mortality. This condition is becoming more alarming as the climate is favoring pathogen-host interactions and vector populations. Rapid changes seen in meteorology are promoting an unmanageable array of vector-borne infectious diseases, such as malaria, Japanese encephalitis, filarial, dengue, and leishmaniasis. Similarly, due to unhygienic conditions, poor sanitation, and infected ground and surface water outbreak of enteric infections such as cholera, vibriosis, and rotavirus is seen on the rise. In addition, parasitic infection ascariasis, fasciolosis, schistosomiasis, and dysentery cases are increasing. Today climate change is a major issue and challenge that needs timely quick solutions. Climate change is imposing non-adaptive forced human migration territorial conflicts, decreasing ecosystem productivity, disease outbreaks, and impelling unequal resource utilization. Rapid climate changes, parasites, pathogens, and vector populations are on the rise, which is making great threats to global health and the environment. This article highlighted the necessity to develop new strategies and control measures to cut down rising vector and pathogen populations in endemic areas. For finding quick solutions educational awareness, technology up-gradation, new vaccines, and safety measures have to be adopted to break the cycle of dreadful communicable diseases shortly

Physics of interdependent dynamical processes.

La emergencia de fenómenos colectivos a escalas macroscópicas no observados en escalas microscópicas cuestiona la validez de las teorías reduccionistas. Para explicar estos fenómenos se necesitan enfoques sistémicos que den cuenta de los patrones de interacción no triviales existentes entre los constituyentes de los sistemas sociales, biológicos o económicos, lo que ha dado lugar al nacimiento de la disciplina conocida como ciencia de los sistemas complejos. Una vía habitual para caracterizar los sistemas complejos ha sido la búsqueda de la conexión entre la estructura de interacciones y el comportamiento colectivo observado en sistemas reales mediante el estudio individual de dinámicas aisladas. No obstante, los sistemas complejos no son inmutables y se encuentran constantemente intercambiando información mediante estímulos internos y externos. Esta tesis se centra en la adaptación de modelos sobre diferentes dinámicas en el campo de los sistemas complejos para caracterizar el impacto de este flujo de información, ya sea entre escalas microscópicas y macroscópicas de un mismo sistema o mediante la existencia de interdependencias entre procesos dinámicos que se propagan de forma simultánea.La primera parte de la tesis aborda el estudio dinámicas acopladas en redes de contacto estáticas. Adaptando los modelos compartimentales introducidos en el siglo XX a la naturaleza de cada dinámica, caracterizamos cuatro problemas diferentes: la propagación de patógenos que interactúan, cuya coexistencia puede ser beneficiosa o perjudicial para su evolución, el control de brotes epidémicos con el uso del rastreo de contactos digital, la aparición de movimientos sociales desencadenados por pequeñas minorías sociales bien coordinadas y la competencia entre honestidad y la corrupción en las sociedades modernas. En todas estas dinámicas, encontramos que el flujo de información cambia las propiedades críticas del sistema así como algunas de las conclusiones extraídas sobre el papel de la estructura de contactos al estudiar cada dinámica de forma individual.La segunda parte de la tesis se centra en el impacto de la movilidad recurrente en la propagación de epidemias en entornos urbanos. Derivamos un modelo sencillo que permite incorporar fácilmente la distribución de la población en las ciudades reales y sus patrones habituales de desplazamiento sin ninguna pérdida de información. Demostramos que los efectos de las políticas de contención basadas en la reducción de la movilidad no son universales y dependen en gran medida de las características estructurales de las ciudades y los parámetros epidemiológicos del virus circulante en la población. En particular, descubrimos y caracterizamos un nuevo fenómeno, el detrimento epidémico, que refleja el efecto beneficioso de la movilidad en algunos escenarios para contener un brote epidémico. Por último, exploramos tres casos de estudio reales, mostrando que nuestro modelo permite capturar algunos de los mecanismos que han convertido a los núcleos urbanos en importantes focos de contagio en recientes epidemias y que el modelo desarrollado puede servir como base para desarrollar marcos teóricos más realistas que reproducen la evolución de distintas enfermedades como la COVID-19 o el dengue.<br /

