UCL IRDR’s dPHE lead a Workshop on Outbreak! Infectious Diseases at the UCL Global Citizenship Programme

In the first week of June 2019, UCL IRDR’s Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies (dPHE) participated in the facilitation of an interdisciplinary workshop, the Global Citizenship Programme Outbreak 2019, to engage in with under- and postgraduate students from UCL and beyond.

Dr Patty Kostkova (Associate Professor) and Dr Caroline Wood (Senior Research Fellow & Coordinator) from dPHE and Dr Shanshan Zhou (IRDR Enterprise and Promotions Officer) kicked-off on day seven’s session by delivering a series of interesting lectures on digital public health. Dr Patty Kostkova spoke about the importance of taking advantage of the digital world we live in, and opportunities of utilising reliable data from social media such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many more, to use as a form of surveillance for accessing information regarding infectious disease outbreaks and the population’s health in general.

Figure 1: Dr Patty Kostkova delivering a lecture on Digital Public Health at the GCP2019

Dr Caroline Wood and Dr Shanshan Zhou engaged in a discussion with prospective students regarding postgraduate opportunities within UCL IRDR’s dPHE. They disseminated its key aims, achievements and the various research projects that is currently in progress – these ranged from .1) use of m-gamification apps in Nigeria (West Africa) to monitor the behavioural change in the patterns of prescribing antibiotics in Nigeria, and 2.) using mobile phone applications as a surveillance tool for ZIKA infected mosquitoes to predict potential outbreaks in Brazil. They took the opportunity to showcase the postgraduate courses hosted by IRDR and dPHE, and the career prospects in digital public health.

Finally, the team led an interactive session with the students to conduct an outbreak investigation on an infectious illness called ‘Stripy coloured hair’ infection (it’s a weird infectious illness that causes… stripy hair. Apparently, it can only be cured by consuming lemons). The students were split into groups of six and tasked with developing a mobile phone application that can be used as a medium for data collection and, in turn, serve as a tool for surveillance and early warning for preventing the disease. Group 4 (see figure 2) presented their app proposal called “Stripy Lemon” and were selected winners by Dr Kostkova and her team as the best application for preventing ‘Stripy colour hair disease’. Well done Group 4!

Figure 2: Dr Patty Kostkova congratulating Group 4 – who came up with the best concept for developing an app for preventing ‘Stripy coloured hair’ infection

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