Please join us for an E-IPER dissertation defense by Alyson Singleton: "Global change, local risk: How development shapes infectious disease dynamics."

In-person: Y2E2 299

Virtual: Zoom webinar (password: 790674)

ABSTRACT

Land-use change and infrastructure development are altering the transmission of infectious diseases in tropical regions. Human activities such as road construction, urbanization, and agricultural expansion reshape ecosystems and human mobility patterns, creating new opportunities for disease emergence and increasing health risks in vulnerable populations. Using tools from epidemiology, ecology, remote sensing, and causal inference, I quantify how environmental change influences infectious disease dynamics across multiple systems. First, I use species distribution models to map the habitat suitability of Biomphalaria snails, the intermediate hosts of schistosomiasis, across Brazil. This work identifies how urbanization and climate shape transmission risk and provides methodological guidance for applying machine learning to disease ecology. Second, I examine how paving the Interoceanic Highway through the Peruvian Amazon in 2009 impacted the transmission of dengue virus. Using a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design, I estimate that the highway paving led to a 403% increase in dengue incidence in nearby communities. Third, I extend this analysis across the Brazilian Amazon, where I develop a novel dataset linking 25 years of highway construction records to health facility-level dengue surveillance data. This analysis reveals that highway expansion drives increases in dengue transmission across the Amazon Basin and identifies the underlying conditions that amplify these effects. Together, these studies demonstrate that infrastructure and land-use decisions can have profound and measurable impacts on infectious disease risk, underscoring the need to incorporate human health outcomes into impact assessments and sustainable development planning.