Spatial distribution and determinants of childhood vaccination refusal in the United States.

Parental refusal and delay of childhood vaccination has increased in recent years in the United States. This phenomenon challenges maintenance of herd immunity and increases the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. We examine US county-level vaccine refusal for patients under five years of age collected during the period 2012-2015 from an administrative healthcare dataset.

Modeling the Social and Spatial Proximity of Crime: Domestic and Sexual Violence Across Neighborhoods.

Objectives: Our goal is to understand the social dynamics affecting domestic and sexual violence in urban areas by investigating the role of connections between area nodes, or communities. We use innovative methods adapted from spatial statistics to investigate the importance of social proximity measured based on connectedness pathways between area nodes. In doing so, we seek to extend the standard treatment in the neighborhoods and crime literature of areas like census blocks as independent analytical units or as interdependent primarily due to geographic proximity.

Strategic testing approaches for targeted disease monitoring can be used to inform pandemic decision-making.

More than 1.6 million Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) tests were administered daily in the United States at the peak of the epidemic, with a significant focus on individual treatment. Here, we show that objective-driven, strategic sampling designs and analyses can maximize information gain at the population level, which is necessary to increase situational awareness and predict, prepare for, and respond to a pandemic, while also continuing to inform individual treatment.

infection with frequent viral coinfection contributes to postinfectious hydrocephalus in Ugandan infants.

Postinfectious hydrocephalus (PIH), which often follows neonatal sepsis, is the most common cause of pediatric hydrocephalus worldwide, yet the microbial pathogens underlying this disease remain to be elucidated. Characterization of the microbial agents causing PIH would enable a shift from surgical palliation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) accumulation to prevention of the disease. Here, we examined blood and CSF samples collected from 100 consecutive infant cases of PIH and control cases comprising infants with non-postinfectious hydrocephalus in Uganda.

Quantifying spatio-temporal variation of invasion spread.

- The spread of invasive species can have far-reaching environmental and ecological consequences. Understanding invasion spread patterns and the underlying process driving invasions are key to predicting and managing invasions. - We combine a set of statistical methods in a novel way to characterize local spread properties and demonstrate their application using simulated and historical data on invasive insects.

An ensemble approach to predicting the impact of vaccination on rotavirus disease in Niger.

Recently developed vaccines provide a new way of controlling rotavirus in sub-Saharan Africa. Models for the transmission dynamics of rotavirus are critical both for estimating current burden from imperfect surveillance and for assessing potential effects of vaccine intervention strategies. We examine rotavirus infection in the Maradi area in southern Niger using hospital surveillance data provided by Epicentre collected over two years.

An attraction-repulsion point process model for respiratory syncytial virus infections.

How is the progression of a virus influenced by properties intrinsic to individual cells? We address this question by studying the susceptibility of cells infected with two strains of the human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV-A and RSV-B) in an in vitro experiment. Spatial patterns of infected cells give us insight into how local conditions influence susceptibility to the virus. We observe a complicated attraction and repulsion behavior, a tendency for infected cells to lump together or remain apart.

Automated Factor Slice Sampling.

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms offer a very general approach for sampling from arbitrary distributions. However, designing and tuning MCMC algorithms for each new distribution, can be challenging and time consuming. It is particularly difficult to create an efficient sampler when there is strong dependence among the variables in a multivariate distribution.

Social Capital and Human Mortality: Explaining the Rural Paradox with County-Level Mortality Data.

The "rural paradox" refers to standardized mortality rates in rural areas that are unexpectedly low in view of well-known economic and infrastructural disadvantages there. We explore this paradox by incorporating social capital, a promising explanatory factor that has seldom been incorporated into residential mortality research. We do so while being attentive to spatial dependence, a statistical problem often ignored in mortality research.