Infectious Disease Dynamics and Control in School Settings
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Background
Infectious diseases can spread rapidly in schools, threatening the health of children and reducing time spent at school. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, school closures were used as a key intervention strategy to control levels of infection, and are likely to be considered in future pandemics. However, school closures carry huge economic and social costs due to loss of learning, increased childcare burden and general reduction in children's wellbeing. The pandemic highlighted the huge evidence gap regarding the impact of interventions within schools that minimise transmission whilst also minimising disruption to children's education. Moving forward, we need to build an understanding of the potential effectiveness of a wider range of interventions, their appropriateness against different infectious diseases, and their broader impact beyond infection control.
Aims
The aim of this workshop is to bring together epidemiologists, mathematical modellers, engineers, social scientists and public health specialists to identify the key challenges in understanding how best to control infection spread within school. The one-day workshop will consist of a series of talks and discussions on the following themes:
- Understanding contact and transmission within schools, and between school and community.
- Identifying effective methods of mitigating infection risk in schools.
- Measuring the costs of infection and interventions on education and wellbeing.
A key goal of this event is to catalyse discussion between individuals in the research areas of infectious disease modelling, social sciences, engineering and public health, fostering collaborations that will address key challenges relating to the risks of schools in infection spread.
Organisers: Sam Moore (Lancaster University), Trystan Leng (Imperial College London) and Jonathan Read (Lancaster University)
Please see below for a provisional timetable.