The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC, Beijing) and Fogarty International Center (FIC) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, USA, in a joint effort supported by Elsevier, hosted the International Forum on Influenza and Other Respiratory Infections 2011 and the FREE Multinational Influenza Seasonal Mortality Study (MISMS) Training Workshop at the Crowne Plaza Parkview in WuZhou, Beijing, China, on August 2–6, 2011.
The two-and-a-half-day forum (August 2-4) was an international gathering of leading public health officers, scientists, and researchers and focused on the burden, transmission, virology, and evolution of influenza and other respiratory infections in East Asia. Presentations and discussions were led by experts from the NIH, US CDC, World Health Organization (WHO), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, China CDC, and other leading healthcare and academic institutions.
During the training workshop (August 4-6), MISMS researchers assisted participants with the analysis of their regional and national influenza-related data. Particular emphasis was given to the mathematical and statistical modeling of epidemiologic, vital statistic, and virologic data, as well as the analysis of phylogenetic and antigenic data.
Thank you to everyone who attended and for making our workshop a great success. We look forward to continuing the collaborations we created in Beijing and hope that you do the same!
Meeting relevance
Ongoing collaboration with China is of vital importance because past research has suggested that tropical areas of East-Southeast Asia play a key role in the global emergence of seasonal influenza viruses. Still, the epidemiology and evolutionary dynamics of influenza in China remain understudied. Using epidemiological data, laboratory surveillance, and molecular data shared through close collaboration with China CDC scientists, this partnership will help characterize the geographical and temporal dynamics of influenza viruses in China and elucidate the role of China in the global migration of influenza strains. This research will provide critical insights for a better understanding of the emergence and global spread of new influenza variants, and help design more effective influenza vaccines and control efforts in China and elsewhere. Continuing collaboration with Chinese scientists will also serve as an invaluable resource that will help to build and disseminate the influenza evidence-base, both in this region of the world and globally.
Agenda
Summary
Final Agenda
Download the agenda for the general scientific meeting
Workshop Day 1 - Thursday, August 4, 2011
1:30 - 2:30 pm Eddie Holmes, Pennsylvania State University (USA); FIC (USA): Phylogenetics 101
2:30 - 3:30 pm Andrew Rambaut, University of Edinburgh (UK); FIC (USA): Practical in Bayesian methods in phylogenetics
3:30 - 4:00 pm Coffee break
4:00 - 5:00 pm Andrew Rambaut, University of Edinburgh (UK) & FIC (USA): Practical in Bayesian methods in phylogenetics (con'd)
Workshop Day 2 - Friday, August 5, 2011
9:00 - 10:30 am Wladimir Alonso and Dan Weinberger, FIC (USA): Practical in time-series and spatial analysis
10:30 - 11:00 am Coffee break
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Derek Smith, University of Cambridge (UK) and FIC (USA): Antigenic cartography
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 - 2:10 pm Yiming Bao, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, NIH (USA): The NCBI Influenza Virus Resource
2:10 - 3:00 pm Short talks by workshop participants
3:00 - 3:30 pm Coffee break
3:30 - 5:00 pm Cecile Viboud, FIC (USA), and Joe Wu, University of Hong-Kong (HK): R0 estimation and disease transmission models
Workshop Day 3 - Saturday, August 6, 2011
Hands-on tutorial, small working groups, flexible schedule
9:00 - 10:30 am Technical workshop
10:30 - 11:00 am Coffee break
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Technical workshop
12:30 - 1:30 pm Lunch
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Workshop |
Workshops
for epidemiologists and virologists led by the US National
Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center
Following
the meeting, a workshop describing the methodology to evaluate vital statistics,
virological, genomic and economic data to describe influenza disease burden and
inform policy will be held. It will consist of sessions designed for epidemiologists/virologists
and policy-makers who are interested in evaluating datasets that can be brought
to the meeting for further analysis. Workshops will concentrate on methodologies
to evaluate time-series data for regional or national analysis of influenza disease
burden, assessments of control, and evolution of influenza viruses. Participants
will have the opportunity to learn and apply tools to analyze national datasets
and formulate further collaborations on bi-national and multinational studies.
Please note that participation in the Thursday and Friday workshop sessions will
be limited. Participation will be based on submitted abstracts, which should include
a description of available datasets that participants may want to further analyze.
It
is highly recommended, but not required, that participants in the workshop bring:
- a laptop with some type of statistical software (SAS recommended)
- an influenza
dataset (vital statistics data, influenza isolate data, and vaccine coverage)
Individuals
who attend the workshop will have the opportunity to learn about:
- time series
analysis
- spatial / temporal relationships
- influenza genomics tools
- data management issues
- SAS / Stata code - go home with your own programs
- strategies for evaluating vaccine benefits in a country using mortality data
- and more!
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If you would like more information about this meeting, please contact us at ficmisms@mail.nih.gov.
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