Infectious Diseases and Climate Change

[NurseEpi]

Hi Everyone,

I'm planning on applying to start my PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology to begin in Fall 2010. My current area of interest is climate change and the impact it is having on the nature and spread of infectious diseases.

Does anyone have any recommendations of universities and/or faculty where I should begin my search? I know of some individual faculties, but I'm not sure if there are any schools where this area of research is a particular strength.

I'd greatly appreciate any advice/input you might have,
NurseEpi

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[Stories]

I can't think of any places off the top of my head that do a lot of that kind of thing. Your interest in ID is covered by any epi department in the country, but your interest in climate change makes it a better fit for folks in a environmental science department. I knew of one ScD student at BU in EH that was working on that kind of thing with both departments.

Because the nature of the study of climate change (and it's focus on models) and the spread of disease, your interest probably lines up more closely with environmental science departments as they focus on modeling and geographic distributions (which tracking ID migration) fits nicely. That's a starting place I'd suggest. Any school which has a lot of climate change science is definitely a good place to look, particularly if they also have a medical school.

 

[Jetdry]

You might already be aware, but I know Johns Hokpins has faculty in the SPH that study the effect of climate change on infectious diseases, particularly malaria and zoonotic diseases. They have a faculty directory that allows you to search faculty profiles using keywords, and many of their faculty have interests that span several departments. It's something they call "joint departmental affiliations", so you could do your research from most any department within the school.

Also, I would check out South Florida and Tulane. I'm thinking they might have research projects along those lines.