Betsy Foxman | |
---|---|
Spouse(s) | Michael Boehnke |
Academic background | |
Education | BSc, Conservation of Natural Resources, 1977, University of California, Berkeley MSPH, Epidemiology, 1980, PhD, Epidemiology, 1983, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Michigan |
Betsy Foxman (born 1955) is an American epidemiologist. She is the Hunein F. and Hilda Maassab Endowed Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan. She also served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Infectious Diseases,is a member of the Infectious Disease Society of America and of the American College of Epidemiology.
Her research areas are the transmission,pathogenesis,ecology and evolution of infectious agents,and the transmission of antibiotic resistance among bacteria,particularly E. coli and Group B Streptococcus. Other interests are the role of oral microbiota in dental caries,viral infection and bacterial pneumonia,biofilm growth on medical devices and the dynamics of hospital pathogens. Foxman is a disciple of Darwinian medicine and believes that therapy can only be intelligently applied if the evolutionary history of pathogens is understood. [1]
Foxman was born in 1955. [2] She earned a Bachelor of Science in Conservation of Natural Resources from the University of California,Berkeley and completed her Master's degree and PhD in Epidemiology from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. [3]
A zoonosis is an infectious disease caused by a pathogen that has jumped from an animal to a human. Typically,the first infected human transmits the infectious agent to at least one other human,who,in turn,infects others.
An infection is the invasion of an organism's body tissues by disease-causing agents,their multiplication,and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agents and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease,also known as a transmissible disease or communicable disease,is an illness resulting from an infection.
An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example,in meningococcal infections,an attack rate in excess of 15 cases per 100,000 people for two consecutive weeks is considered an epidemic.
Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection that applies only to infectious disease that are contagious that occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection,whether through previous infections or vaccination,thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity.
An asymptomatic carrier is a person or other organism that has become infected with a pathogen,but that displays no signs or symptoms.
In medicine,public health,and biology,transmission is the passing of a pathogen causing communicable disease from an infected host individual or group to a particular individual or group,regardless of whether the other individual was previously infected. The term strictly refers to the transmission of microorganisms directly from one individual to another by one or more of the following means:
In epidemiology,the basic reproduction number,or basic reproductive number,denoted ,of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection. The definition assumes that no other individuals are infected or immunized. Some definitions,such as that of the Australian Department of Health,add the absence of "any deliberate intervention in disease transmission". The basic reproduction number is not necessarily the same as the effective reproduction number ,which is the number of cases generated in the current state of a population,which does not have to be the uninfected state. is a dimensionless number and not a time rate,which would have units of time−1,or units of time like doubling time.
In infectious disease ecology and epidemiology,a natural reservoir,also known as a disease reservoir or a reservoir of infection,is the population of organisms or the specific environment in which an infectious pathogen naturally lives and reproduces,or upon which the pathogen primarily depends for its survival. A reservoir is usually a living host of a certain species,such as an animal or a plant,inside of which a pathogen survives,often without causing disease for the reservoir itself. By some definitions a reservoir may also be an environment external to an organism,such as a volume of contaminated air or water.
Paul W. Ewald is an evolutionary biologist,specializing in the evolutionary ecology of parasitism,evolutionary medicine,agonistic behavior,and pollination biology. He is the author of Evolution of Infectious Disease (1994) and Plague Time:The New Germ Theory of Disease (2002),and is currently director of the program in Evolutionary Medicine at the Biology Department of the University of Louisville.
An emergent virus is a virus that is either newly appeared,notably increasing in incidence/geographic range or has the potential to increase in the near future. Emergent viruses are a leading cause of emerging infectious diseases and raise public health challenges globally,given their potential to cause outbreaks of disease which can lead to epidemics and pandemics. As well as causing disease,emergent viruses can also have severe economic implications. Recent examples include the SARS-related coronaviruses,which have caused the 2002-2004 outbreak of SARS (SARS-CoV-1) and the 2019–21 pandemic of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Other examples include the human immunodeficiency virus which causes HIV/AIDS;the viruses responsible for Ebola;the H5N1 influenza virus responsible for avian flu;and H1N1/09,which caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Viral emergence in humans is often a consequence of zoonosis,which involves a cross-species jump of a viral disease into humans from other animals. As zoonotic viruses exist in animal reservoirs,they are much more difficult to eradicate and can therefore establish persistent infections in human populations.
Howard Taylor Ricketts was an American pathologist after whom the family Rickettsiaceae and the order Rickettsiales are named.
The Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology (MPIIB) is a non-university research institute of the Max Planck Society located in the heart of Berlin in Berlin-Mitte. It was founded in 1993. Arturo Zychlinsky is currently the Managing Director. The MPIIB is divided into nine research groups,two partner groups and two Emeritus Groups of the founding director Stefan H. E. Kaufmann and the director emeritus Thomas F. Meyer. The department "Regulation in Infection Biology" headed by 2020 Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier was hived off as an independent research center in May 2018. The Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens is now administratively independent of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. In October 2019,Igor Iatsenko and Matthieu Domenech de Cellès established their research groups at the institute,Mark Cronan started his position as research group leader in March 2020. Silvia Portugal joined the institute in June 2020 as Lise Meitner Group Leader. Two more research groups where added in 2020,Felix M. Key joined in September and Olivia Majer in October,completing the reorganization of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.
Sunetra Gupta is an Indian-born British infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology,University of Oxford. She has performed research on the transmission dynamics of various infectious diseases,including malaria,influenza and COVID-19,and has received the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Rosalind Franklin Award of the Royal Society.
Evolution of Infectious Disease is a 1993 book by the evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald. In this book Ewald contests the traditional view that parasites should evolve toward benign coexistence with their hosts. He draws on various studies which contradict this dogma and asserts his own theory that is based on fundamental evolutionary principles. This book provides one of the first in-depth presentations of insights from evolutionary biology on various fields in health science,including epidemiology and medicine.
Airborne or aerosol transmission is transmission of an infectious disease through small particles suspended in the air. Infectious diseases capable of airborne transmission include many of considerable importance both in human and veterinary medicine. The relevant infectious agent may be viruses,bacteria,or fungi,and they may be spread through breathing,talking,coughing,sneezing,raising of dust,spraying of liquids,flushing toilets,or any activities which generate aerosol particles or droplets.
In biology,a pathogen in the oldest and broadest sense,is any organism that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent,or simply a germ.
Nina H. Fefferman is an American evolutionary biologist,epidemiologist,and ecologist at the University of Tennessee for the Departments of Ecology and Evolution &Mathematics. Her research focuses on the mathematics of epidemiology,evolutionary &behavioral ecology,and conservation biology. She studies how individual behaviors can affect an entire population.
Azra Catherine Hilary Ghani is a British epidemiologist who is a professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. Her research considers the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases,including malaria,bovine spongiform encephalopathy and coronavirus. She has worked with the World Health Organization on their technical strategy for malaria. She is associate director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis.
Marc Lipsitch is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,where he is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He has worked on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
In epidemiology,particularly in the discussion of infectious disease dynamics (modeling),the latent period is the time interval between when an individual or host is infected by a pathogen and when they become infectious,i.e. capable of transmitting pathogens to other susceptible individuals.