We utilize a variety of disease systems in order to answer questions about the spatial and temporal distribution of disease.
Cooling Centers
In support of ADHS’s CDC BRACE Project, we mapped the 2022 Cooling Centers in Pima County. As the temperature rise, these places are available as heat refuge, hydration stations, or supply pick up. This map was made starting with the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness‘s Summer Sun Respite Sites. These locations were updated by reaching out to organizations who been listed in prior years to confirm hours, restrictions and COVID requirements. Libraries have been used as cooling centers in prior years, but due to COVID-restrictions time in the library may be limited. Please visit the Pima County Library website for more information. Information about Pools and Splash Pads are available from the City of Tucson and Pima County websites. Check below for a tutorial on Spatial Optimization.
Infectious Causes of Cancers
Working in collaboration with Drs Robin Harris, Leslie Dennis and Eyal Oren, we’ve built a team investigating cancers caused by infection, particularly Helicobacter pylori and gastric cancer. This has morphed in a variety of directions including looking into antibiotic resistance and other infectious causes of cancer.
Health Effects of a Changing Climate
Recently, with my colleague Julie Jernberg from the College of Medicine, we’ve been developing material to support clinicians treating the health effects of a changing climate. You can find that material and more about the project at our website, including free CME on Heat and Heat Related Illness. This dovetails with the CDC BRACE framework for cities and states to prepare for climate health hazards, which I am working on with colleagues in CAPLA (Ladd Keith), ASU (Dave Hondula), ADHS and Pima County Health Department.
Forecasting Chikungunya in the Caribbean
In response to the DARPA InnoCentive Challenge, we (Professor Joceline Lega and the Brown Lab) developed a tool to estimate the total number, duration and peak incidence of chikungunya cases in the 2014-2015 Chikungunya outbreak in the Caribbean. We are working to validate the model on other diseases and other areas and will soon upload the tool here.
Climate and Mosquito Abundance
Continuing work started as a Post-doc with Dr. Andrew Comrie, we are continuing to quantify the association between climate and health. With a team of ten researchers from the US Southwest, we wrote the chapter on Climate Change and Health for the Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States which provides technical input for the 2013 National Climate Assessment. We continue to collaborate with partners at ADHS to support climate adaptation planning.
Datasets
1) Eastern equine Encephalitis data used for our analysis predicting spread of EEE incidence in the US. Files: EEE_data.xlsx (1.78 MB)
2) A tutorial on how to use the Spatial Optimization tool to identify potential locations, in our case, for cooling centers.