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Browsing by Author "Brown, Heidi E."

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    Summary results of the 2014-2015 DARPA Chikungunya challenge
    Del Valle, Sara Y.; McMahon, Benjamin H.; Asher, Jason; Hatchett, Richard; Lega, Joceline C.; Brown, Heidi E.; Leany, Mark E.; Pantazis, Yannis; Roberts, David J.; Moore, Sean; Peterson, A. Townsend; Escobar, Luis E.; Qiao, Huijie; Hengartner, Nicholas W.; Mukundan, Harshini (2018-05-30)
    Background: Emerging pathogens such as Zika, chikungunya, Ebola, and dengue viruses are serious threats to national and global health security. Accurate forecasts of emerging epidemics and their severity are critical to minimizing subsequent mortality, morbidity, and economic loss. The recent introduction of chikungunya and Zika virus to the Americas underscores the need for better methods for disease surveillance and forecasting. Methods: To explore the suitability of current approaches to forecasting emerging diseases, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the 2014–2015 DARPA Chikungunya Challenge to forecast the number of cases and spread of chikungunya disease in the Americas. Challenge participants (n=38 during final evaluation) provided predictions of chikungunya epidemics across the Americas for a six-month period, from September 1, 2014 to February 16, 2015, to be evaluated by comparison with incidence data reported to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). This manuscript presents an overview of the challenge and a summary of the approaches used by the winners. Results: Participant submissions were evaluated by a team of non-competing government subject matter experts based on numerical accuracy and methodology. Although this manuscript does not include in-depth analyses of the results, cursory analyses suggest that simpler models appear to outperform more complex approaches that included, for example, demographic information and transportation dynamics, due to the reporting biases, which can be implicitly captured in statistical models. Mosquito-dynamics, population specific information, and dengue-specific information correlated best with prediction accuracy. Conclusion: We conclude that with careful consideration and understanding of the relative advantages and disadvantages of particular methods, implementation of an effective prediction system is feasible. However, there is a need to improve the quality of the data in order to more accurately predict the course of epidemics.
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    Synergistic China-US Ecological Research is Essential for Global Emerging Infectious Disease Preparedness
    Smiley Evans, Tierra; Shi, Zhengli; Boots, Michael; Liu, Wenjun; Olival, Kevin J.; Xiao, Xiangming; VandeWoude, Sue; Brown, Heidi E.; Chen, Ji-Long; Civitello, David J.; Escobar, Luis E.; Grohn, Yrjo; Li, Hongying; Lips, Karen; Liu, Qiyoung; Lu, Jiahai; Martinez-Lopez, Beatriz; Shi, Jishu; Shi, Xiaolu; Xu, Biao; Yuan, Lihong; Zhu, Guoqiang; Getz, Wayne M. (Springer, 2020-02-03)
    The risk of a zoonotic pandemic disease threatens hundreds of millions of people. Emerging infectious diseases also threaten livestock and wildlife populations around the world and can lead to devastating economic damages. China and the USA—due to their unparalleled resources, widespread engagement in activities driving emerging infectious diseases and national as well as geopolitical imperatives to contribute to global health security—play an essential role in our understanding of pandemic threats. Critical to efforts to mitigate risk is building upon existing investments in global capacity to develop training and research focused on the ecological factors driving infectious disease spillover from animals to humans. International cooperation, particularly between China and the USA, is essential to fully engage the resources and scientific strengths necessary to add this ecological emphasis to the pandemic preparedness strategy. Here, we review the world’s current state of emerging infectious disease preparedness, the ecological and evolutionary knowledge needed to anticipate disease emergence, the roles that China and the USA currently play as sources and solutions to mitigating risk, and the next steps needed to better protect the global community from zoonotic disease.