The complexity of infectious disease epidemiology, and the interdisciplinary advances in disease control observed in the 21st century, suggest that a multidisciplinary approach is essential to the study of future emerging and reemerging infectious agents. The Harvard School of Public Health has a long history of research in infectious disease epidemiology, in a variety of academic departments.
The program in Infectious Disease Epidemiology is enhanced by a growing body of research activity. Research based in the Epidemiology department currently is focused in the following key areas:
- Epidemiology of pediatric HIV infection, including the impact of ART on long-term survival and other outcomes
- The behavioral and biological aspects of HIV transmission and natural history, including prevention interventions
- Transmission dynamics and within-host population biology of infectious disease, combining in vivo (murine) experimental studies with statistical and computationally-complex mathematical modeling (population-dynamical) approaches
- Exhaled particles and their relationship to infectivity of influenza
- Identifying risk factors for the transmission of drug sensitive and resistant M. tuberculosis, using molecular and conventional epidemiologic methods
- Comparative genomics of M. tuberculosis strains, elucidating the genetic basis of transmissibility in drug resistant strains