Award Abstract # 2109293
Identifying local-to-global "win-win" solutions for human health and sustainability through infectious disease control
NSF Org: |
DEB
Division Of Environmental Biology
|
Recipient: |
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME DU LAC
|
Initial Amendment Date:
|
July 20, 2021 |
Latest Amendment Date:
|
January 29, 2024 |
Award Number: |
2109293 |
Award Instrument: |
Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Colette St. Mary
cstmary@nsf.gov
(703)292-4332
DEB
Division Of Environmental Biology
BIO
Directorate for Biological Sciences
|
Start Date: |
July 1, 2021 |
End Date: |
June 30, 2026 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award
Amount: |
$2,500,000.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to
Date: |
$2,500,000.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date:
|
FY 2021 = $2,500,000.00
|
History of Investigator:
|
-
Jason
Rohr
(Principal Investigator)
jasonrohr@gmail.com
-
Alex
Perkins
(Co-Principal Investigator)
|
Recipient Sponsored Research
Office: |
University of Notre Dame
940 GRACE HALL
NOTRE DAME
IN
US
46556-5708
(574)631-7432
|
Sponsor Congressional
District: |
02
|
Primary Place of
Performance: |
University of Notre Dame
940 Grace Hall
Notre Dame
IN
US
46556-5708
|
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
02
|
Unique Entity Identifier
(UEI): |
FPU6XGFXMBE9
|
Parent UEI: |
FPU6XGFXMBE9
|
NSF Program(s): |
Ecology of Infectious Diseases
|
Primary Program Source:
|
01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002122RB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
|
Program Reference
Code(s): |
7242,
9251
|
Program Element Code(s):
|
724200
|
Award Agency Code: |
4900
|
Fund Agency Code: |
4900
|
Assistance Listing
Number(s): |
47.074
|
ABSTRACT

The unprecedented rate of infectious disease emergence, the need to feed 11 billion people by 2100, widespread poverty, and rapid degradation of the environment represent some of the most formidable ecological and public health problems of the 21st century. Because health often drives policies across the globe and is regularly linked to ecology, it can be a vital lever for securing a sustainable future for the developing world, where disease, poverty, and human population growth are most rampant, and resources to address these issues are most limited. The research team investigates how disease control strategies at local-to-global scales benefit human and environmental health. This study builds on the facts that part of every calorie that the more than 1.5 billion worm-infected humans on the planet consume is wasted on feeding or combating these worms, that mass drug administration (MDA) to treat worm infections is cheap and cost-effective, and that fertilizers that wash off an agricultural field fuel waterborne worm infections and reduce water quality. Reducing food wasted on parasitic worms would provide more food for humans and reduce the conversion of natural areas to agriculture, simultaneously mitigating disease, hunger, poverty, climate change, and ecosystem service deficits. Specifically, the research team tests the efficacy of controlling the disease schistosomiasis by removing aquatic vegetation that harbors the snails that are the source of the worms that infect humans. The fieldwork is carried out in Senegal and serves as a prototype for how the management of infectious diseases can promote sustainability across the planet. This project is transformative because it innovatively integrates principles of ecology, disease biology, and socio-economics to develop mitigation strategies and policy recommendations to address global ecological and public health problems. The project provides research opportunities for a postdoctoral researcher and undergraduate and graduate students, including individuals from underserved groups, and it promotes international collaboration with scientists in Senegal.
The first aim of this project is to conduct a global bioeconomic analysis to holistically quantify the substantial economic benefits of MDA to treat human helminths, which, in turn, should more widely promote the use of MDA to reduce not only disease but also undernutrition, poverty, and environmental harm. The second aim of this project is to use randomized control clinical trials to evaluate whether harvesting aquatic vegetation and using it as compost, livestock feed, or fuel for gas-producing biodigesters will decrease human waterborne diseases and poverty, reduce water pollution by recycling nitrogen and phosphorous captured in the plants, and increase profits, open water access, and food and energy production. The third aim of this project is to begin to integrate, translate, and scale these innovations using remote sensing technology to map the abundance of aquatic vegetation and village remoteness. The bioeconomic experimental and mathematical approaches used in this project are general in their construction, offering broad generalizability of the theoretical aspects of this project beyond the specific parasites and locations of empirical work. This allows the project to serve as a blueprint for how to i) disrupt poverty-disease traps, ii) design and test incentives for community-led maintenance of public health benefits, iii) predict the effects of environmental change on the transmission of other parasites, and importantly, iv) synergistically integrate socio-economic and environmental systems to develop innovations that simultaneously improve human health and sustainability. The results from this study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, a public seminar series in the U.S. and Senegal, and workshops at Senegalese research centers.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Doruska, Molly_J and Barrett, Christopher_B and Rohr, Jason_R
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Haggerty, Christopher J. E. and Halstead, Neal T. and Civitello, David J. and Rohr, Jason R.
"Reducing disease and producing food: Effects of 13 agrochemicals on snail biomass and human schistosomes"
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Environmental Science & Technology
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Harjoe, Carmen C. and Buck, Julia C. and Rohr, Jason R. and Roberts, Claire E. and Olson, Deanna H. and Blaustein, Andrew R.
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PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
, v.15
, 2021
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JR, Rohr
"Risk of Human Exposure to the Intestinal Schistosome, Schistosoma mansoni, across Seasons along the Senegal River"
Gastroenterology and Hepatology Research
, v.7
, 2021
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Nguyen, Karena H. and Boersch-Supan, Philipp H. and Hartman, Rachel B. and Mendiola, Sandra Y. and Harwood, Valerie J. and Civitello, David J. and Rohr, Jason R.
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, v.118
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Ortega, Nicole and Roznik, Elizabeth A. and Surbaugh, Kerri L. and Cano, Natalia and Price, Wayne and Campbell, Todd and Rohr, Jason R.
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"Ontogeny of immunity and potential implications for co-infection"
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"The Atrazine Saga and its Importance to the Future of Toxicology, Science, and Environmental and Human Health"
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"Use of snail traps for surveillance of schistosome-shedding snails in rice fields and fragile ecosystems"
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(Showing: 1 - 43 of 43)
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