Stockholm Group for Epidemic Modeling. S-GEM: Seminars & talks

The aim with this workshop is to bring together researchers with different background to give a broad picture of current trends in chlamydia research. The workshop is arranged by the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University and the Stockholm Group for Epidemic Modelling (S-Gem), with financial support from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.

Please register by sending an e-mail to chlamydia-workshop@s-gem.se (Conference attendance is free of charge but pre-registration is required)

Place

Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University. Kräftriket,
Roslagsvägen 101, house 5, room 14

Program

(updated 29 august: Hans Fredlund changed placec with Björn Herrmann)

9.30-10.30 John J. Potterat “Experiences and lessons learned from the Colorado Springs STD projects”

11.00-12.00 Ann Jolly, Health Canada “Patterns of Chlamydia and gonorrhoea infection in sexual networks in Manitoba, Canada”

13.30-14.30 Hans Fredlund, Unit for Infectious Disease Control, Dept Clin Microbiology, Örebro University Hospital “Genotyping of C.trachomatis. An instrument to improve contact tracing?”

15.00-16.00 Björn Herrmann, Section of Clinical Microbiology, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden, “The new genetic variant of Chlamydia trachomatis – an exciting story with several lessons”

16.30-17.00 Helena Carré, “The importance of contact tracing (prel. title)”

9.00-10.00 Robert Brunham, BC Ctr Dis Control, Vancouver: "The Unexpected Impact of a Chlamydia Trachomatis Infection Control Program on Susceptibility to Reinfection."

10.30-11.30 Alden Klovdahl, Australian University, “Measuring Mixing: Some new measures relevant for better understanding the spread and control of Chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases.”

11.30-12.30 Devon D. Brewer, Interdisciplinary Scientific Research, Seattle, USA “Reliability of Reported Sexual Partnership Dates and Measures of Concurrency”

13.30-14.30 Birgitte Freiesleben de Blasio, University of Oslo. “Preferential attachment in sexual networks”

Discussant: Anders Tegnell, Director, Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare.

Björn Herrmann, Section of Clinical Microbiology, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden

Ann Jolly, Health Canada “Patterns of Chlamydia and gonorrhoea infection in sexual networks in Manitoba, Canada

Robert Brunham, BC Ctr Dis Control, Vancouver: "The Unexpected Impact of a Chlamydia Trachomatis Infection Control Program on Susceptibility to Reinfection."

13 april

Workshop on antibiotic resistance

A workshop with the aim to point out the importance of mathematical and
stochastic modeling in understanding the spread of resistance to a mixed
audience of mathematicians, statisticians and people from the medical
profession is organized by S-GEM in collaboration with Stockholm University.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University. Kräftriket,
Roslagsvägen 101, house 5, room 14.

Organizers: Åke Svensson and Patricia Geli

9.30-10.15 Otto Cars: "The global problem of antibiotic resistance-more questions that anwers?"

10.45-11.30 Odo Diekmann: "Three aspects of the spread of antibiotic resistance: hospital re-entry, multiple acquisition routes, multiple colonization sites"

13.30-14.15 Karl Ekdahl: "Penicillin-resistant pneumococci - potentials for modeling"

14.15-15.00 Laura Temime: "Modeling antibiotic resistance in populations: from deterministic to stochastic to agent-based models"

15.30-16.15 Dan I. Andersson: "Which experimental data do we need and how do we get them?"

16.15-17.00 Patricia Geli: "From Penicillin Binding Proteins to Epidemics: different aspects of models of antibiotic resistance"

Otto Cars is Professor at the Antibiotic Research Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, Clinical Bacteriology and Infectious Diseases, Uppsala University and head of the Swedish Strategic Programme for the Rational Use of Antimicrobial Agents and Surveillance of Resistance (STRAMA)

Odo Diekmann is Professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Utrecht and of Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica

Karl Ekdahl is a Professor at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet and Strategic Advisor to the Director at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

Laura Temime is an assistant professor in the Health Safety Department of the CNAM University in Paris and an associated researcher at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM)

Dan I. Andersson is Professor at the department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Uppsala University

Patricia Geli is a doctoral student in the Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University and biostatistician at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control

Tuesday 19th September

Vaccination strategies and intervention

S-GEM's second workshop will be on vaccination strategies and intervention. It will take place at Stockholm University. The workshop is organised by S-GEM in collaboration with Stockholm University.

