When a new flu strain or a resurgent polio outbreak threatens, a team at Imperial College builds computer models that predict how fast the disease will spread and which interventions—school closures, travel bans, vaccine campaigns—will slow it down most effectively. This matters because public health agencies from the UK Health Protection Agency to the WHO must make real-time decisions during epidemics, often with incomplete data. The Centre’s models and rigorous data analysis provide the evidence those agencies need to choose strategies that save lives and limit economic disruption. Without such modelling, responses risk being too slow, too broad, or misdirected. If the research succeeds, the Centre will turn its advanced modelling methods into user-friendly software that public health professionals worldwide can run themselves—no specialist required. That could transform outbreak response in low-resource settings, where expert modellers are scarce. The work also trains the next generation of quantitative epidemiologists and deepens fundamental understanding of how diseases evolve genetically and how new treatments or vaccines alter transmission dynamics.
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The threat from new infectious diseases has been highlighted in recent years by the 2003 SARS epidemic, H5N1 'bird flu' and the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. Preparing for such eventualities is a priority for public health agencies and governments worldwide. Also, as scientific research delivers new approaches to controlling existing infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and polio, there is a need to determine what interventions are likely to work best to limit the disease and illness caused by a specific disease in a particular setting. In this context, computer modelling of the spread of diseases in populations coupled with scientifically rigorous data analysis have proven themselves as powerful tools for giving insight into how diseases spread and what can be done to limit that control that spread. The Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling undertakes research on these scientific methods and applies them to disease threats of concern. A key feature of the Centre is the close links it has made with with public health agencies - such as the UK Health Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO) - organisations which have to formulate and implement strategies to control infectious diseases. The senior scientists in the Centre are world-leaders in infectious disease modelling and analysis. They have broad experience in responding to real epidemics (e.g. BSE/vCJD, SARS, H5N1 bird flu and the 2009 flu pandemic), and undertaking epidemiological research on endemic diseases (such as malaria, HIV and polio). Their work directly influences disease control policy through the many interactions the Centre has with public health organisations and governments. The funding provided by MRC and Imperial College have allowed dedicated investment into the development of close collaborative partnerships with HPA, CDC and WHO - as well as with other important organisations who work on improving health in developing countries (notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). With each, we are working on a large number of research projects which have both scientific interest to Centre researchers and are contributing to the evidence base needed for public health decisions. Centre funding supports a core technical capacity available to all projects, and pays for dedicated postdoctoral research staff who spend substantial time at WHO (Geneva) and CDC (Atlanta) undertaking epidemiological research with the staff of those agencies and facilitating collaboration with other Centre staff. MRC funding has also facilitated a greater focus on collaboration, training and career development within the Centre - training the next generation of quantitative infectious disease epidemiologists. We are also involved in increasing knowledge of advanced modelling methods in public health institutions and the wider infectious disease research community, and so have run a number of introductory vocational short courses, both at Imperial College, but also on partner sites in Geneva and London. All of this applied activity depends on the more fundamental research undertaken in the Centre on the epidemic dynamics of different diseases, how diseases evolve genetically over time, and on analysing new approaches to control or treat diseases. Much of this research is multidisciplinary, involving Centre researchers working with leading clinical and experimental scientists around the world. Continued funding for the Centre will allow the collaborative partnerships established in the last 4 years to be sustained and enhanced, and new collaborations with researchers and health agencies in countries such as China and India to be developed. It will also fund new priority research areas, including work to implement the analysis and modelling methods developed by Centre staff as user-friendly computer programs that can be used by public health professionals around the world.
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