Caitlin Rivers

Last updated
Caitlin Rivers
Caitlin Rivers.jpg
Rivers c. 2017
Born
United States
Other namesCaitlin Yeaton
Education University of New Hampshire (BS)
Virginia Tech (MPH, PhD)
OccupationEpidemiologist
Years active2014-present
Employer(s) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (current)
U.S. Army

Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

In 2011, Rivers received a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of New Hampshire, where she specialized in medical anthropology. [2] She has said that she became interested in public health after reading Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains , which was about anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer's work on infectious disease eradication. [3]

In 2013, Rivers received a master's degree in public health (MPH) with a concentration in infectious disease from Virginia Tech. In 2015, she received a PhD in the Genetics, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology program, where she specialized in computational epidemiology, from Virginia Tech. [4] Her thesis was on modeling emerging infectious diseases for public health support, using non-traditional, public available sources of data, such as data collected from social media and Google search terms. [5] She specifically focused on data related to outbreaks of avian influenza A (H7N9), Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and Ebola virus disease (EVD).

Career

During her post-graduate studies, Rivers was a graduate research assistant at Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech (formerly known as the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute) in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she built infectious disease models of emerging infectious diseases including Influenza A virus subtype H7N9, Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, and the 2014-2015 Western African Ebola virus epidemic – the latter in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense. Rivers maintained the only source of digital repository of data during the Ebola outbreak. As part of this work she developed Python tools, interfaces, and tutorials for epidemiologists. [3]

From 2013 to 2015, Rivers was a civilian epidemiologist for the United States Army. She worked at the U.S. Army Public Health Center as part of the Science, Mathematics, And Research For Transformation (SMART) Defense Scholarship Program during her second year of her doctoral program. [3] Rivers worked on the Army's Acute Respiratory Disease Surveillance Program, where she worked with Army data to monitor and track trends in infectious diseases and pinpoint where they occur.

In 2017, Rivers became a Senior Associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her work centers on modeling outbreaks of infectious diseases to help understand how an outbreak unfolds, its trajectory, and what approaches to take to slow—and eventually stop—the spread. [6] She and her colleagues have advocated for integrating these modeling approaches in public health decision-making into an interdisciplinary field they call "outbreak science." [7] She has argued for the creation of a National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center, which would play a role similar to that of the National Weather Service and act as a primary source of epidemiological models during times of crisis, while advancing the field. [8]

COVID-19

As it emerged in late 2019, Rivers has applied her expertise in computational epidemiology to forecast the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, using available data from previous outbreaks since the novel coronavirus. She and her colleagues used data from intensive care unit and inpatient bed needs in two Chinese cities (Wuhan and Guangzhou) to project what health care needs would be if and when the outbreak spread to the United States. [9] [10] Their analysis concluded that if an outbreak similar to the scale of the outbreak in Wuhan occurred in an American city, ICU needs of COVID-19 patients alone would exceed hospital capacity.

Rivers has used Twitter as a means of communicating her analyses as new data become available, refining the public's understanding of the trajectory of the pandemic. She has collaborated with researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to analyze trends in flu-like illnesses that were not influenza and, in March, found some unusual activity that may correspond to incidence of COVID-19. The study concluded that further research was necessary to determine whether the data was indeed a signal that SARS-CoV-2 was causing widespread disease in the United States. [11] She also analyzed syndromic surveillance data from outbreaks in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore and found the containment measures they were taking were actually effective at "flattening the curve" of transmission and reducing infections. [12] [13]

In March 2020, she co-authored a policy proposal through the American Enterprise Institute, along with former FDA commissioners Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan, former FDA chief of staff Lauren Silvis, and public health expert Crystal Watson, with a step-by-step timeline on how to safely ease restrictions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. [14] [15] The plan outlines four phases, with triggers to move from one phase to the next, build on an epidemiology evidence base. In an op-ed that preceded the policy proposal, Gottlieb and Rivers argued that quarantining entire cities is unnecessary; instead, government officials should focus on well-coordinated mitigation measures across the country to reduce community spread. [16] Part of these mitigation measures also include providing relief for those who will be economically impacted by closures and medical costs.

