Project: Investigating the household risk of group A Streptococcus infection
McVernon Group
Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is a ubiquitous bacterium, responsible for multiple diseases. These diseases range from superficial skin and throat infections through to severe sequelae such as poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis and rheumatic heart disease. Households are often an important driver of the spread of communicable diseases, with contacts between household members usually more frequent and more intense than contacts occurring outside the household. This project involves a large linked dataset, encompassing emergency department presentations, hospital admissions, and deaths in Victoria and containing information on households. This project could involve a review of published studies examining household risk of group A Streptococcus infection; a descriptive analysis of the household data for all group A Streptococcus conditions in the dataset (scarlet fever, acute rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, invasive GAS); and a longitudinal analysis of individuals who appear more that once in the dataset.
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McVernon Group
13 vacancies
Professor Jodie McVernon is a physician with subspecialty qualifications in public health and vaccinology. She has extensive expertise in clinical vaccine trials, epidemiologic studies and mathematical modelling of infectious diseases, gained at the University of Oxford, Health Protection Agency London and the University of Melbourne. Her work focuses on the application of a range of cross-disciplinary methodological approaches, including mathematical and computational models, to synthesise insights from basic biology, epidemiological data and sociological research. These models advance understanding of the observed epidemiology of infectious diseases and inform understanding of optimal interventions for disease control.
McVernon Group Current Projects
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Modelling spatial and demographic heterogeneity of malaria transmission risk
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Investigating combined impacts of interventions against scabies and group A Streptococcus using transmission models
PhD/MPhil
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Mathematical modelling of soil-transmitted helminths
PhD/MPhil
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Understanding the impact of new testing for infectious diseases
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Investigating the household risk of group A Streptococcus infection
Master of Biomedical Science
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Optimal design of competitive mixture experiments
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Optimising use of existing and emerging SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics to support the public health response to COVID-19
PhD/MPhil
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Invasive Streptococcus A – piecing together clinical, genomic and public health aspects of the puzzle
PhD/MPhil
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Buruli ulcers’ Most Wanted – Understanding the mosquito associated with the flesh-eating bacteria, Mycobacterium ulcerans.
Master of Biomedical Science
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Measuring the association between influenza presentations and invasive group A Streptococcus infections (iGAS)
Master of Biomedical Science
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Bias in vaccine effectiveness studies
Master of Biomedical Science
Research degrees at the Doherty Institute are administered by the University of Melbourne.