Honorary Research Fellow
PhD
Dan Weiss is an Honorary Research Fellow at Telethon Kids Institute and an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University. At Telethon Kids Institute, Dan serves as the Director of Global Malaria Epidemiology for the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), which is part of the Geospatial Health and Development group. In this role, Dan leads the production of malaria burden estimates that supply the World Malaria Report (World Health Organization) and the Global Burden of Disease (University of Washington). Dan’s wider research interests include modelling travel time to essential services and developing new covariates for disease modelling using remotely sensed imagery, geographic information systems, and geospatial modelling approaches. Dan is originally from the United States where he obtained a PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina in 2009. He joined MAP at the University of Oxford in 2013 and moved to Western Australia in 2020.
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Publications
August 2023
Trends in treatment-seeking for fever in children under five years old in 151 countries from 1990 to 2020
Access to medical treatment for fever is essential to prevent morbidity and mortality in individuals and to prevent transmission of communicable febrile illness in communities. Quantification of the rates at which treatment is accessed is critical for health system planning and a prerequisite for disease burden estimates.
Published research Geospatial Health and Development Child and adolescent healthJanuary 2024Socioeconomic, Demographic, and Environmental Factors May Inform Malaria Intervention Prioritization in Urban Nigeria
Urban population growth in Nigeria may exceed the availability of affordable housing and basic services, resulting in living conditions conducive to vector breeding and heterogeneous malaria transmission. Understanding the link between community-level factors and urban malaria transmission informs targeted interventions.
Published research Geospatial Health and Development MalariaAugust 2023Association between mental health workforce supply and clusters of high and low rates of youth suicide: An Australian study using suicide mortality data from 2016 to 2020
Abstract: To examine the association between mental health workforce supply and spatial clusters of high versus low incidence of youth suicide.
Published research Youth Mental Health Geospatial Health and Development Youth mental healthAugust 2023Mapping tuberculosis prevalence in Ethiopia using geospatial meta-analysis\
Reliable and detailed data on the prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) with sub-national estimates are scarce in Ethiopia. We address this knowledge gap by spatially predicting the national, sub-national and local prevalence of TB, and identifying drivers of TB prevalence across the country.
Published research Infectious Diseases Infectious Diseases Epidemiology Geospatial Health and Development Malaria Geospatial and TuberculosisJuly 2023Impacts on Human Movement in Australian Cities Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic
No studies have yet examined high-resolution shifts in the spatial patterns of human movement in Australia throughout 2020 and 2021, a period coincident with the repeated enactment and removal of varied governmental restrictions aimed at reducing community transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We compared overlapping timeseries of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, epidemiological data on cases and vaccination rates, and high-resolution human movement data to characterize population-level responses to the pandemic in Australian cities.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and Development COVID-19 Geospatial and TuberculosisMay 2023disaggregation: An R Package for Bayesian Spatial Disaggregation Modeling
Disaggregation modeling, or downscaling, has become an important discipline in epidemiology. Surveillance data, aggregated over large regions, is becoming more common, leading to an increasing demand for modeling frameworks that can deal with this data to understand spatial patterns.
Published research Geospatial Health and DevelopmentApril 2023Evaluating COVID-19-Related Disruptions to Effective Malaria Case Management in 2020–2021 and Its Potential Effects on Malaria Burden in Sub-Saharan Africa
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to far-reaching disruptions to health systems, including preventative and curative services for malaria. The aim of this study was to estimate the magnitude of disruptions in malaria case management in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on malaria burden during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used survey data collected by the World Health Organization, in which individual country stakeholders reported on the extent of disruptions to malaria diagnosis and treatment.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and Development COVID-19 MalariaJanuary 2023Projected health impact of post-discharge malaria chemoprevention among children with severe malarial anaemia in Africa
Children recovering from severe malarial anaemia (SMA) remain at high risk of readmission and death after discharge from hospital. However, a recent trial found that post-discharge malaria chemoprevention (PDMC) with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine reduces this risk. We developed a mathematical model describing the daily incidence of uncomplicated and severe malaria requiring readmission among 0-5-year old children after hospitalised SMA.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and Development MalariaJanuary 2023Global estimates of the number of pregnancies at risk of malaria from 2007 to 2020: a demographic study
The most recent global estimates of the number of pregnancies at risk of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria infection are from 2007. To inform global malaria prevention and control efforts, we aimed to estimate the global distribution of pregnancies at risk of malaria infection from 2007 to 2020.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and Development MalariaSeptember 2022Economic and social development along the urban–rural continuum: New opportunities to inform policy
The economic and social development of nations relies on their population having physical access to services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority of the 3.4 billion people living in rural areas, this largely depends on their access to urban centers of different sizes.
