We are a multidisciplinary research group focused on unraveling the drivers of infectious disease transmission as well as socially and spatially disparate outcomes in infection, morbidity and mortality. This work covers a broad array of pathogens ranging from tuberculosis to influenza, diarrheal disease, COVID-19, and others. Methodologically, our work sits at the interface between infectious disease data and statistical and simulation models. We are motivated by a strong commitment to global and domestic health equity backed by rigorous analysis.

Our work covers a broad array of methods and pathogens, but is grounded in the underlying philosophy of Bayesian inference. This means that we focus on the integration of sources of data across biological, social, and spatial scales, using models that can account for the information and uncertainty associated with these different sources. Because of this, our work is informed by ideas and data from an array of fields including infectious disease epidemiology, molecular genotyping/genomics, spatial statistics, data science, environmental epidemiology, clinical medicine, and others.

Funding

The Simons Foundation

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Featured Content

Kelly Broen, Rob Trangucci, Jon Zelner

January 2021 Int J Health Geogr

Measuring the impact of spatial perturbations on the relationship between data privacy and validity of descriptive statistics

Background: Like many scientific fields, epidemiology is addressing issues of research reproducibility. Spatial epidemiology, which often uses the inherently identifiable variable of participant address, must balance reproducibility with participant privacy. In this study, we assess the impact of several different data perturbation methods on key spatial statistics and patient privacy.

Methods: We analyzed the impact of perturbation on spatial patterns in the full set of address-level mortality data from Lawrence, MA during the period from 1911 to 1913. The original death locations were perturbed using seven different published approaches to stochastic and deterministic spatial data anonymization. Key spatial descriptive statistics were calculated for each perturbation, including changes in spatial pattern center, Global Moran’s I, Local Moran’s I, distance to the k-th nearest neighbors, and the L-function (a normalized form of Ripley’s K). A spatially adapted form of k-anonymity was used to measure the privacy protection conferred by each method, and its compliance with HIPAA and GDPR privacy standards.

Results: Random perturbation at 50 m, donut masking between 5 and 50 m, and Voronoi masking maintain the validity of descriptive spatial statistics better than other perturbations. Grid center masking with both 100 × 100 and 250 × 250 m cells led to large changes in descriptive spatial statistics. None of the perturbation methods adhered to the HIPAA standard that all points have a k-anonymity > 10. All other perturbation methods employed had at least 265 points, or over 6%, not adhering to the HIPAA standard.

Conclusions: Using the set of published perturbation methods applied in this analysis, HIPAA and GDPR compliant de-identification was not compatible with maintaining key spatial patterns as measured by our chosen summary statistics. Further research should investigate alternate methods to balancing tradeoffs between spatial data privacy and preservation of key patterns in public health data that are of scientific and medical importance.

DOI Online Access

Recent Publications

Has the relationship between wealth and HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa changed over time? A temporal, gendered and hierarchical analysis

This study examines the relationship between wealth and HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa to determine whether and how this …

Emily Andrus, Sanyu A. Mojola, Elizabeth Moran, Marisa C. Eisenberg, Jon Zelner

DOI Online Access

The DIOS framework for optimizing infectious disease surveillance: Numerical methods for simulation and multi-objective optimization of surveillance network architectures

Disease surveillance systems are essential for understanding the epidemiology of infectious diseases and improving population health. A well-designed surveillance system can achieve a high level of fidelity in estimates of interest (e.g., disease trends, risk factors) within its operational constraints. Currently, design parameters that define surveillance systems (e.g., number and placement of the surveillance sites, target populations, case definitions) are selected largely by expert opinion and practical considerations. Such an informal approach is less tenable when multiple aspects of surveillance design—or multiple surveillance objectives—need to be considered simultaneously, and are subject to resource or logistical constraints. Here we propose a framework to optimize surveillance system design given a set of defined surveillance objectives and a dynamical model of the disease system under study. The framework provides a platform for in silico surveillance system design, and allows the formulation of surveillance guidelines based on quantitative evidence, tailored to local realities and priorities. The framework is designed to facilitate greater collaboration between health planners and computational and data scientists to advance surveillance science and strengthen the architecture of surveillance networks.

Qu Cheng, Philip A Collender, Alexandra K Heaney, Xintong Li, Rohini Dasan, Charles Li, Joseph A Lewnard, Jon Zelner, Song Liang, Howard H Chang, Lance A Waller, Benjamin A Lopman, Changhong Yang, Justin V Remais

DOI Online Access