Introduction to ESEI

Professor Steve LindsayDurham University

Key global challenges - 2011

Climate change

Technological change

Globalisation

Population growth

Food, water and energy

security

Poverty alleviation

Infectious diseases

Urbanisation

Biodiversity loss

Stolen from A. Watkinson

Infectious Diseases - 2011

• The world is experiencing rapidly changing patterns in health

• Emergence of new infectious diseases e.g. H5N1, Ebola, West Nile virus

• Re-emergence of old infections e.g. tuberculosis, measles & pertussis

• Persistence of intractable infectious diseases e.g. malaria & trypanosomiasis

• Key drivers are often environmental & social in nature

• ESEI was set up to respond to the threat from new and emerging pathogens so that we are better able to anticipate, prepare for, and control future outbreaks

• This ground-breaking initiative aimed to establish novel inter-disciplinary approaches to studying the ecology of infectious diseases.

• The vision of ESEI was to establish truly inter-disciplinary teams, conducting high quality state-of-the-art innovative research to inform and impact on policy and practice

Overview of ESEI

ESEI would take a more ‘holistic’ systems approach to examining the drivers of infectious disease

Holistic systems approach:Inter-relationships between the host, pathogen and the social & natural environment.

• Launched under the umbrella of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership and is a partial contribution to the LWEC strategic objective on protecting human, plant and animal health from diseases, pests and environmental hazards.

• Aligns with the concept of ‘one health’, which seeks to link medical and veterinary science by drawing on a common pool of knowledge between the two sectors in order to exploit the potential of animal disease research to provide insights into human health.

• Phase I - Catalyst Grants (2010): to enable development of new inter-disciplinary partnerships and development of innovative, ‘mould breaking’, research ideas and research strategies.

• Phase II - Research Consortia Grants (2011): to fund interdisciplinary teams of researchers conducting high quality innovative interdisciplinary research that would not usually be supported through existing funding schemes.

Phased Funding

Principles of ESEI Research Consortia

1. Generating new research paradigm/innovation

2. High potential Public Health impact

3. Inter-disciplinarity

4. Zoonoses (preference)

Awarded ESEI Consortia

ENIGMA - Sources, Seasonality, Transmission and Control: Campylobacter and human behaviour in a changing environmentPI - Sarah O’Brien (Liverpool)

MONKEYBAR - Defining the biomedical, environmental and social risk factors for human infection with Plasmodium knowlesiPI – Chris Drakeley (LSHTM)

URBANZOO - Epidemiology, Ecology and Socio-Economics of Disease Emergence in NairobiPI - Eric Févre (Liverpool)

What’s the meeting about?

During the course of this workshop we will hear the potential impact ESEI research will have on policy and practice.