Zhiyuan Song and I got a seed grant from Center for Innovation in Global Health Ebola Innovation at Stanford. We will use our expertise to solve global health challenges. Abstract below.

Dynamically evaluating and mapping Ebola outbreak risks in West and Central Africa in response to social-environmental changes

Since the first recorded outbreak of human Ebola virus disease in 1976, the Ebola epidemics have evolved from rare small­scale endemics to frequent larger­scale epidemics. The current ongoing outbreak in West Africa is unprecedented in terms of both spread area and infected cases. In addition, for the first time, more than one Ebola epidemics concurred in separated regions independently (West Africa and DRC). This intensified trend of Ebola outbreaks urges a dynamically updated risk evaluation in response to the social­environmental changes in West and Central Africa. In particular, recent studies suggest that deforestation and urbanization could be important drivers for the increases in frequency and size of the outbreaks. To dynamically evaluate the risk, we propose to perform a synthetic analysis to quantify Ebola risks and the effects from land use, wildlife distribution, climate, economic, demographic and public health factors.