Emily Mader, NEVBD Program Manager
“The Cornell MPH Program is our longest partnership,” says Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEVBD) program manager Emily Mader. NEVBD focuses on workforce training, applied research, and developing a community of practice network across 13 states in the Northeastern United States and the District of Columbia. Their network approach brings together public health experts working with mosquito and tick prevention and control, with academic researchers focused on vector biology, to better understand and train practitioners in the best strategies for combating many vector-borne diseases.
“A lot of our work is trying to broaden collaborations across sectors that have historically not spoken with each other,” says Mader. The majority of her work with the center involves engaging with public health organizations, including state departments of health, county mosquito control agencies, and public works departments. “These are the folks with their boots on the ground to collect ticks and mosquitoes, test for pathogens, and mitigate risk.”
In 2017, a Cornell Office of Engagement Initiatives (OEI) grant funded an NEVBD project in collaboration with the MPH Program and its students to conduct and evaluate focus groups and trainings on tick-borne diseases with local physicians. The goal was to support more effective, useful conversations with their patients about ticks, the diseases they carry, and tick prevention. Mader says that to date, primary and emergency care physicians are not well-trained in vector-borne diseases during their academic medical training, unless they choose to enroll in a specific fellowship program or in continuing education courses.
MPH students have also supported NEVBD in a project that sought to understand the public’s knowledge of ticks and tick-borne disease prevention, and how the perceived risks of contracting these diseases can influence people’s enjoyment of the outdoors.
Climate change is playing a large role in shifts in prevalence of vector-borne diseases of concern across the Northeast. “We are already seeing things change,” says Mader. With mosquitoes, the main concerns are West Nile and Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) viruses, but some other mosquito-borne diseases are beginning to pop up more. “We have reports of dengue, yellow fever, and malaria at port cities every year,” says Mader. MPH students have also worked with NEVBD and its partners in collecting and analyzing mosquitoes in the field. “There are a lot of different traps for catching a mosquito,” says Mader, who points out that there are many different species of mosquito in the Northeast—how you trap them depends on the species, as well as the life stage of the mosquito. Some traps attract adult females, that can be analyzed for pathogens in surveillance programs using carbon dioxide, a fan, and a scent to attract a mosquito. “You can also dip for larvae in water, like in the spring around snow melt ponds in the woods,” says Mader.
This summer, students will be working with horse owners in coastal Virginia. An MPH student is collaborating with a Master of Science Entomology student, along with researchers and community organizations, to develop outreach materials for local horse owners on the importance of EEE vaccination. If infected, EEE attacks the nervous system, and horses are commonly infected with EEE in coastal Virginia. During an outbreak of EEE in 2019, several people in Massachusetts and Connecticut died from the disease. “We are trying to control mosquito vectors, and understand what species are bridge vectors,” says Mader, who emphasizes that much is still not understood about this disease. “Horses are sentinels in a lot of ways for what mosquito-borne disease risks could look like for humans or other mammals.”
Next year, MPH students will join a class on malaria biology and control taught by Dr. Laura Harrington, NEVBD program director and professor of entomology at Cornell University. “The public health interventions and challenges MPH students learn about in other parts of their curriculum also apply to malaria,” says Harrington. “Malaria is a disease of tremendous global importance.”
Written by Audrey Baker