We are very proud to have assembled many interessting speakers, truly dignities in their field. This is an all day event. Don't miss!

Program:

9.15-9.30: Introduction

9.30-10.15: Anders Tegnell, Socialstyrelsen: Modelling and vaccination policies.

10.15-10.45: Coffee

10.45-11.30: Reuven Cohen, Technion, Israel: Acquaintance immunization.

11.30-12.15: Rose-Marie Carlsson, Smittskyddsinstitutet: Pertussis and the Swedish vaccination program.

12.15-13.30: Lunch

13.30-14.15: Martin Eichner, Tuebingen, Germany: Learning about long-term vaccination effects from outbreak data.

14.15-15.00: Frank Ball, Nottingham, England: Optimal vaccination strategies for stochastic epidemics among a population of households.

15.00-15.30: Coffee

15.30-16.15: John Glasser, CDC, USA: Evaluation of hypothetical mechanisms for the changing epidemiology of pertussis throughout the developed world by analysis of natural experiments in Sweden.

16.15-17.00: Tom Britton, Stockholm University: Estimating vaccine effects.

Participation is free of charge

The workshop is supported by The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (www.fas.se)

28th September 15:00

Kay Axhausen from ETH, Zürich

5:e september 16-16.30 (swedish)

Våra sociala kontaktmönster och deras betydelse för spridningen av infektionssjukdomar

I vårt dagliga liv skapar vi tillsammans ett nätverk av olika typer av kontakter. Genom detta nätverk riskerar olika sjukdomar att spridas. Strukturen hos nätverket kan både underlätta och försvåra uppkomsten av epidemier. Detta föredrag kommer att beskriva vilka förutsättningar som krävs för att en epidemi skall bryta ut, samt hur olika typer av kontaktnätverk ser ut och kan studeras. De kontaktstrukturer som kommer att diskuteras är bl.a. sexuella kontaktmönster, kontakter mellan patienter på sjukhus samt kontakter mellan människor i vardagen.

3rd May 15:00-16:00

Frank Ball, Nottingham University

Statistical inference for epidemics among a population of households

This talk is concerned with a stochastic model for the spread of an SIR (susceptible -> infective -> removed) epidemic among a closed, finite population that contains several types of individuals and is partitioned into households. A pseudolikelihood framework is presented for making statistical inference about the parameters governing such epidemics from final outcome data, when possibly only some of the households in the population are observed. The framework includes parameter estimation, hypothesis tests and goodness-of-fit. Asymptotic properties of the procedures are derived when the number of households in both the sample and the population are large, which correctly account for dependencies between households. The methodology is illustrated by applications to data on a minor variola outbreak in São Paulo and to data on influenza outbreaks in Tecumseh, Michigan.

8th March 15:00

Cramérrummet, rum 306, hus 6 i Kräftriket, se www.math.su.se/gemensamt/hitta.html

Åke Svensson:

Generation times in epidemic models

The recent interest in emerging infectious diseases has stressed the interest in the early progress of an epidemic. It is important to understand the properties that govern the early spread of the infection. In complement to the well-established basic reproduction number (the mean number of persons infected by the first spreader) it is important to understand how infectiousness varies in time. The concept of generation time is meant to describe the time interval between successive infections.

We will discuss how generation time can be defined and how its distribution decides the epidemic progress. We will also consider how to to estimate generation times from different kinds of studies. Most of the results are derived from theory of branching processes and demography.

Welcome!

31st January 14:30 to 15:30

Avian influenza in humans – findings from Vietnam and Turkey

Karl Ekdahl will give a presentation about a recent article in Archives of Internal Medicine which has recently recieved alot of attention, see abstract below. Karl will also give a perspective on the current situation in Turkey. The seminar is co-arranged by S-GEM and MEB.

Is exposure to sick or dead poultry associated with flu-like illness: A population-based study from a rural area in Vietnam with outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza. Arch Internal Med 2006; 166:119-23.

