In any disease context, antibiotic use is less effective as organisms develop resistance. Learning how behaviours contribute to disease can provide evidence to support behaviour change policies which could prevent infections in the first place.
Dr Nicola Wardrop聽uses spatial analysis methods to understand how environmental factors, socio-economic factors and behaviours contribute to disease transmission in resource poor settings, particularly related to diseases which transmit from livestock to humans.聽Her main interest is the relationship between animal health and human health, particularly in a spatial context, and in considering how different landscapes can influence this relationship. By building a strong evidence base on the factors influencing disease risk, researchers can work with local government bodies to improve disease control interventions, preventing environmental contamination and infections in humans and livestock.
The aim of the project is to develop a 鈥淥ne Health analytical framework鈥 to provide advances in聽the understanding of the spatially heterogeneous risk of neglected zoonotic disease (NZD), such as sleeping sickness and tapeworm,聽in humans and animals.
Such聽neglected zoonoses contribute significant levels of morbidity and mortality in both human and livestock populations, and since the rural poor depend heavily on livestock for their livelihoods, they also constrain development and contribute to the cycle of poverty. Current moves towards 鈥淥ne Health鈥 are resulting in the integration of medical and veterinary services for zoonotic disease control, although the evidence required to support effective integration of control is still lacking. The proposed research will utilise research data generated by collaborating projects in a novel, integrated spatial analysis combining human and animal disease data, along with environmental information.
This research, which spans the fields of human and animal health, parasitology, statistics, spatial modelling and environmental science, has the potential to deliver significant evidence to the holistic One Health movement. The project outputs will provide valuable information to support NZD control, benefiting both human and livestock health and increasing livestock productivity.
Where next?
Dr Wardrop would like to collaborate with colleagues in engineering to develop tools for the measurement of soil contamination with human pathogens. These could then be implemented to assess spatial patterns of contamination with a range of human pathogens, and to better understand how landscape factors contribute to contamination levels and risk of infection in humans and livestock.