CNH2-L: Eco-social interactions influencing human exposure to ticks and the Lyme disease agent in anthropogenic landscapes

CNH2-L：影响人类在人类景观中接触蜱虫和莱姆病病原体的生态社会相互作用

• 批准号: 1924061
• 负责人: Maria Diuk-Wasser
• 金额: $ 141.42万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2024-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1924061&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CNH2; Eco; social; interactions; influencing

There are about 300,000 cases of Lyme disease every year in the United States. There is no Lyme disease vaccine available for humans, so the only prevention options are to reduce the number of ticks infected with the bacterium in the environment and to reduce human contact with ticks. To help develop these prevention methods, our study will simultaneously investigate how the ticks and the bacteria are dispersed and survive in the environment and where people are encountering the ticks, whether in their own yards or in the natural areas they visit. We will use state-of-the-art technology to monitor deer movement by GPS and human movement using a smartphone application. This will be the first study in the United States to focus on tick-borne diseases in urban green spaces, where dense human populations co-exist with urban wildlife that disperse ticks and the microorganisms they carry. A multidisciplinary team of ecologists, epidemiologists, social scientists, and economists was assembled to investigate this complex system. By engaging with the community in a ?citizen science? approach, the researchers will better understand people's knowledge, actions and motivations in relation to tick-borne diseases; educate people on proper protection methods; and provide recommendations to reduce the individual and community risk of Lyme disease. The project is led by two Hispanic females and will build the community of interdisciplinary scholars ready to tackle socioenvironmental systems research, including two postdoctoral researchers, one PhD student, and more than five Master's and undergraduate students. The research team hypothesizes that tick-borne diseases act as an integrated socioenvironmental system in which environmental- and human-associated drivers reciprocally influence each other. Central to the approach is the assessment of the relative contributions of ecological and human behavioral factors to increased Lyme disease incidence, with a focus on urban landscapes. Because of the aggregated nature of risk in urban areas, the study units will be 'ecological neighborhoods', each composed of an urban park on Staten Island, New York City and the houses around that park. The researchers will first study how the movement of deer and the abundance of other animals result in differential dispersal of ticks in parks across Staten Island. Then, they will explore how features of the backyards surrounding the parks influence their attractiveness to hosts carrying ticks and the survival of ticks after they drop off from hosts. A smartphone app will provide information on people's movement and exposure risk. The research team will also conduct surveys to assess people's knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding tick-borne diseases and identify risky behaviors and avoidance practices. By integrating these data to inform agent-based models, the team will identify optimum combinations of interventions at the level of the individual, community, and city. These 'integrated tick management' approaches will be provided to policy makers to better target public health interventions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在美国每年大约有30万例莱姆病。目前还没有可用于人类的莱姆病疫苗，因此唯一的预防选择是减少环境中感染该细菌的蜱虫数量，并减少人类与蜱虫的接触。为了帮助开发这些预防方法，我们的研究将同时调查蜱虫和细菌如何在环境中分散和生存，以及人们在哪里遇到蜱虫，无论是在他们自己的院子里还是在他们访问的自然区域。我们将使用最先进的技术，通过GPS监测鹿的运动，并使用智能手机应用程序监测人类的运动。这将是美国第一项关注城市绿色空间中蜱传疾病的研究，密集的人口与城市野生动物共存，这些野生动物传播蜱虫及其携带的微生物。一个由生态学家、流行病学家、社会科学家和经济学家组成的多学科小组被召集起来调查这个复杂的系统。通过与社区的互动，A？公民科学通过这种方法，研究人员将更好地了解人们对蜱传疾病的知识、行动和动机;教育人们正确的保护方法;并提供减少莱姆病个人和社区风险的建议。该项目由两名西班牙裔女性领导，将建立跨学科学者社区，准备解决社会环境系统研究，包括两名博士后研究人员，一名博士生和五名以上的硕士和本科生。研究小组假设，蜱传疾病作为一个综合的社会环境系统，其中环境和人类相关的驱动因素相互影响。该方法的核心是评估生态和人类行为因素对莱姆病发病率增加的相对贡献，重点是城市景观。由于城市地区风险的聚集性，研究单元将是“生态社区”，每个单元由纽约市史泰登岛的一个城市公园和该公园周围的房屋组成。研究人员将首先研究鹿的运动和其他动物的丰富性如何导致史泰登岛公园中蜱虫的差异传播。然后，他们将探索公园周围后院的特征如何影响它们对携带蜱虫的宿主的吸引力以及蜱虫从宿主身上脱落后的存活率。智能手机应用程序将提供有关人们运动和暴露风险的信息。研究小组还将进行调查，以评估人们对蜱传疾病的知识，态度和做法，并确定危险行为和避免行为。通过整合这些数据，为基于代理的模型提供信息，该团队将在个人，社区和城市层面确定干预措施的最佳组合。这些“综合蜱虫管理”方法将提供给政策制定者，以更好地针对公共卫生干预措施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

项目成果

Impact of Land Use Changes and Habitat Fragmentation on the Eco-epidemiology of Tick-Borne Diseases

• DOI: 10.1093/jme/tjaa209
• 发表时间: 2021-07-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY
• 影响因子: 2.1
• 作者: Diuk-Wasser, Maria A.;VanAcker, Meredith C.;Fernandez, Maria P.
• 通讯作者: Fernandez, Maria P.