Michigan State University (MSU) is using a $1.1 million
grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to perfect a health
innovation that would allow researchers to track the path of diseases.
Researchers will start by tracking sleeping sickness hotbeds in Kenya.
According to excerpts from the article:
The four-year project will analyze factors such as
climate change, land use and distribution of the tsetse fly in the east African
country.
The bite of the tsetse spreads the potentially fatal
“sleeping sickness,” or trypanosomiasis, to humans and livestock, although it
is currently impossible to predict where the disease will surface next, said
Joseph Messina, MSU associate professor of geography and lead researcher.
“In the long run, the goal of the model is to actually
predict the areas where people or animals will be at risk for the disease,”
Messina said. “So one, 10 or 50 years from now, if you’re a government planner
and you’re building a disease-control program, you’ll have that information.”
Because the research draws MSU faculty from multiple
departments and areas of expertise – including climatology, entomology and
epidemiology – it falls in line with the NIH “Roadmap for Medical Research,”
Messina said. The federal initiative promotes interdisciplinary health
research.
The seeds of the project were sown at a February 2006
meeting in Nairobi, where Messina and other MSU researchers gathered to
brainstorm research ideas relating to Africa. The meeting was supported with a
grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies,
which also supports interdisciplinary research.
"The NIH funding awarded to Dr. Messina and his team
indicates that the seed funding we have provided to researchers through the
Health and Biomedical Research Initiative is beginning to pay dividends,” said
Ian Gray, vice president for research and graduate studies. “Our faculty are
very competitive and with the proper research infrastructure they will garner
their share of competitive federal grants."
Read the entire article here.
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