Theodore C. White
University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Fungal infections in the U.S. have become more common and more widespread over the past 40 years.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Microbiology & Immunology
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
fungal disease
mycoses
environmental epidemiology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Estimate regional U.S. trends in incidence, hospitalization and death from major fungal diseases, using de-identified Oracle/Cerner electronic health records for over 96 million patients after correcting for data biases.
- Measure how temperature, precipitation, soil moisture and extreme events such as dust storms and floods affect fungal disease incidence, using time-series analysis of EHR and California coccidioidomycosis surveillance data.
- Test whether patient and community factors, such as rural residence, income, comorbidities and housing quality, change the link between environmental exposures and fungal disease outcomes.
- Forecast near-term trends in fungal disease incidence across the U.S. from EHR and surveillance data.
More about the research
New fungal pathogens have emerged, resistance to antifungal drugs has risen, and more people have weakened immune systems. Weather and soil may add to this risk. They can change where disease-causing fungi grow, lengthen the season when spores spread, and scatter spores during extreme events. Yet past studies of fungal disease have been too small and too limited in time and place to say clearly who is most at risk and why.
Why it matters
Fungal infections are rising across the U.S., but limited surveillance has left their environmental drivers poorly understood. Identifying how weather, extreme events and patient circumstances raise fungal disease risk could help protect high-risk groups. These include rural, low-income and underinsured patients. Near-term forecasts could alert clinicians and public health agencies to coming increases in infections such as Valley fever.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bruce Alexander
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build regional capacity for climate and health research by linking multidisciplinary expertise and institutional partnerships to questions that align with the stated priorities of American Indian and rural communities in the Upper Midwest.
Kirsten Wiens
Temple University, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Identify which sociodemographic, clinical, and environmental factors predict hospitalization and death from Vibrio infection, using multi-level models of CDC COVIS and FoodNet surveillance records that control for confounders at individual and county levels.
Karen Norris
University of Georgia, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether the NXT-2 vaccine, a lab-made peptide based on a fungal protein shared across species, triggers strong immune responses in nonhuman primates.
The school
University of Missouri-Kansas City: 7 labs on PI Pages, $57M a year on research, 94 research doctorates a year.
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