Health co-benefits of environmental interventionsWe have been working together with researchers from the School of Public Health to look at the health co-benefits of actions that help mitigate impactful environmental change. Currently we are taking a closer look at the health co-benefits of transitions to lower impact food systems, health co-benefits of urban green spaces, and health and biodiversity co-benefits of environmental interventions with a focus on infectious diseases.
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Emerging infectious diseasesInfectious diseases threaten individual wellbeing, are a major public health burden, can impact economies and, as most recently seen with the west African Ebola outbreak, can have international consequences in places far removed from their origins. Infectious diseases can also threaten agricultural systems and wild plant and animal biodiversity. We seek to understand what factors (e.g., land-use and climate changes) promote the emergence and shape the global distributions of infectious diseases, with applications from public health, to economics to conservation.
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Ecosystem service-disservice trade-offsNature provides a range of services that are fundamental to human health and well-being. On the other hand, nature also provides a number of natural enemies, such as infectious diseases and harmful plants and animals, that can contribute to the burden of disease. In some cases, human activities and impacts can exacerbate disservices and reduce services. Taking infectious diseases and human-wildlife conflict as examples, we are looking at the ways in which ecosystem services could be being undermined by ecosystem disservices and exploring how better management of disservices could provide win-win solutions for conservation and health.
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Snake bite eco-epidemiologyWe have recently been awarded a couple of research grants from the British Ecological Society and the Medical Research Council to investigate snake bite ecology and epidemiology. We plan to bring some ecological insights into understanding the spatial distribution of snake bite in South Asia, a snakebite hotspot, with a view to trying to work out what will happen in future under rapid climate and extensive land-use change. Check out this blog post for more details.
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