Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Aug;115(8):1216-23.
doi: 10.1289/ehp.9806.

Environmental determinants of infectious disease: a framework for tracking causal links and guiding public health research

Joseph N S Eisenberg  1 , Manish A Desai, Karen Levy, Sarah J Bates, Song Liang, Kyra Naumoff, James C Scott
Affiliations

Environmental determinants of infectious disease: a framework for tracking causal links and guiding public health research

Joseph N S Eisenberg et al. Environ Health Perspect. 2007 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Discoveries that emerging and re-emerging pathogens have their origin in environmental change has created an urgent need to understand how these environmental changes impact disease burden. In this article we present a framework that provides a context from which to examine the relationship between environmental changes and disease transmission and a structure from which to unite disparate pieces of information from a variety of disciplines.

Methods: The framework integrates three interrelated characteristics of environment-disease relationships: a) Environmental change manifests in a complex web of ecologic and social factors that may ultimately impact disease; these factors are represented as those more distally related and those more proximally related to disease. b) Transmission dynamics of infectious pathogens mediate the effects that environmental changes have on disease. c) Disease burden is the outcome of the interplay between environmental change and the transmission cycle of a pathogen.

Results: To put this framework into operation, we present a matrix formulation as a means to define important elements of this system and to summarize what is known and unknown about the these elements and their relationships. The framework explicitly expresses the problem at a systems level that goes beyond the traditional risk factor analysis used in public health, and the matrix provides a means to explicitly express the coupling of different system components.

Conclusion: This coupling of environmental and disease transmission processes provides a much-needed construct for furthering our understanding of both specific and general relationships between environmental change and infectious disease.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Environmental determinants of infectious disease (EnvID) framework.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Transmission cycle groupings.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Matrix for mapping the relationship between proximal environmental characteristics and transmission cycles. GMO, genetically modified organism.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Importance of ecologic and social processes from different transmission groups.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Causal diagram of the relationship between roads and diarrheal disease.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Anderson RM, May RA. Infectious Diseases of Humans: Dynamics and Control. New York: Oxford University Press; 1991.
    1. Anderson W. Natural histories of infectious disease: ecological vision in twentieth-century biomedical science. Osiris. 2004;19:39–61. - PubMed
    1. Barrett R, Kuzawa CW, McDade T, Armelagos GJ. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases: the third epidemiologic transition. Ann Rev Anthropol. 1998;27:247–271.
    1. Birley MH. The Health Impact Assessment of Development Projects. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; 1995.
    1. Black H. Environmental and public health: pulling together the pieces. Environ Health Perspect. 2000;108:A513–A515. - PubMed

Publication types