Open science

Rivers is an advocate for the open science movement, particularly as it relates to matters of public health and health security. When she began modeling the Ebola virus disease epidemic in 2014, she converted data released by ministries of health into a machine-readable format and shared it openly on GitHub, an open repository for collaborative work on software and code. [17] In the wake of the Zika virus outbreak, she co-authored a perspective piece on the importance of making data sharing the norm in order to maximize readiness for public health emergencies, outlining challenges, such as the need for data standards for sharing, and potential solutions. [18] [19] She has also worked to develop an ethical framework of research standards for analyzing and reporting on publicly available data, with a specific focus on data resulting from Twitter. [20]

Awards and honors

Selected works and publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epidemic</span> Rapid spread of disease affecting a large number of people in a short time

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. Ian Lipkin</span> Professor, microbiologist, epidemiologist

Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social distancing</span> Infection control technique by keeping a distance from each other

In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious disease by maintaining a physical distance between people and reducing the number of times people come into close contact with each other. It usually involves keeping a certain distance from others and avoiding gathering together in large groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public health emergency of international concern</span> Formal declaration by the World Health Organization

A public health emergency of international concern is a formal declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of "an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response", formulated when a situation arises that is "serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected", which "carries implications for public health beyond the affected state's national border" and "may require immediate international action". Under the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), states have a legal duty to respond promptly to a PHEIC. The declaration is publicized by an IHR Emergency Committee (EC) of international experts, which was developed following the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Ferguson (epidemiologist)</span> British epidemiologist and researcher

Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute, and of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Syra Madad</span> American pathogen preparedness expert

Syra Madad is an American pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist. Madad is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the executive leadership team which oversees New York City's response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the city's 11 public hospitals. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery Channel documentary The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael J. Ryan (doctor)</span> Irish doctor and Chief Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme

Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Aylward</span> Canadian physician and epidemiologist

Bruce Aylward is a Canadian physician and epidemiologist. Since September 2017 he has been Senior Advisor to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. He is part of the implementation of the WHO's COVAX Facility. He has past experience in the areas of polio eradication, Zika virus, and Ebola.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic</span> Aspect of viral outbreak

Media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has varied by country, time period and media outlet. News media has simultaneously kept viewers informed about current events related to the pandemic, and contributed to misinformation or fake news.

Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.

Lauren Marie Gardner is an American engineer who is an associate professor and co-director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She created the Johns Hopkins University dashboard that is used to share information about the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nahid Bhadelia</span> Indian-American infectious diseases physician and researcher

Nahid Bhadelia is an American infectious-diseases physician, founding director of Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID) at Boston University and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

Maimuna (Maia) Majumder is a computational epidemiologist and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital's Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP). She is currently working on modeling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Rasmussen</span> American virologist and researcher

Angela Lynn Rasmussen is an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Alexandra Phelan is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She specializes in international legal and policy issues that are related to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, including upstream drivers of disease emergence like climate change.

Allison Joan McGeer is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and is a partner of the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. McGeer has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air and has served on several provincial committees advising aspects of the Government of Ontario's pandemic response.

Crystal Watson is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. She is an expert in health security, biodefense, and risk assessment and preparedness for emerging infectious diseases. She is currently working on the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Natalie E. Dean is an American biostatistician specializing in infectious disease epidemiology. Dean is currently an assistant professor of Biostatistics at the University of Florida. Her research involves epidemiological modeling of outbreaks, including Ebola, Zika and COVID-19.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saskia Popescu</span> Infectious disease epidemiologist

Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health security expert in Phoenix, Arizona. She is an Assistant Professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland, and holds academic appointments at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, where she lectures on biopreparedness and outbreak response. Since the start of the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Popescu has worked to prepare for and mitigate the spread of the disease within healthcare and the entertainment industry, where she led the global epidemiology and infection prevention response for Netflix. She has been recognized for her communication efforts around the pandemic, as well as her work on the front lines in infection prevention and healthcare biopreparedness. Popescu currently is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks, addressing converging biological risks from biological weapons nonproliferation, biosecurity, emerging infectious diseases and ecological security, biopreparedness in private industry, and global health security vulnerabilities.

