In random order:
2 new papers. Over summer we published 2 new papers on the digital surveillance cohort Grippenet.fr.
Man flu or woman flu? We analyzed 6 full influenza season with Grippenet.fr data to recover commonly known risk factors for an ILI episode and discover new ones. We found that women are at higher risk of contracting the infection, even after discounting for household composition and contacts with children. An addition to the interesting debate about man vs. woman flu, we'll look further into this problem integrating the database of GP surveillance.
Factors associated with influenza-like-illness: a crowdsourced cohort study from 2012/13 to 2017/18
C Guerrisi, M Ecollan, C Souty, L Rossignol, C Turbelin, M Debin, T Goronflot, P-Y Boëlle, T Hanslik, V Colizza, T Blanchon
BMC Public Health 19, 879 (2019)
From recommended to mandatory vaccination. On January 1st, 2018, France changed its policy for vaccinations against childhood diseases, changing 8 recommended vaccines into mandatory. We asked Grippenet.fr population about their opinion on this change of policy. 2/3 of the French population were in favor with the measure, though 60% found it to be authoritarian. A nice editorial on how vaccination policies are currently evolving in Europe accompanied the article.
Population perception of mandatory childhood vaccination programme before its implementation, France, 2017
P Mathieu, A Gautier, J Raude, T Goronflot, T Launay, M Debin, C Guerrisi, C Turbelin, T Hanslik, C Jestin, V Colizza, T Blanchon, L Rossignol
Eurosurveillance 24(25):pii=1900053 (2019)
1 student ends, 1 student starts. Caroline Guerrisi will soon finish her PhD, with a defense planned for November 20 to discuss her work on digital surveillance in France. Here's her thesis. Laura Di Domenico, currently finishing her Master between the University of Trento, Dept of Mathematics, and INSERM, will enroll the PhD School of Public Health next November to work on the CDR4EBOLA project.
4 new grants. We got 4 new grants selected over summer, these have been amazing months. More details here, new cycle at EPIcx soon to start, massive hiring ahead!
EPIcx freshens up. We took advantage of these months of great events to update and freshen up the lab website to reflect the evolution of the lab. You will see some changes.
- The research direction on multistrain epidemics is becoming a full-body spin-off led by Chiara Poletto, deserving a novel digital space - follow Chiara for updates.
- We added a novel line of research on the use of mobile phone data to assess the epidemic risk. This is something we've already been working on in the past (e.g. here and here) and that we're now pursuing in the context of developing countries. It is in collaboration with Orange, UCLA, INRIA, University of La Havana.
- A larger space will soon be dedicated to global animal health. It will cover a large-scale study on European livestock industry we are conducting in collaboration with 14 partners in Europe. We also collaborate on livestock industries in Brazil, Uruguay.
- Zoonoses will be the link between our work and the work of Raphaelle Metras who will join INSERM and our team in November, yay!
Networks2021. This is the very first Joint Sunbelt and NetSci Conference, hosted by IUNI in Washington, DC, in July 2021. Vittoria Colizza is member of the Steering Committee. It is going to be a unique and exciting event - the biggest network conference ever?!