Collaborative Research: Socio-economic and environmental drivers of emerging infectious diseases

新出现的传染病（如艾滋病、严重急性呼吸系统综合症、埃博拉病毒）在全球范围内威胁着人类健康，但人们对这些毁灭性疾病在人群中出现的过程并不十分了解。人口、社会经济和人为的土地利用变化导致了森林砍伐、城市化、农村人口变化、贸易和旅行全球化、气候变化和生物多样性丧失的全球格局。虽然从未量化，但这些变化及其结果已被假设与这些疾病的出现有关。在本提案中，我们概述了一个多学科研究计划，首次分析环境、人类和社会动态在疾病出现中的作用，并开发一个预测模型，以确定未来疾病出现的“热点”。我们将首先分析全球范围内疾病出现的时空格局。例如，我们会问，在过去几十年里，感染人类的传染病的数量是否有所增加？世界上某个特定地区是否比其他地区发生了更多的突发事件？第二，我们会量化新发传染病的人口、社会经济、环境和生态驱动因素吗？例如，全球人口密度、贫困、港口可及性、农业、宿主生物多样性、降水和温度的变化对疾病出现的可能性有什么影响？第三，我们将利用量化的驱动因素建立一个模型，预测未来可能发生传染病的地方，从而更好地了解全球人类健康的风险。该项目将设在哥伦比亚大学的两个国际公认的团体联系在一起：研究新发传染病生态学的保护医学联合会（CCM）和国际地球科学信息网络中心（CIESIN），该中心专门研究人口、社会经济和环境变化的全球趋势和模式。

Emerging infectious diseases (e.g. AIDS, SARS, Ebola) threaten human health on a global scale but the processes underlying these devastating disease emergences into human populations are not well understood. Demographic, socio-economic and anthropogenic land use change have led to a global pattern of deforestation, urbanization, rural population change, globalization of trade and travel, climate change and biodiversity loss. Although never quantified, these changes and their outcomes have been hypothesized to be linked to these disease emergences. In this proposal, we outline a multidisciplinary program of research to analyze for the first time the role that the environment and human and social dynamics play in disease emergence and to develop a predictive model that will identify 'hotspots' for future disease emergence. We will firstly analyze the spatial and temporal pattern of disease emergence on a global scale. For example, we ask whether the number of infectious diseases emerging into human populations has increased over the last few decades? Have more emergences occurred in one particular area of the world than others? Secondly, will we quantify the demographic, socio-economic, environmental and ecological drivers of emerging infectious disease? For example, what roles do changes in global human population density, poverty, accessibility to ports, agriculture, host biodiversity, precipitation and temperature have on the likelihood of a disease emerging? Thirdly, we will use the quantified drivers to build a model to predict where future emergences of infectious diseases might occur, leading to a better understanding of the risks to global human health. This project links two internationally-recognized groups based at Columbia University: the Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM), which studies the ecology of emerging infectious diseases, and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), which specializes in testing global trends and patterns in demography, socio-economic and environmental changes.