Designing Scalable Strategies to Reduce Infectious Disease in Underserved Communities

Enteric infections, including antibiotic-resistant infections, disproportionately impact low-resource communities. Among all global deaths due to antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, 86% occur in low- and middle-income countries. Scalable prevention strategies are urgently needed. In this talk I will present field and lab studies that exploit new tools in molecular microbiology to identify zoonotic and environmental transmission pathways of enteric pathogens and antibiotic resistance. I will also discuss inline chlorination as an approach to reduce exposure to diarrheal and resistant pathogens by reducing the time and cost burden for accessing safe drinking water. Finally I will present work to design a novel chlorine dosing device and strategies to scale inline chlorination across diverse settings to serve the estimated 2 billion people globally using contaminated drinking water.

Speaker:Amy Pickering, UC Berkeley