CCDD

Join us TODAY! 1PM ET for our #IDEpi Seminar presented by Dr. Kenneth Mayer. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26

Join us March 5 at 1PM ET for our #IDEPI Seminar presented by Kenneth Mayer, Professor of Medicine, HMS; Professor of Global Health and Population, HSPH; Co-Director, The Fenway Institute and Medical Research Director, Fenway Health; Attending Physicians, BIDMC. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26.

Join us TODAY! 1PM ET for our #IDEpi Seminar presented by Molly Franke, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School for our #IDEpi Seminar Series. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26.

Join us THURS 2/26 at 1PM ET with Molly Franke, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School for our #IDEpi Seminar Series. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26.

Coordinator II (Senior Program Coordinator)

Join our team! We are #hiring for a #hybrid Senior Program Coordinator role!

This position blends high-level operational management with research program coordination.

Click on the link below to learn more and apply today!
👉 careers.harvard.edu/job/coordina...

Join us TODAY at 1PM ET for our #IDEpi Seminar presented by Rachel Baker, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and Environment and Society at Brown University. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26

Members of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD)

We are #hiring! Are you a doctoral graduate passionate about using data and models to drive global health impact?

Join us and @ccdd-hsph.bsky.social as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in HIV Epidemiology and Modeling!

👉 Learn more and apply today below! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15825

Join us THURS 2/12 at 1PM ET with Rachel Baker, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and Environment and Society at Brown University for our #IDEpi Seminar Series. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26.

Join us TODAY at 1PM ET for our #IDEpi Seminar presented by Robbie Goldstein, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health . Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26

Join us THURS 2/5 at 1PM ET with Robbie Goldstein, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for our #IDEpi Seminar Series. Register for Zoom at hsph.me/IDEPI26.

Comparing Strategies to Introduce Two New Antibiotics for Gonorrhea: A Modeling Study Immediately introducing 2 new antibiotics to treat gonorrhea alongside 1 currently used therapy is more effective at minimizing drug resistance than holdin

New publication! Comparing Strategies to Introduce Two New Antibiotics for Gonorrhea: A Modeling Study featuring authors: @mckline98.bsky.social, @kroster.bsky.social, @dhelekal.bsky.social, @rumpl-er.bsky.social, and @yhgrad.bsky.social. Read it here at bit.ly/3Z1Zplh

New publication: Individual and population-level risk factors for new HIV infections among adults in Eastern and Southern Africa. Read from authors including @jeff-imai-eaton.bsky.social at bit.ly/3Ngxzz6

Leveraging Limited Testing Data for Early Detection of Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks Early during emerging infectious disease outbreaks, case-based surveillance is constrained by limited test availability, diagnostic delays, and low clinical suspicion. Novel pathogens that mimic sympt...

New preprint by PhD student Alex Zapf and @mlipsitch.bsky.social: Leveraging Limited Testing Data for Early Detection of Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks. Read it at bit.ly/3LmM83F

YouTube video by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Learning how infectious diseases spread—and how to stop them

The mission of Harvard Chan School’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (@ccdd-hsph.bsky.social) is to understand how infectious diseases emerge and spread, to train the next generation of scientists and public health officials, and to guide policy with rigorous science.

Taking injectable PrEP to scale: Optimising the value of lenacapavir for South Africa’s HIV response Background Six-monthly injectable lenacapavir (LEN) for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has superior efficacy to oral tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC), and similar efficacy to...

New preprint: Taking injectable PrEP to scale: Optimising the value of lenacapavir for South Africa’s HIV response. Read more from authors including CCDD's @jeff-imai-eaton.bsky.social at bit.ly/4s6byD1

The Paradox of Neglecting Changes in Behavior: How Standard Epidemic Models Misestimate Both Transmissibility and Final Epidemic Size During epidemic outbreaks, populations adapt their behavior in response to disease burden, fundamentally altering transmission dynamics. Despite this, most compartmental models assume constant contact...

New preprint by @pantbinod.bsky.social and Mauricio Santillana: The Paradox of Neglecting Changes in Behavior: How Standard Epidemic Models Misestimate Both Transmissibility and Final Epidemic Size. Read more at bit.ly/48NuLlq

SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Variation Shows Evidence of Transmission and Convergent Evolution in a University Surveillance Cohort Monitoring and understanding the transmission and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 remains a significant pub-lic health priority. Within-host genetic variation provides insight into viral evolution during infe...