References

  1. ↑ Shapiro, Ari; Rivers, Caitlin (17 April 2020). "An Epidemiologist Answers What Is Needed To Reopen The Country". All Things Considered. NPR.
  2. ↑ Undergraduate Research Conference: April 15–30, 2011 (PDF). Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire. 2011. p. 31. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2020-04-19. Caitlin Rivers, Anthropology; Exploring Childhood Obesity in Rural New Hampshire
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Former student begins rewarding career at Army Public Health Center". U.S. Army. 23 September 2015.
  4. ↑ Rivers, Caitlin M. (March 16, 2015). Modeling of Emerging Infectious Diseases for Public Health Decision Support (Doctor of Philosophy in Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology thesis). Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. hdl:10919/52023. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  5. ↑ Young, Sean D.; Rivers, Caitlin; Lewis, Bryan (June 2014). "Methods of using real-time social media technologies for detection and remote monitoring of HIV outcomes". Preventive Medicine. 63: 112–115. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.01.024 . PMC   4031268 . PMID   24513169.Wikidata-logo.svg Wikidata ()
  6. ↑ "How Computer Modeling Of COVID-19's Spread Could Help Fight The Virus". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  7. ↑ Rivers, Caitlin; Chretien, Jean-Paul; Riley, Steven; Pavlin, Julie A.; Woodward, Alexandra; Brett-Major, David; Maljkovic Berry, Irina; Morton, Lindsay; Jarman, Richard G.; Biggerstaff, Matthew; Johansson, Michael A. (2019-07-15). "Using "outbreak science" to strengthen the use of models during epidemics". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 3102. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.3102R. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11067-2 . ISSN   2041-1723. PMC   6629683 . PMID   31308372.
  8. ↑ Enserink, Martin; Kupferschmidt, Kai (2020-03-25). "Mathematics of life and death: How disease models shape national shutdowns and other pandemic policies". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  9. ↑ Li, Ruoran; Rivers, Caitlin; Tan, Qi; Murray, Megan B.; Toner, Eric; Lipsitch, Marc (2020-03-10). "The Demand for Inpatient and ICU Beds for COVID-19 in the US: Lessons From Chinese Cities". DASH at Harvard.
  10. ↑ "'Flattening the curve' may be the world's best bet to slow the coronavirus". STAT. 2020-03-11. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  11. ↑ Schnirring, Lisa (14 March 2020). "US takes more big pandemic response steps; Europe COVID-19 cases soar". Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. University of Minnesota.
  12. ↑ Branswell, Helen (20 March 2020). "How some countries are beating back the coronavirus". The Boston Globe.
  13. ↑ "When will the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing end?". Science News. 2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  14. ↑ McGinley, Laurie; Wan, William (29 March 2020). "Experts converge on plans for easing coronavirus restrictions safely". The Washington Post.
  15. ↑ "National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  16. ↑ Gottlieb, Scott; Rivers, Caitlin M. "Opinion | Quarantining cities isn't needed. But a fast, coordinated response to covid-19 is essential". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  17. ↑ Perkel, Jeffrey (2016-10-06). "Democratic databases: science on GitHub". Nature News. 538 (7623): 127–128. Bibcode:2016Natur.538..127P. doi: 10.1038/538127a . PMID   27708327.
  18. ↑ Chretien, Jean-Paul; Rivers, Caitlin M.; Johansson, Michael A. (2016-08-16). "Make Data Sharing Routine to Prepare for Public Health Emergencies". PLOS Medicine. 13 (8): e1002109. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002109 . ISSN   1549-1676. PMC   4987038 . PMID   27529422.
  19. ↑ "Zika, Ebola emphasize need for open, public health data sharing". FierceHealthcare. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  20. ↑ Rivers, Caitlin M.; Lewis, Bryan L. (2014-08-21). "Ethical research standards in a world of big data". F1000Research. 3: 38. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.3-38.v2 . ISSN   2046-1402.
  21. ↑ Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative: Class of 2015 Yearbook (PDF). Center for Health Security. 2015. p. 31.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.