Marcy Ekanayake-Weber
University at Albany, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis keep spreading in the United States even though antibiotics can treat them. One reason they are hard to control is that people differ a lot in their sexual behavior and partner networks.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
sexually transmitted infections
chlamydia
gonorrhea
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Characterize how sexual behavior and partner networks vary across people in the New York Capital Region, using survey data and community-based group model building workshops.
- Develop a flexible agent-based model (ABM), a simulation of individual people and their partnerships, for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis spread, calibrated with empirical behavior and disease-burden data.
- Use the calibrated ABM to project the long-term impacts of STI interventions and build an interactive dashboard that lets local public health professionals compare strategies.
More about the research
Most computer models of STI spread ignore those differences. Those models rest on oversimplified assumptions, so they can give public health officials a misleading picture of which interventions will work.
Why it matters
STIs remain common in the United States despite effective treatment. Local health departments need better ways to choose among prevention and testing strategies. A model built on realistic, community-informed behavior data could give more accurate forecasts of what each intervention would achieve. The planned dashboard could help public health staff in the New York Capital Region tailor STI programs to their own communities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Makella Coudray
University of Central Florida, FL·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Assess the acceptability, feasibility and accuracy of self-collected versus clinician-collected genital and non-genital specimens for STI detection among trans women, using mixed methods.
Alun Lloyd
North Carolina State University, NC·Mathematics & Statistics
Measure how residents of Ibagué, Colombia differ in adopting mosquito-prevention behaviors around the home, such as water container management, and identify the cues that drive them, using observational and experimental social science methods.
Fanghui Shi
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Build computable phenotype algorithms that identify sexually transmitted infection (STI) patterns from electronic health records and survey data in the All of Us research program.
The school
University at Albany: 15 labs on PI Pages, $472M a year on research, 144 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.