New preprint featuring CCDD authors Léa Cavalli, @bradfordptaylor.bsky.social, Beau Schaeffer, and @billhanage.bsky.social: SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Variation Shows Evidence of Transmission and Convergent Evolution in a University Surveillance Cohort. Read it at bit.ly/4pLO4BO

Why are gonorrhea case rates declining in the US? A research agenda - PubMed After nearly a decade of rising gonorrhea rates, the United States CDC reported a decline in infection rates for two years in a row in 2022 and 2023, especially among young adults. While this warrants cautious optimism that control measures have been successful, the reasons for the decline are unkno …

U.S. gonorrhea rates fell in 2022 and 2023 after nearly a decade of increases—new paper by @kroster.bsky.social and @yhgrad.bsky.social maps out possible drivers, current evidence, and the data needed to understand what is causing the decline. Read more at bit.ly/4aWmc9i

🧪 #gonorrhoea #mustread today's news about 2 new drugs to treat #gonorrhoea

Thanks @kakape.bsky.social for opportunity to say, "The availability of two new drugs will lead to an important and likely controversial debate about how best to use them"

And to @yhgrad.bsky.social @gardp.bsky.social

Evaluating the impact of a longitudinal, integrated climate change, health, and environment curriculum in undergraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School Climate change, air pollution, and ecological degradation are defining public health and health equity challenges of our time. Efforts to integrate and evaluate climate change curriculum in medical ed...

New article by Natalie Baker and colleagues:

"Evaluating the impact of a longitudinal, integrated climate change, health, and environment curriculum in undergraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School"

journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

@gaurabbasu.bsky.social @mckline98.bsky.social

Over 15 years at Boston Children’s Hospital, late‑onset and very‑late‑onset GBS infections in infants were frequently severe, often resulting in ICU admission and meningitis, yet no genomic predictors of severity were identified, and the two presentations were clinically and genetically similar.

A 15-year Single-center Analysis of Late-onset Group B Streptococcus Infection Correlating Clinical Severity With Pathogen Virulence Determinants Post-EOD GBS disease is associated with high rates of ICU admission and meningitis without a consistent link to pathogen virulence, suggesting that host re

New publication from CCDD’s Léa Cavalli, @billhanage.bsky.social, & collaborators: bit.ly/4rF0Rr3

Zoliflodacin and gepotidacin cross-resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae Resistance to zoliflodacin, a first-in-class antibiotic for gonorrhea treatment, can occur through gyrBD429N, but this mutation's impact on fitness and resistance to other topoisomerase targeting drug...

New preprint: with increasing resistance to ceftriaxone, the last recommended antibiotic for gonorrhea, we urgently need new drugs. Two--zoliflodacin & gepotdiacin--are up for approval by the FDA in Dec. Here we show a point mutation can result in cross-resistance. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com Kudos to @tylim.bsky.social and @jameshay.bsky.social for a huge effort and thanks to all the collaborators for their hard work. See the final version here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Experimental mRNA flu vaccine is more effective than conventional flu shot, but causes more side effects

Experimental mRNA flu vaccine is more effective than conventional flu shot, but causes more side effects. @billhanage.bsky.social weighs in at @cidrap.bsky.social. Read it here at bit.ly/4o8qIo0

Nowcasting epidemic trends using hospital- and community-based virologic test data - Nature Communications Population-level distributions of SARS-CoV-2 viral load can correlate with epidemic trends. Here, the authors use viral loads to nowcast epidemic growth rates over two-week periods and investigate how...

New study shows that shifts in SARS‑CoV‑2 Ct value distributions can help nowcast epidemic trends, revealing both strong potential and key real‑world limitations for Ct‑based surveillance. From CCDD alumni TY Lim & @jameshay.bsky.social and faculty @yhgrad.bsky.social at bit.ly/4o37EaN

Want to eradicate malaria-bearing mosquitoes? Try fungus, this researcher says A Northeastern postdoc has created a mathematical model that demonstrates how a fungal solution could control malarial mosquito populations.

A modeling study led by @pantbinod.bsky.social, a CCDD-affiliated postdoc in MIGHTE LAB, Northeastern University, shows fungal biocontrol could reduce malaria-carrying mosquitoes by up to 90%—full story at Northeastern Global News bit.ly/3LDJma1

Fast approximate Bayesian inference of HIV indicators using PCA adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature Naomi is a spatial evidence synthesis model used to produce district-level HIV epidemic indicators in sub-Saharan Africa. Multiple outcomes of policy …

New method for approximate Bayesian inference in extended latent Gaussian models uses adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature—improves accuracy & speed, demonstrated on small-area model for district-level epidemic estimates in Malawi. From authors incl CCDD’s @jeff-imai-eaton.bsky.social @ bit.ly/4oLH7QA

CCDD Authors cont’d: Melike Hazal Can, Hening Cui, Katherine Jia, Yunfei Li, Sylvia Ofori, @nswartwood.bsky.social, Caroline Buckee, @jeff-imai-eaton.bsky.social, Nicolas Menzies

Calibration of transmission-dynamic infectious disease models: A scoping review and reporting framework Author summary Calibration, the identification of parameter values so that model outcomes are consistent with observed data or other evidence, is often employed in the process of obtaining model resul...

Reporting on calibration methods in infectious disease models is inconsistent—our new PIPO framework & scoping review reveal gaps and offer guidance to boost transparency and reproducibility. Read more from CCDD authors Emmanuelle Dankwa, Léa Cavalli, @ruchitabalasub1.bsky.social @ bit.ly/4hPBw9g