The verified human cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Vietnam may represent only a selection of the most severely ill patients. The study objective was to analyze the association between flu-like illness, defined as cough and fever, and exposure to sick or dead poultry.

A population-based study was performed from April 1 to June 30, in FilaBavi, a rural demographic surveillance site with confirmed outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza among poultry. We included 45 478 randomly selected (cluster sampling) inhabitants. Household representatives were asked screening questions about exposure to poultry and flu-like illness during the preceding months; individuals with a history of disease and/or exposure were interviewed in person.

A total of 8 149 individuals (17.9%) reported flu-like illness, 38,373 persons (84.4%) lived in households keeping poultry, and 11 755 (25.9%) resided in households reporting sick or dead poultry. A dose-response relationship between poultry exposure and flu-like illness was noted; poultry in the household (odds ratio, 1.14; 95% confidence interval, 0.96–1.12), sick or dead poultry in the household, but with no direct contact (odds ratio, 1.14, 95% confidence interval, 1.06–1.23), and direct contact with sick poultry (odds ratio, 1.73; 95% confidence interval, 1.58–1.89). The flu-like illness attributed to direct contact with sick or dead poultry was estimated to be 650-750 cases.

Conclusions
Our epidemiological data are consistent with transmission of mild highly pathogenic avian influenza to humans and suggest that transmission could be more common than anticipated, though close contact seem required. Further microbiological studies are needed to validate these findings.

7 November, 2005

Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University. Kräftriket, Roslagsvägen 101, house 6, room 14.

Welcome to our first public workshop on Networks in Epidemiology. S-GEM is proud to introduce a full day of interesting speakers in the forefront of their fields. Among the seven speakers two are visitors from The Netherlands and US. Devon Brewer will present his research on person, place, time, DNA and behavior from an epidemiological prespective. Jacco Walinga talks about contact networks.

Participation is of course free of charge. Please e-mail if you with to take part.

9.00-9.30: Johan Giesecke, European Centre for Disease Control
Introduction

9.30-10.15: Lisa Brouwers, Swedish Institute of Infectious Disease Control
Micropox - Microsimulation of smallpox outbreaks in Sweden

10.15-10.45: Coffee

10.45-11.45: Jacco Wallinga, RIVM, Netherlands
Uncovering the contact networks behind emerging epidemics

11.45-12.30: Tom Britton, Stockholm University
Random graphs, infectious diseases and vaccination strategies

12.30-13.45: Lunch break

13.45-14.30: Tommi Asikainen, Stockholm University
Analysis of the smallpox outbreak in Stockholm 1963

14.30-15.30: Devon Brewer, Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Seattle
Investigating person, place, time, DNA, and behavior for a comprehensive infectious disease epidemiology

15.30-16.00: Coffee

16.00-16.45: Fredrik Liljeros, Stockholm University
A contact network for the whole Swedish population?

16.45: Close off

The workshop is supported by The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, www.fas.se.

5 October, 2005

Dr. Helbing is a leading researcher in modells of social behavior with several papers in Nature and Science. Topics include congestion patterns
in traffic flows, self-organization phenomena in pedestrian crowds,
human trail formation, Mexican waves (La Ola) in stadia during mass
events interdependent decision behavior and scaling laws in
traveller behavior.

May 12, 2005

Colds, Crimes and Currencies: understanding the dynamical properties of real-world complex networks

May 18, 2005

Tom Britton, Professor at the Department of Mathematical Statistics, Stockholm University

We consider a stochastic epidemic model having two types of severity - mild and severe - and the type of severity depends on the amount of infectious exposure an individual receives. Large population properties of the model are derived: a rigorous branching process approximation to the early stages of the epidemic, and a strong law and associated central limit theorem for the final outcome of epidemics which take off. (Joint work with Frank Ball)

April 27, 2005

In this talk we present an overview of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods as applied to problems of statistical inference for infectious disease data. We operate within a Bayesian framework, and use stochastic transmission models that describe the underlying spread of infection. Applications described include estimation of vaccine efficacy; determining routes of infection; estimation of transmission rates; and others.

Archive

30-31 August

Workshop on the Current Chlamydia Epidemic in Western Societies