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Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies Funds New Center for Eco-Epidemiology

The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies (YIBS) has announced that it will establish a Center for Eco-Epidemiology (YIBSCEE) at Yale. Durland Fish, Professor of Epidemiology in EPH's Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases (EMD), will serve as Director of the new center. The creation of a forum for exchange between the disciplines of epidemiology and ecology is extremely important, Fish says, because while many environmental issues also pose health threats, finding solutions to these problems has been complicated by the intellectual gap that exists between epidemiology, a medical discipline, and ecology, an environmental discipline.

Yale's newly created Center for Eco-Epidemiology will explore, from an interdisciplinary perspective, issues that bear on both public health and the environment, such as the impact of an $8 billion ecological restoration program in the Florida Everglades on 15 mosquito-borne viruses endemic to the area.

“Epidemiology and ecology have a lot in common. Both collect data from the field and both try to understand how organisms persist in their environment. Ecologists are better at this in some ways and epidemiologists are better in other ways. But, the two disciplines do not communicate enough to overcome each other's deficiencies,” says Fish. “Medical epidemiology lacks a comprehensive understanding of natural environmental processes that influence disease agents and environmental science lacks the sound methodology and advanced technology of contemporary epidemiological investigation.” The lack of collaboration between the disciplines has been reinforced by funding barriers: the National Science Foundation does not fund medical research and the National Institutes of Health does not fund ecological research. The goal of YIBSCEE is to bridge the disciplinary gap.

The Lyme disease and West Nile Virus epidemics illustrate the need for an interdisciplinary approach to addressing public health challenges arising from environmental events. In the case of Lyme disease, reforestation of the Northeast has caused changes in the population density and distribution of the white-tailed deer and, correspondingly, its natural parasite the deer tick. These changes have caused an epidemic of Lyme disease as humans have increasingly come into contact with ticks infected with the Lyme disease spirochete. Implementing environmental interventions that would decrease human risk of contracting Lyme disease requires specific ecological knowledge. In the case of West Nile Virus, the risk of infection in humans, wildlife and domestic animals is dependent on characteristics of certain mosquito populations. Mosquito control requires detailed knowledge of environmental factors that affect mosquito abundance. Thus, although effective control of Lyme disease and West Nile Virus requires environmental solutions, only public health agencies, which do not have staff trained to develop environmentally-based mitigation strategies, are responsible for developing interventions and policy.

“Yale is in an excellent position to facilitate this interdisciplinary effort [between epidemiology and ecology] because we have a medical school on the same campus as ecology and environmental science. We can play a leadership role in both training and research. Both disciplines will benefit from integration, as will society,” says Fish.

YIBSCEE, which will be operational in the fall of 2005, will host symposia and seminar series, foster the creation of new undergraduate and graduate courses dealing with health and the environment, and coordinate Yale's existing cross-disciplinary curricula. One of YIBSCEE's goals is to help develop an interdisciplinary doctoral program in epidemiology and ecology/environmental science at Yale. Topics YIBSCEE will address include global warming, biodiversity, environmental change, wildlife, environmental impact assessment, and bioterrorism.

Faculty from Yale's School of Medicine (Department of Internal Medicine and EPH), School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology will participate in YIBSCEE activities. Faculty from EPH's Divisions of EMD, Environmental Health Sciences, and Biostatistics will be involved.

–Story by Christy Gordon