Spatial Analysis of Mosquito-Borne Diseases in Europe: A Scoping Review

Mosquito-borne infections are increasing in endemic areas and previously unaffected regions. In 2020, the notification rate for Dengue was 0.5 cases per 100,000 population, and for Chikungunya <0.1/100,000. In 2019, the rate for Malaria was 1.3/100,000, and for West Nile Virus, 0.1/100,000. Spatial analysis is increasingly used in surveillance and epidemiological investigation, but reviews about their use in this research topic are scarce. We identify and describe the methodological approaches used to investigate the distribution and ecological determinants of mosquito-borne infections in Europe. Relevant literature was extracted from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science from inception until October 2021 and analysed according to PRISMA-ScR protocol. We identified 110 studies. Most used geographical correlation analysis (n = 50), mainly applying generalised linear models, and the remaining used spatial cluster detection (n = 30) and disease mapping (n = 30), mainly conducted using frequentist approaches. The most studied infections were Dengue (n = 32), Malaria (n = 26), Chikungunya (n = 26), and West Nile Virus (n = 24), and the most studied ecological determinants were temperature (n = 39), precipitation (n = 24), water bodies (n = 14), and vegetation (n = 11). Results from this review may support public health programs for mosquito-borne disease prevention and may help guide future research, as we recommended various good practices for spatial epidemiological studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Socio-Life Science and the COVID-19 Outbreak

This open access book presents the first step towards building socio-life science, a field of science investigating humans in such a way that both social and life-scientific factors are integrated. Because humans are both living and social creatures, a human action can never be understood fully without knowing both the biological traits of a person and the social scientific environments in which he exists. With this consideration, the editors of this book have initiated a research project promoting a deeper and more integrated understanding of human behavior and human health. This book aims to show what can, and could be, achieved through our interdisciplinary project. One important product is the newly formed three-party collaboration between Pasteur Institut, Kyoto University, and the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. Covering many different fields, including medicine, epidemiology, anthropology, economics, sociology, demography, geography, and policy, researchers in these institutes, and many others, present their studies on the COVID-19 pandemic. Although based on different methodologies, the studies show the importance of behavioral change and governmental policy in the fight against a huge pandemic. The book explains the unique genome cohort–panel data that the project builds to study social and life scientific aspects of humans

From the frontline: strengthening surveillance and response capacities of the rural workforce in the Asia-Pacific region. How can grass-roots implementation research help?

Health systems in the Asia-Pacific region are poorly prepared for pandemic threats, particularly in rural/provincial areas. Yet future emerging infectious diseases are highly likely to emerge in these rural/provincial areas, due to high levels of contact between animals and humans (domestically and through agricultural activities), over-stretched and under-resourced health systems, notably within the health workforce, and a diverse array of socio-cultural determinants of health. In order to optimally implement health security measures at the frontline of health services where the people are served, it is vital to build capacity at the local district and facility level to adapt national and global guidelines to local contexts, including health systems, and community and socio-cultural realities. During 2017/18 James Cook University (JCU) facilitated an implementation research training program (funded by Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) for rural/provincial and regional health and biosecurity workers and managers from Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. This training was designed so frontline health workers could learn research in their workplace, with no funding other than workplace resources, on topics relevant to health security in their local setting. The program, based upon the WHO-TDR Structured Operational Research and Training IniTiative (SORT-IT) consists of three blocks of teaching and a small, workplace-based research project. Over 50 projects by health workers including surveillance staff, laboratory managers, disease control officers, and border security staff included: analysis and mapping of surveillance data, infection control, IHR readiness, prevention/response and outbreak investigation. Policy briefs written by participants have informed local, provincial and national health managers, policymakers and development partners and provided on-the-ground recommendations for improved practice and training. These policy briefs reflected the socio-cultural, health system and disease-specific realities of each context. The information in the policy briefs can be used collectively to assess and strengthen health workforce capacity in rural/provincial areas. The capacity to use robust but simple research tools for formative and evaluative purposes provides sustainable capacity in the health system, particularly the rural health workforce. This capacity improves responses to infectious diseases threats and builds resilience into fragile health systems