Public Health Modeling News

Every year, more than 11,000 deaths in the U.S. could be attributed to wildfire smoke because it contains fine particulate matter (PM2.5), according to a new study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.

Yale researchers and scientists in 14 other countries have established a new system of dengue lineages which, they say, will allow better tracking and improve vaccine development. They recently described the new system in a study published in the journal PLOS Biology.

Pollutants from fires can travel great distances and have the potential to affect human health thousands of kilometers away. In a new study, researchers from the Yale School of Public Health investigated whether long-term exposure to fine particles in wildfire smoke was associated with increases in causes of death.

In an exclusive email interview with Contagion, Alexandra Savinkina, MSPH, PhD student specializing in the epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, discusses her research on COVID vaccinations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the Northeast, it’s projected to get warmer and wetter, and the rainfall and temperature will impact mosquito populations, said Philip Armstrong, associate clinical professor of epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and a medical entomologist who runs Connecticut’s mosquito surveillance program.

A YSPH-led research team is investigating innovative new ways to identify and mitigate outbreaks of HIV among people who use drugs.

The U.S. is making the same mistakes with the H5N1 bird flu virus as with COVID, even as the highly pathogenic avian influenza continues spreading on American farms and raising alarms that it could mutate to become a pandemic, YSPH Associate Professor Gregg Gonsalves and colleagues argue in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent diagnosis with a case of West Nile virus has brought renewed attention to the little-known illness that is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States. Yale School of Public Health Associate Professor Nathan Grubaugh, an infectious disease epidemiologist, said the number of cases of West Nile virus nationally has stayed relatively stable over the past decade with about 1,000 to 3,000 cases per year.

Former President Donald Trump has promised that, if re-elected to the presidency, he would cut federal funding for any schools with a vaccine or mask mandate. His promises highlight the continued politicization of CDC-recommended public health best practices. Yale School of Public Health Associate Professor Gregg Gonsalves joins a discussion on anti-vaccine rhetoric during the current election.