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

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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.