ABOUT
The Health Emergencies Center is characterized by multidisciplinarity and specialization. By combining knowledge of the epidemiology of infectious diseases and mathematical and computational modeling, the Health Emergencies Center develops quantitative epidemiology methods to strengthen epidemiological surveillance and response to disease outbreaks.
The center is committed in the study of all major transmissible diseases affecting human health and its research contributes in the areas of Surveillance of infectious diseases and Emergencies related to human diseases, vector borne diseases and pollution.
The Center is affiliated with the Italian National Institute of Health, and has various collaboration with NGOs, regional and local public health authorities aimed to study and improve surveillance of infectious diseases worldwide. Its research helped inform decision making, policy planning and response procedure related to various disease of public health relevance such as influenza (project CIMPLEX) and it is currently involved in the European project MOOD (MOnitoring Outbreak events for Disease surveillance)
The Center contributed in various project aiming to mitigate the public health impacts of human diseases and is at the forefront of modeling and evaluating the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic progression in Italy closely collaborating with the Italian National Institute of Health. The research conducted at the Center timely informed the decision making authorities of the potential outcome of public health strategies under different scenarios not only for the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but also for influenza pandemics (project FLUMODCONT), Ebola, varicella and measles.
The public health consequence of worldwide spread of competent mosquito vector is an increased risk of transmission of vector-borne disease. This risk became apparent during the Zika pandemic in South America (project ZIKAlliance) and in local outbreaks of chikungunya and dengue in Europe. The Center was actively involved in characterizing the transmission risk, modelling the impact and build the preparedness required to face future vector-borne epidemics.
