How disease spreads in households can be tracked with smarter statistics
Official title: Phylogenetics, causal inference, and model diagnostics for longitudinal studies of infectious disease transmission and control
Funded at Ohio State University · NIH-11378525 · Data updated 2026-11-12
A new research project will improve statistical methods to study how infectious diseases pass between people in households and close contacts, helping public health teams respond more effectively.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Ohio State University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Columbus, UNITED STATES) |
| Project start | August 1, 2025 |
| Project end | July 31, 2030 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $516,398 |
| NIH project number | 5R01AI184507-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11378525 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Not a patient-facing trial; findings will mainly inform public health strategies for infectious diseases in communities and households.
✕Less likely to help
There is no direct trial or treatment for individual patients in this grant.
What this research studies
This project builds advanced statistical tools to model who-infected-whom and how factors like vaccination, age, and masks affect both susceptibility and infectiousness. It will develop faster Bayesian algorithms that can handle genetic sequence data from pathogens to improve estimates, while reducing computational burdens. The team will also create methods to assess how well these models fit the data and to quantify secondary attack risks and infectiousness profiles to guide intervention choices.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the work could lead to more accurate and timely guidance for controlling outbreaks in households and similar settings.
How similar studies have gone: Previous work using pairwise survival analysis has shown improved inference over traditional methods, with ongoing development building on that foundation.
Where this research is happening
-
Ohio State University
Columbus, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Kenah, Eben — Ohio State University
- Study coordinator: Kenah, Eben
Related research
Other NIH-funded projects on the same topics.
-
Latin American Center for Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance and Readiness
A regional collaboration in Peru and neighboring countries aims to strengthen early warning and monitoring for viruses that could jump from animals to people, helping communities prepare for outbreaks.
-
Center in Latin America to monitor emerging infectious diseases
A U01 grant supporting a collaboration between Peruvian and U.S. researchers to improve early detection and surveillance of regionally relevant viruses that could affect people, animals, and crops in Peru and neighboring areas.
-
Acanthamoeba as a modern model parasite to study infectious disease biology and mitochondria
A five-year project will define the mitochondrial proteins and pathways of Acanthamoeba castellanii to advance infectious disease biology and parasite metabolism.
-
IDEAL project helps predict vaccine response, infections, and asthma in early childhood
A Child-focused program will collect and share saliva, blood, and tissue samples from diverse infants to find biological patterns that predict how vaccines work, how respiratory infections occur, and who develops asthma.
-
Understanding how early-life immune development affects vaccine responses and asthma risk in children
This project uses lab-grown human immune cells from infants and young children to explore why some kids respond poorly to vaccines and are more prone to respiratory infections and asthma.
-
Multi-omic endotypes of vaccine response, respiratory infections, and asthma in children
A parent-friendly look at how early-life immune development shapes how kids respond to vaccines and stay free from lung infections and asthma, using advanced biological profiling.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.