There has been an increasing appreciation of the importance of environmental pathways for the human-to-human transmission of respiratory, enteric, and other pathogens. These indirect transmission chains may involve water, food, air, and fomites, all of which provide natural points for intervention. There is a need, therefore, to develop transmission models that explicitly describe pathogen dynamics and the dynamics of human contact with pathogens in these environments. We call these environmental infection transmission system (EITS) models. We propose to develop and examine such models across a range of spatial and temporal scales, as determined by agent survivability in different environments and temporal patterns of excretion and exposure. We focus on enteric pathogens as they: 1) exploit a wide range of environmental scales; 2) there exists extensive human and environmental data; and 3) enteric diseases have major global and domestic public health importance. We propose to build upon our work in the past 10 years applying transmission models to microbial risk assessment that has advanced regulatory policy for the USEPA, and more recently through our work in the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment (CAMRA). Our analyses have included transmission studies in domestic settings such as Cryptosporidium, MRSA, and norovirus in the United States, as well as international settings such as cholera and diarrheal diseases in Haiti, Thailand, and Ecuador. In our work thus far we have examined distinct types of environmentally mediated transmission on a case-by-case basis. Here we will develop a unified framework integrating environmental transmission across a wide range of temporal and spatial transmission scales. Specifically, we propose the following specific aims: 1) To develop an environmental infection transmission systems (EITS) modeling approach that focuses on long timescales, such as waterborne transmission; 2) To develop an EITS modeling approach that focuses on short timescales, such as fomite transmission; and 3) To develop a framework that integrates these diverse transmission pathways that span across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. As many interventions are environmentally driven (e.g. surface cleaning, drinking water and wastewater treatment) this framework will provide detailed environmental insight and guidance for policy and interventions.

Public Health Relevance

There has been an increasing appreciation of the importance of environmental pathways for the transmission of respiratory, enteric, and other pathogens. We propose to develop and examine such models across a range of spatial and temporal scales, as determined by agent persistence in different environments and temporal patterns of excretion and exposure. We will focus on enteric pathogens as: 1) they exploit a wide range of temporal and spatial scales; 2) there exists extensive human and environmental data; and 3) enteric diseases have major global and domestic public health importance.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Research Project--Cooperative Agreements (U01)
Project #
3U01GM110712-04S1
Application #
9474895
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZGM1)
Program Officer
Janes, Daniel E
Project Start
2014-09-01
Project End
2019-06-30
Budget Start
2017-08-01
Budget End
2018-01-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2017
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Public Health & Prev Medicine
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
073133571
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
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Brouwer, Andrew F; Masters, Nina B; Eisenberg, Joseph N S (2018) Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment and Infectious Disease Transmission Modeling of Waterborne Enteric Pathogens. Curr Environ Health Rep 5:293-304
Kao, Yu-Han; Eisenberg, Marisa C (2018) Practical unidentifiability of a simple vector-borne disease model: Implications for parameter estimation and intervention assessment. Epidemics 25:89-100
Kraay, Alicia N M; Brouwer, Andrew F; Lin, Nan et al. (2018) Modeling environmentally mediated rotavirus transmission: The role of temperature and hydrologic factors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115:E2782-E2790
Kraay, Alicia N M; Hayashi, Michael A L; Hernandez-Ceron, Nancy et al. (2018) Fomite-mediated transmission as a sufficient pathway: a comparative analysis across three viral pathogens. BMC Infect Dis 18:540
Kraay, Alicia N M; Trostle, James; Brouwer, Andrew F et al. (2018) Determinants of Short-term Movement in a Developing Region and Implications for Disease Transmission. Epidemiology 29:117-125
Blanco, Natalia; Foxman, Betsy; Malani, Anurag N et al. (2017) An in silico evaluation of treatment regimens for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. PLoS One 12:e0182815
Petrie, Joshua G; Eisenberg, Marisa C; Ng, Sophia et al. (2017) Application of an Individual-Based Transmission Hazard Model for Estimation of Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in a Household Cohort. Am J Epidemiol 186:1380-1388
Koopman, J S; Henry, C J; Park, J H et al. (2017) Dynamics affecting the risk of silent circulation when oral polio vaccination is stopped. Epidemics 20:21-36
Nguyen, Dao; Ionides, Edward L (2017) A second-order iterated smoothing algorithm. Stat Comput 27:1677-1692

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