Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research (CTIDR)

Some of the greatest human health impacts from infectious diseases are influenced by weather events and seasons. Billions are at risk annually from rainfall-dependent malaria, and viral pathogen spillover events and spread of vector-borne diseases (VBD) are increasing due to extreme weather events. In response to these urgent threats, Cornell University has created the Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research (CTIDR). To have the greatest health impacts, we must change research and practice paradigms from reactive focus on response to outbreaks to proactive understanding of the complex social and environmental conditions that promote risk of outbreaks. We hypothesize that community-engaged research integrating human, reservoir and vector behavior, weather, land-use, human and animal health, and vector/pathogen genomic evolution datasets, will enable creation of predictive epidemiological models and future generation and rigorous testing of preventative interventions. Working toward these goals, CTIDR’s Community Engagement Core (CEC) will intersect with and support the aims of the Administrative Core, Living Evidence Data Core, Project 1 Research Team (extreme weather events and land use changes result in wildlife-to-human viral spillover events), and Project 2 Research Team (community-based early warning system for weather-sensitive VBD can promote human health), and will specifically work to foster collaborative, community-engaged research teams that generate hypotheses and extend projects, and generate and use data to improve infectious disease prevention and community resilience. The CEC will build upon robust community engagement seeded by CTIDR members, and augment approaches and outcomes under the leadership of CEC lead Meredith (ESI). Over the next 3 years, to build reciprocal community engaged research relationships for the future, the CEC will (1) Promote and enhance community engagement in guiding CTIDR’s work by establishing community-embedded action research partnerships, and creating standard processes and venues to support communication of community ideas, issues, needs, and concerns to CTIDR’s members to inform and guide research activities that address community needs; (2) Aid communities in using CTIDR data and research to spur systems change by advancing partner communities’ public health literacy, including via sharing data and CTIDR research results into plain, action-focused language; and (3) Establish benefits and scalability of the CEC approach by applying mixed methods developmental evaluation to document processes, resource needs, outputs, and outcomes derived from CEC actions. Anticipated outcomes include active hypothesis-driven CBPR projects and documentation of expanded capacity and process/ systems change showing how research is being used by communities to improve infectious disease prevention, and resilience against the complex impacts of extreme weather events.