Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the virus SARS-CoV-1, the first identified strain of the SARS-related coronavirus. The first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the syndrome caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. In the 2010s, Chinese scientists traced the virus through the intermediary of Asian palm civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epidemiology and training in public health, and the largest public health training facility in the United States, the school is ranked first in public health in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and has held that ranking since 1994.
Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicine, environmental science, chemistry and others, overlapping with environmental pathology. It can be viewed as the medical branch of the broader field of environmental health. The scope of this field involves studying the interactions between environment and human health, and the role of the environment in causing or mediating disease. This specialist field of study developed after the realisation that health is more widely and dramatically affected by environmental factors than previously recognized.
Alfred (Al) Sommer is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.
Katherine "Kate" L. O'Brien is a Canadian American pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist, and vaccinologist who specializes in the areas of pneumococcal epidemiology, pneumococcal vaccine trials and impact studies, and surveillance for pneumococcal disease. She is also known as an expert in infectious diseases in American Indian populations. O’Brien is currently the Director of the World Health Organization's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.
The National Centre for Disease Control is an institute under the Indian Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It was established in July 1963 for research in epidemiology and control of communicable diseases and to reorganize the activities of the Malaria Institute of India. It has nine branches at Alwar, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, Calicut, Coonoor, Jagdalpur, Patna, Rajahmundry and Varanasi to advise the respective state governments on public health. The headquarters are in Sham Nath Marg, in New Delhi.
Airborne transmission 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. This is the transmission of diseases via transmission of an infectious agent, and does not include diseases caused by air pollution.
The Iquitos Satellite Laboratory (IQTLAB) was established in 2002 in the city of Iquitos, Peru by doctor Margaret Kosek, biologist Maribel Paredes Olortegui, and nurse Pablo Peñataro Yori, with the collaboration of the Dr. Robert Gilman working group in Lima, Peru and the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 (NAMRU-6).
Dr. Moyses Szklo is a Brazilian epidemiologist and physician scientist. He is currently University Distinguished Service Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, Editor-in-chief Emeritus of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and director of the Johns Hopkins Summer Institute of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Szklo has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as a major textbook of epidemiology. He has led several major epidemiologic societies and studies and has been lecturing and leading courses all over the world, including Spain, Italy, Israel, Brazil, and Mexico.
David DuPuy Celentano is a noted epidemiologist and professor who has contributed significantly to the promotion of research on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). He is the Charles Armstrong chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He holds joint appointments with the school’s departments of Health Policy and Management, Health Behavior and Society, and International Health, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases.
A Nipah virus infection is a viral infection caused by the Nipah virus. Symptoms from infection vary from none to fever, cough, headache, shortness of breath, and confusion. This may worsen into a coma over a day or two, and 50 to 75% of those infected die. Complications can include inflammation of the brain and seizures following recovery.
Emily J. Erbelding is an American physician-scientist. She is the director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Erbelding was previously deputy director of the Division of AIDS at NIAID. She was a faculty member at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and served as director of clinical services for the Baltimore City Health Department STD/HIV program.
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.
COVID-19 surveillance involves monitoring the spread of the coronavirus disease in order to establish the patterns of disease progression. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends active surveillance, with focus of case finding, testing and contact tracing in all transmission scenarios. COVID-19 surveillance is expected to monitor epidemiological trends, rapidly detect new cases, and based on this information, provide epidemiological information to conduct risk assessment and guide disease preparedness.
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.
Gypsyamber D'Souza is an American epidemiologist. She is a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. D'Souza researches infectious diseases, cancer prevention, and translational epidemiology. She is a principal investigator of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study / Women's Interagency HIV Study Combined Cohort Study (Mwccs.org).
Michelle L. Bell is an American environmental engineer. Since 2015, she has been the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at the Yale School of the Environment. In 2020, Bell was named a member of the National Academy of Medicine for her research into understanding the critical links between the environment and public health.
Joanne Katz is an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Ophthalmology. Her expertise is in maternal, neonatal, and child health. She has contributed to the design, conduct and analysis of data from large community based intervention trials on nutritional and other interventions in Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal and other countries.
Lorna E. Thorpe is an American epidemiologist who is a professor and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at NYU Langone Health. She serves as Vice Chair of Strategy and Planning in the Department of Population Health and on the Board of the American College of Epidemiology.
Aimée Rebecca Kreimer is an American cancer epidemiologist who researches the etiology and prevention of human papillomavirus infection (HPV) and cancer prevention. She is a senior investigator in the infections and immunoepidemiology branch at the National Cancer Institute.
