Public Health

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has displaced more than a quarter of the population. Assessing disease burdens among displaced people is instrumental in informing global public health and humanitarian aid efforts. We estimated the disease burden in Ukrainians displaced both within Ukraine and to other countries by combining a spatiotemporal model of forcible displacement with age- and gender-specific estimates of cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, cancer, HIV, and tuberculosis (TB) in each of Ukraine’s 629 raions (i.e., districts).

University of Florida researchers are refining wastewater surveillance techniques—a public health tool dating to the 1940s—to monitor cities, neighborhoods, and individual buildings for traces of COVID-19, fentanyl, and pesticides.

A team of UF researchers were early advocates that people should be tested for COVID-19 and monitored for viral variants—regardless of their vaccination status.

UF students and researchers address the links between intestinal pathogens, livestock, and children’s gut health.

UF researchers use molecular tools to detect dengue virus and West Nile virus in southeastern Florida and inform mosquito control in real time.

UF researchers track COVID-19 trends in an island community’s wastewater. The approach has broad implications as a public health surveillance tool.

When Hurricanes Irma and Maria lashed the Caribbean in 2017, the U.S. Virgin Islands experienced devastation similar to Puerto Rico, including massive disruption to their healthcare system, but with less media fanfare. The extent of damage unleashed by these storms on medical care in the U.S. Virgin Islands is only now coming into focus, thanks to research by UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute Director J. Glenn Morris and College of Medicine Interim Dean Adrian Tyndall.

New modeling by EPI researcher Burton Singer calculates that the substantial costs involved in developing a universal flu vaccine are worth every cent. Singer collaborated with a team from Yale University, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Maryland to calculate that a universal flu vaccine would save $3.5 billion in direct medical costs annually and save 19,500 lives in the U.S. alone.

EPI investigator Song Liang enjoys introducing undergraduate students to the mesmerizing world of pathogens research. His most recent mentee, Lindsay Richards, recently won UF’s campus-wide Undergraduate Research Symposium best paper competition in the STEM/Medicine category.

Three EPI investigators are coauthors to published research on Venezuela’s public health crisis and how it is affecting bordering South American countries. Vaccine-preventable diseases and insect-borne diseases are increasing as mosquito-control measures subside and public health infrastructure crumbles.