Projects
Mobility Analysis for Pandemic Prevention Strategies (MAPPS)
Principal Investigator: Mark Lurie
Agency: National Science Foundation, Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) Phase I
This project will provide a framework to collect, capture, curate and analyze complex, multi-scale human movement and social interaction data that can be adapted to understand a wide variety of pressing problems including climate change, tracking of wildlife, disaster relief, management and urban planning. With the establishment of the Center for Mobility Analysis for Pandemic Prevention Strategies (MAPPS) at Brown University, this project aims to: categorize, organize and synthesize existing data on mobility and social mixing; develop new and innovative tools for measuring mobility and social mixing; and use that information to develop and populate mathematical models aimed at predicting and preventing future pandemics.
See Project website: https://www.mappsproject.com/
Tuberculosis Prevention in South Africa: Understanding User Experience and Feasibility with Geolocation Tracking Using a Mobile Device Application
Principal Investigator: Mark Lurie (PI)
Agency: Lura Cook Hull Trust
In this study we investigate the feasibility of using a cell-phone-based application to measure human mobility among a group of patients recently initiating TB treatment in Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Migration, Urbanization and Health in a Transition Setting
Investigators: M White (Principal Investigator), S McGarvey (Co-I), M Lurie (Co-I) and others;
Agency: NIH/NICHD (HD083374-01A1)
This five-year observational study aims to shed light on issues of how mobile individuals acquire and manage chronic diseases and access long-term care, combining insights from a new longitudinal cohort study of 4,000 migrants and stayers and more than twenty years of extant data for a population of now more than 100,000 in demographic surveillance. Our study site is a district in rural northeast South Africa and the locations to which migrants from that origin move.
Healthcare system resilience in Bangladesh and Haiti in times of global changes (climate-related events, migration and Covid-19)
Investigators (Select): Malabika Sarker
Agency: French National Research Agency as part of the presidential call “Make Our Planet Great Again” (MOPGA); co-financed by the Centre National de Ressources et de Resilience
Since climate change, pandemics and population mobility are challenging healthcare systems, empirical and integrative research to study and help improve the health systems resilience is needed. We present an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research protocol, ClimHB, focusing on vulnerable localities in Bangladesh and Haiti, two countries highly sensitive to global changes. We develop a protocol studying the resilience of the healthcare system at multiple levels in the context of climate change and variability, population mobility and the Covid-19 pandemic, both from an institutional and community perspective.