Published research Geospatial Health and DevelopmentAugust 2022Spatiotemporal mapping of malaria incidence in Sudan using routine surveillance data
Malaria is a serious threat to global health, with over 95 % of the cases reported in 2020 by the World Health Organization in African countries, including Sudan. Sudan is a low-income country with a limited healthcare system and a substantial burden of malaria.
April 2022A novel statistical framework for exploring the population dynamics and seasonality of mosquito populations
Understanding the temporal dynamics of mosquito populations underlying vector-borne disease transmission is key to optimizing control strategies. Many questions remain surrounding the drivers of these dynamics and how they vary between species-questions rarely answerable from individual entomological studies (that typically focus on a single location or species).
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and Development MalariaFebruary 2022Spatial codistribution of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in Ethiopia
HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria are the three most important infectious diseases in Ethiopia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the spatial codistribution of these diseases is critical for designing geographically targeted and integrated disease control programmes. This study investigated the spatial overlap and drivers of HIV, TB and malaria prevalence in Ethiopia.
Published research Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Geospatial Health and Development Malaria Geospatial and TuberculosisOctober 2021Achieving universal electrification of rural healthcare facilities in sub-Saharan Africa with decentralized renewable energy technologies
A potential response to the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with long-term benefits is to provide electricity for medical equipment in rural health centers and communities. This study identifies a large gap in the electrification of healthcare facilities in SSA, and it shows that decentralized photovoltaic systems can offer a clean, reliable, quick, and cost-effective solution.
Published research Geospatial Health and Development COVID-19June 2021Mapping malaria by sharing spatial information between incidence and prevalence data sets
As malaria incidence decreases and more countries move towards elimination, maps of malaria risk in low-prevalence areas are increasingly needed. For low-burden areas, disaggregation regression models have been developed to estimate risk at high spatial resolution from routine surveillance reports aggregated by administrative unit polygons.
Published research Geospatial Health and Development MalariaJune 2021Maps and metrics of insecticide-treated net access, use, and nets-per-capita in Africa from 2000-2020
Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are one of the most widespread and impactful malaria interventions in Africa, yet a spatially-resolved time series of ITN coverage has never been published. Using data from multiple sources, we generate high-resolution maps of ITN access, use, and nets-per-capita annually from 2000 to 2020 across the 40 highest-burden African countries.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and DevelopmentJune 2021Mapping the endemicity and seasonality of clinical malaria for intervention targeting in Haiti using routine case data
Towards the goal of malaria elimination on Hispaniola, the National Malaria Control Program of Haiti and its international partner organisations are conducting a campaign of interventions targeted to high-risk communities prioritised through evidence-based planning. Here we present a key piece of this planning: an up-to-date, fine-scale endemicity map and seasonality profile for Haiti informed by monthly case counts.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and DevelopmentApril 2021Using Hawkes Processes to model imported and local malaria cases in near-elimination settings
Developing new methods for modelling infectious diseases outbreaks is important for monitoring transmission and developing policy. In this paper we propose using semi-mechanistic Hawkes Processes for modelling malaria transmission in near-elimination settings. Hawkes Processes are well founded mathematical methods that enable us to combine the benefits of both statistical and mechanistic models to recreate and forecast disease transmission beyond just malaria outbreak scenarios.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and DevelopmentJanuary 2021Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on malaria intervention coverage, morbidity, and mortality in Africa: a geospatial modelling analysis
Substantial progress has been made in reducing the burden of malaria in Africa since 2000, but those gains could be jeopardised if the COVID-19 pandemic affects the availability of key malaria control interventions. The aim of this study was to evaluate plausible effects on malaria incidence and mortality under different levels of disruption to malaria control.
Published research Infectious Diseases Geospatial Health and DevelopmentDecember 2020Global maps of travel time to healthcare facilities
Access to healthcare is a requirement for human well-being that is constrained, in part, by the allocation of healthcare resources relative to the geographically dispersed human population. Quantifying access to care globally is challenging due to the absence of a comprehensive database of healthcare facilities. We harness major data collection efforts underway by OpenStreetMap, Google Maps and academic researchers to compile the most complete collection of facility locations to date.
Published research Geospatial Health and Development -
Education and Qualifications