Responding to the pandemic
Going above and beyond
For his work researching COVID-19, supporting the state, and educating the University, the press and private citizens about the pandemic and public health responses, George Rutherford, MD, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, was honored with a 2021 Chancellor Award for Public Service. Our people have been actively applying their expertise to support the local and regional efforts to address the pandemic such as staffers Debby Oh, PhD and Alice Fishman, MS, postdoctoral fellow Alicia Riley, PhD, and faculty members Paul Wesson, PhD, Yea-Hung Chen, PhD and many more.
Some of their contributions include developing an interactive population health mapping website, research on the COVID death rates among California’s Latinx population, working with local public health officials to finding the true size of a population that isn’t readily counted, and California COVID-related deaths research and policy briefs.
Top photo: George Rutherford, MD / by Noah Berger
Bottom photo: Paul Wesson, PhD / courtesy of Trans Research Unit for Equity
Top photo: Debby Oh, PhD / courtesy of the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics Bottom photo: Alice Fishman, MS / courtesy of the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Top photo: Alicia Riley, PhD / courtesy of Alicia Riley, Twitter Bottom photo: Yea-Hung Chen, PhD / courtesy of Yea-Hung Chen, Twitter
Covidseeker tracks the coronavirus with cell phone data
Yulin Hswen, SciD, MPH, leveraged digital data to help rein in the pandemic. In one project, she asked mobile phone users to share their location data so scientists could use it to figure out where people were most likely to have gotten infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the data could also identify risky behaviors and link positive cases with those they may have exposed to the virus. In a second project, Hswen tracked an epidemic secondary to COVID-19: violence against Asian Americans. She demonstrated through an analysis of Twitter data that when former president Trump tweeted using Asian slurs to describe the virus, he seeded an ecosystem of Asian bashing on the social network. Her findings were covered in the New York Times and USA Today.
Photo credit: Susan Merrell
Natural history of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection
In response to an early call in the New England Journal of Medicine for a natural history of COVID-19, Dan Kelly, MD, MPH, began following patients. Now, with CDC funding, he is studying the disease course to better understand when, how and why those who are infected shed the virus, the conditions of household transmission, and the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. No results have been publicly shared yet, but the team is providing timely data to the CDC to help inform COVID-19 guidance.
Photo credit: "Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2" by NIAID is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Seeking genetic clues to COVID’s spread
To prevent the rise and spread of more coronaviruses, the scientific community still needs more information about where SARS-CoV-2 came from. Knowing that the virus relies heavily on ACE2 receptors to infect its host, Katherine Pollard, PhD, and colleagues turned to a dataset of ACE2 genetic sequences from 410 vertebrate species to identify which species are most susceptible to the virus. Only old-world primates were in the “very high” category.
Pollard and her colleagues tinkered with ACE2 gene variants to show that doing so can break the virus’s infectious stride. Their results may lead to the identification of intermediate host species for SARS-CoV-2 and guide the selection of animal models of COVID-19. Given that coronaviruses appear likely to continue to spill over from animal populations, Pollard’s lab also looked for similarities in the ways the novel coronavirus, its predecessor, SARS-CoV-1, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus attack host cells and whether there are any existing drugs that would interfere with these mechanisms. In findings published in Science in December, Pollard and colleagues suggest further study of the NSAID indomethacin and a handful of typical antipsychotics.
Photo credit: Gladstone Institutes
California excess mortality during the pandemic
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics researchers have been actively studying the California death certificates from 2020 and 2021, compared with prior years, to understand more about the burden of COVID-19 and other causes of death across the state, the disproportionate burden in specific communities, and the impact of public health and policy interventions since March 2020. Comparing 2020 deaths to those in previous years allows the researchers to show in detail who in California has been hardest hit by COVID-19 and other health threats and where the burden has been greatest. It also avoids undercounting the impact of COVID-19 in groups that have not received adequate testing.
