Assessing Community-Based Tick Control for LD Mitigation

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HealthyPeople2010 established a goal of reducing Lyme diseaseto 9.7 cases per 100,000 residents within the next six years. Sincet ick abundance is positively correlated with disease incidence in Rhode Island,where statewide disease incidence rates average>51 per 100,000 residents, there clearly is an immediate need for effective disease mitigation measures including tick reduction interventions. Numerous tick control strategies for disease prevention have been developed ;many have been evaluated, at least to some degree but few have been implemented widely or in a coordinated manner. Moreover, there may be strong experimental evidence indicating the effectiveness of a particular intervention, but its efficacy under actual application circumstances may be limited or unknown. To date, there have been nostudies that measure actual effectiveness in reducing Lyme disease incidence at the population level. It is our hypothesis that for interventions to be effective, it wil lbe necessary to increase public knowledge and proper implementation of tick control strategies, or use strategies that require less participation of the public at risk. To evaluate this, we propose to: 1) assess and evaluate tick control attitudes and practices before and after implementing an aggressive, interactive community outreach program for tick control; 2) implement a community-wide 4-poster tick control program and evaluate its effectiveness for disease prevention; and 3) assist 4-poster technology transfer by developing a comprehensive manual detailing implementation of a municipal 4-poster tick control program. This project will be the first to test whether area-wide tick control efforts result in reduced disease incidence. Its innovation lies in the fact that tick biologists will use interactive techniques and be active participants in municipal and homeowner tick control programming. Efforts will focus on identifying strategiesfor engaging the community and individuals at risk.