(above) Image recently published paper in The Journal of Open Source Software on MetaWards: A flexible metapopulation framework for modelling disease spread. Full paper available here.

JUNIPER Consortium Newsletter
February 2022

Dear friends and associates of JUNIPER,

Welcome to this months edition of the JUNIPER consortium's newsletter. This month we have our monthly seminar at the end of the month, so there is still time to attend! We have also had a number of papers and preprints published, see below for a summary of this months highlights.

Events

MONTHLY SEMINAR SERIES 

Speaker: Dr Emily Nixon (University of Bristol)
Title: Who takes part in social contact surveys? A mixed methods analysis of participation with relevance to epidemic modelling
Abstract: Social contact survey data are widely used in modern epidemic models, yet the biases in such data have not been much explored. I will present the results from a study that I did in collaboration with qualitative researchers (https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.28.22270006) where we tried to identify potential biases and to find out how engagement and accuracy with these types of surveys can be improved. We ran focus groups comprising of university students who had (n=13) and had not (n=14) completed a social contact survey during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative findings were explored quantitatively by analysing participation data. Our results will help to optimise completion and accuracy of future social contact surveys.
Date: Mon 28th February 12:00pm-13:00pm (GMT)
Further details and link to watch the talk here

WEEKLY SEMINAR SERIES

We have a weekly informal seminar on Wednesdays at 16:00-17:00 GMT followed by a virtual beer hour. If you are interested in attending please sign up here. 

Recent Papers and Articles

Article published in The Journal of Open Source Software on MetaWards: A flexible metapopulation framework for modelling disease spread by members at the Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Warwick. You can read the full paper here.

Article in Epidemics on Challenges in estimation, uncertainty quantification and elicitation for pandemic modelling. You can read the full paper here.

Preprint on the impacts of increased global vaccine sharing on the COVID-19 pandemic; a retrospective modelling study by members at the University of Warwick available here.

Preprint on novel methods for estimating the instantaneous and overall COVID-19 case fatality risk among care home residents in England by members at the University of Manchester is available here.

We are happy to be working with Plus Magazine to bring the work from consortium members to a wider audience. Check out the full list of articles here. 

For a full list of outputs from the consortium, check out our website here​.

Upcoming events

Genomic, Evolutionary and Epidemiological Approaches for Pandemics is a one-day workshop on 15th March which will look at the integration of phylogenetic and epidemiological tools. Find out more including how to register here. 

Socio-Economic Determinants of Coronavirus in the UK is a one-day workshop on 5th April which will do this by give an overview of the emerging socio-economic patterns seen through the lens of the UK COVID-19 public health data, as well as discussing the socio-economic factors from both a public health and social science perspective. Find out more including how to register here.

Thank you as always for your continued support and interest. We hope you all have a lovely break over Christmas and we look forward to more interactions with you all in 2022. 

- JUNIPER consortium

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Contact: Dr Ciara Dangerfield - ced57@cam.ac.uk (JUNIPER scientific programme manager)

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(above) Figure from JUNIPER consortium preprint on impacts of increased global vaccine sharing on the COVID-19 pandemic available here.