The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently awarded the U 2.2 million dollars to study and help prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola.
Because of the grant, the U and five other institutions will become Disease Prevention Epicenters, more than doubling the current number in the United States. This project will help initiate new ways of protecting the health of specialists and patients in hospitals and clinics.
The CDC began Prevention Epicenters in 1997 to help universities and academic institutions collaborate and “stay ahead of the germs,” which cost the U.S. healthcare industry billions of dollars each year, according to the CDC website.
David Toth, a mathematics and internal medicine professor, participates in this research and explained the significance of this grant for the U.
“This award will put the U in a position to be a national and regional leader in the field of infection prevention research and implementation,” Toth said.
The grant will be used from 2015-2018 to fund research at the Epicenter, named SPIRIT (Strategies to Prevent Infection and Reduce Inter-individual Transmission). Research will involve collaboration by epidemiologists, physicians, biomedical informaticists, psychologists and mathematicians.
Toth is part of the team modeling disease transmission in healthcare settings.
“This work promises to help us make real progress in learning the best ways to prevent dangerous infections from occurring,” Toth said.
The team developed computer simulations of infections and how they are transmitted. This rate has been studied mathematically for properties and characteristics of outbreaks. Previous analysis has allowed researchers to simulate these events and help healthcare professionals combat future spread of diseases.
Research will span four different studies and focus on stopping the spread of two general types of pathogens.
The first type of pathogens being studied are common ones such as influenza, C. difficile and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which are controllable but can be potentially fatal. The second focus is new pathogens, such as the spread of Ebola last year from Africa.
The four areas of study at the U’s SPIRIT Epicenter are: calculating what factors influence the rate of transmission, structuring communication between hospitals and doctors to help prevent spread of disease, forming mathematical models to discover what causes transmission of pathogens in these settings and developing new equipment, such as gowns, gloves and masks.
The U was chosen for this project because of its ability to integrate fields from biomedical and psychology to mathematics and population analytics.
“Our interdisciplinary approach promises to make real progress in this area of research,” Toth said.
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