Karen Elaine Stella Hamre, MPH
Current course of study: Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Congratulations to Karen Hamre, who has been awarded a Fogarty fellowship for 2013-14. Learn more about her project and goals, in her own words:
Highland areas (>1,500m above sea level) are targeted for malaria elimination due to their unstable transmission patterns. Unlike in malaria holoendemic regions where partial immunities to malaria are built-up and sustained through years of infectious mosquito bites, populations in highland areas are susceptible to epidemics as their immune responses wane due to the highly seasonal and sporadic nature of transmission.
Dr. Chandy John and his colleagues at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Dr. John Vulule and Dr. George Ayodo, have been conducting research in the highland areas of Kipsamoite and Kapsisiywa in western Kenya for over a decade.
Current course of study: Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Congratulations to Karen Hamre, who has been awarded a Fogarty fellowship for 2013-14. Learn more about her project and goals, in her own words:
Highland areas (>1,500m above sea level) are targeted for malaria elimination due to their unstable transmission patterns. Unlike in malaria holoendemic regions where partial immunities to malaria are built-up and sustained through years of infectious mosquito bites, populations in highland areas are susceptible to epidemics as their immune responses wane due to the highly seasonal and sporadic nature of transmission.
Dr. Chandy John and his colleagues at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Dr. John Vulule and Dr. George Ayodo, have been conducting research in the highland areas of Kipsamoite and Kapsisiywa in western Kenya for over a decade.
Through his active and passive surveillance studies, he reported evidence of local malaria transmission interruption from April 2007-March 2008 after the Kenyan Ministry of Health implemented annual indoor residual spraying and switched to first-line artemisinin-combination therapy anti-malarial drugs for treatment of uncomplicated malaria.
Interrupting local transmission is the first step towards the elimination stage.
During my 11 months in Kisumu, Kenya, as a Fogarty Global Health Scholar, I plan to utilize the rich data Dr. John is collecting on anthropogenic (e.g., roof structure, wall material, bednet usage, numbers in household), demographic (e.g., age, gender), entomologic (e.g., vector density and species), environmental (e.g., rainfall and temperature), and spatial (e.g., global positioning information of households, schools, forests, swamps) factors to study the epidemiology of malaria across time and transmission patterns in the same study population and location.
I intend to contribute to the understanding of the epidemiology of malaria in this highland area by making comparisons of predictors of malaria risk before and after interruption of transmission.
Specifically, I aim to determine where clustering of incidence occurs (i.e., identify 'hot spots' of malaria) after the period of interruption, and evaluate whether these clusters and related predicting ecologic risk factors correlate with those reported during epidemic and non-epidemic months before interruption.
Understanding how malaria interruption may affect several predictors of risk in highland settings will help inform future targeted control and elimination strategies.
For more information on the Fogarty fellowships, visit the Global Peds website
