Measuring how vaccines protect people and communities
Official title: Causal Inference in Infectious Disease Prevention Studies
Funded at Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill · NIH-11296240 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project creates better ways to show how vaccines protect vaccinated people and also reduce disease spread to others.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Chapel Hill, United States) |
| Project start | December 1, 2009 |
| Project end | January 31, 2031 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $394,262 |
| NIH project number | 2R01AI085073-15 |
| Project ID | NIH-11296240 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
People who take part in vaccine trials, vaccine effectiveness studies, or public health surveillance programs could contribute data that this research uses.
✕Less likely to help
Patients not involved in vaccine or infectious disease studies are unlikely to directly benefit from this grant’s activities.
What this research studies
Researchers will build new statistical tools to measure both the direct protection a vaccine gives an individual and the indirect protection it provides to others (herd immunity). They will use data from vaccine trials, observational studies, and computer simulations to test and refine these methods. The work focuses on situations where one person’s vaccination can change another person’s risk of getting sick, a problem called interference. The goal is to make results from vaccine studies clearer for doctors and public health decision makers.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could lead to clearer vaccine recommendations and better public health policies that account for community-level protection.
How similar studies have gone: Prior research has produced some methods for measuring herd effects, but this project aims to create more general and robust tools building on that earlier work.
Where this research is happening
-
Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Hudgens, Michael G — Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- Study coordinator: Hudgens, Michael G
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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.