New HSPH Center To Address Flu

With flu season looming, the Harvard School of Public Health recently founded a new research center that will focus on improving the understanding of infectious diseases and making information on the subject more accessible to the public and policy makers.

The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics will be funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) with a renewable grant of approximately $2 million a year for five years.

The new HSPH organization will become MIDAS’s second “Center of Excellence,” and will be devoted both to research and its applications. The first is located at the University of Pittsburgh.

“We focus on policy interaction, outreach, education, and research,” said Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the HSPH who will be heading the new research center. “Four mandates instead of just one.”

The grant allotment will officially begin next week, Lipsitch said, adding that the Center’s immediate goals include the continuation of “urgent” work on the H1N1 flu.

“We’re trying to follow the path of the H1N1 as it evolves over the autumn and winter,” he said.

Lipsitch said that the Center already has produced substantial research in time for flu season’s arrival.

Edward Goldstein, a research scientist at the HSPH who has been modeling the dynamics of H1N1 transmission in households, said he is looking forward to working in the new organization. One of his recent projects for the Center looked into the benefits of dispensing the common antiviral drug Tamiflu to individuals at high-risk of getting the H1N1 virus before flu cases begin coming in droves.

“I hope that our results will soon be used to advise policy makers to make decisions,” Goldstein said.

But the HSPH center aims to reach even farther, according to Lipsitch. He said that he hoped the Center will also actively educate the next generation of “data-savvy modelers” by offering graduate courses and funding research opportunities.

The idea of a new research center solely devoted to modeling infectious diseases arose last spring when NIH announced the possibility of new funding, said Lipsitch.

According to Irene Eckstrand, a MIDAS Scientific Officer, the Harvard center will be “differentiated not by the questions they seek to answer, but by the methods they use.”

HSPH’s researchers will be focusing on the use of mathematical models to analyze the spread of infectious diseases. In contrast, MIDAS’ other centers have primarily relied on “individual-base models,” which involve finding patterns in tracking an enormous number of individuals.

“With a mathematical model, you give up a little realism, but you gain understanding of what’s happening,” Lipsitch said.

“I’m really excited about the Harvard center,” said Eckstrand. “I think it has all the strengths to take on the leadership role in developing modeling and research planning tools for the United States.”

—Staff writer Helen X. Yang can be reached at hxyang@fas.harvard.edu.