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

美国每年大约有30万莱姆病病例。目前还没有针对人类的莱姆病疫苗，因此唯一的预防选择是减少环境中感染了这种细菌的蜱虫的数量，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传播和生存，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和智能手机应用程序来监测鹿的运动。这将是美国第一个关注城市绿地中蜱传疾病的研究，在城市绿地中，密集的人口与城市野生动物共存，这些野生动物会驱散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团队被召集起来调查这个复杂的系统。通过参与社区？公民科学吗?方法，研究人员将更好地了解人们与蜱传疾病有关的知识、行动和动机；教育人们正确的保护方法；并提供建议，以降低个人和社区患莱姆病的风险。该项目由两名西班牙裔女性领导，将建立一个跨学科学者社区，准备应对社会环境系统研究，包括两名博士后研究员，一名博士生，以及五名以上的硕士和本科生。研究小组假设，蜱传疾病是一个综合的社会环境系统，在这个系统中，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坦顿岛的一个城市公园和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程度如何导致斯塔顿岛公园内蜱虫的不同分布。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。一款智能手机应用程序将提供有关人们活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做法。通过将这些数据整合到基于代理的模型中，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“蜱虫综合管理”方法将提供给决策者，以更好地针对公共卫生干预措施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.