The Department researchers include: Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS Yea-Hung Chen, PhD Kate Duchowny, PhD Maria Glymour, ScD, MS Ellicott Matthay, PhD Alicia Riley, PhD
Photo credit: Susan Merrell
UC Health & CDPH COVID Modeling Consortium
In collaboration with the University of California Health and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) we have launched an innovative data modeling consortium to ensure public health policymakers have timely, relevant analysis to support pandemic-related decision making. The University of California Health-CDPH COVID Modeling Consortium co-chaired by Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS is a regular forum in which nearly 150 UC faculty in epidemiology, infectious diseases, economics, statistics, computer science, ecology and data modeling work with CDPH modelers and public health experts to inform the pandemic response in California with data. Through the consortium, researchers provide updated analyses and address new developments in COVID-19, and State public health leaders offer insight into which types of analysis will be most meaningful in thoroughly understanding the health-related patterns and economic impact of COVID-19.
Photo credit: HandMadeFont.com / Shutterstock
COVID Citizen Science
Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH, was awarded $6.8m from PCORI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his COVID Citizen Science mobile app survey research on the COVID-19 pandemic. The PCORI contract focused on how COVID-19-related policies affect individuals and the spread of the disease using participant responses to short daily and weekly surveys to gain insight into their physical and mental health, behaviors, and experience with local public health policies related.
Participants can also opt-in to share their electronic health records (EHRs) and insurance claims data. The data sets will shed light on which policies are most effective at reducing harm from the COVID-19 pandemic. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported COVID Citizen Science work to generate actionable knowledge about how to prevent the spread of the infection and reduce the health and societal impact of the pandemic. The research leverages a geographically and demographically diverse population-based cohort and HER health data. One objective is to evaluate whether the mobile app survey could be used for syndromic surveillance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Photo credit: ucsf.edu
Healthy Outcomes of Pregnancy for Everyone
A team of researchers including Nadia Diamond-Smith, PhD, Charles McCulloch, PhD, George Rutherford, MD, and Krysia Lindan, MD, led by Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski, PhD, MS, launched the Healthy Outcomes of Pregnancy for Everyone (HOPE) Study in partnership with COVID Citizen Science. The HOPE study examines how environmental and biological factors affect healthy or adverse pregnancy and infant outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward.
One of the key interests is in looking at the health and experiences of low-income people and Black and Brown women and birthing persons who are known to be at increased risk for adverse outcomes and often suffer the impacts of systematic discrimination and racism.
Photo credit: Yaw Niel via Shutterstock
Umoja Health Partners
As a veteran of disparities work, Associate Professor Kim Rhoads, MD, PhD, who also serves as director of community engagement at the Helen Diller Family Cancer Center, is keenly aware of the limitations of the conventional research-based model of addressing disparities in access and outcomes. Researchers publish evidence that their intervention led to incrementally better access or outcomes, but the work of scaling up and implementing is left for other parties and another day – a day, as COVID has shown, that never quite arrives. In 2020, Rhoads worked with established community partners to take the pop-up testing model and, later, COVID-19 vaccination clinics into largely Black neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland, staffed and collaboratively run by community members. The work coalesced into Umoja Health, which has been widely hailed as a successful model for reaching underserved populations.
Photo credit: Mike Kai Chen
Virtual training on contact tracing in California
George Rutherford, MD, has anchored an $8.7 million state contract to develop and provide a 20-hour online training program widely used by county health departments to train contact tracers and case investigators to communicate effectively with California’s diverse population.
Photo credit: Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Understanding the spread of COVID-19 across the Bay Area
A large-scale, long-term research collaboration between UC San Francisco, Stanford University, and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub earned a $13.6-million commitment from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to better understand the spread of COVID-19 across the San Francisco Bay Area. The research, led by George Rutherford, MD, and Bonnie Maldonado, MD, of Stanford, sampled a broad, representative population in the Bay Area to provide data crucial for informing policy decisions about how to safely resume economic activity in California while ensuring that transmission remains low.
Photo credit: Mike Kai Chen
