SoS 180: Dr. Pollock on Monkey Pox, Chlamydia, and why people are so fussy about sex

Chris sits down with Dr. Emily Pollock, a Prevention Effectiveness Fellow at the CDC in the Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention, where she brings a more robust understanding of human behavior to the challenges of STI modeling for public health. Dr. Pollock earned her PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Washington, with a certificate from the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the same institution. Her dissertation, "Epidemics as Complex Systems: Demography, Networks, and Treatment of Chlamydia trachomatis," focused on applying dynamic network analysis to understand how behavioral, biological, and biomedical factors influence chlamydia reinfection. Most recently, she worked as a data analytics and modeling team member for the CDC's response to the monkeypox outbreak. She has helped develop agent-based network models to understand behavioral drivers of monkeypox transmission and the effects of behavior on the epidemic's trajectory. She discusses two papers: First, the monkeypox model she and her team recently published: "Modeling the Impact of Sexual Networks in the Transmission of Monkeypox virus Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men" which you can find at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7135e2.htm?s_cid=mm7135e2_w And this paper: "Impacts of Changing Sexual Behavior on Chlamydia and Gonorrhea Burden Among US High School Students, 2007 to 2017," which has some fascinating insights into changing rates of sexual behavior and their contribution to some declines in adolescent STI diagnoses. Find it here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000001390 [dx.doi.org] ------------------------------ Emily's e-mail: ruu7@cdc.gov -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: cgildee@uw.edu