Caitlin Rivers

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Caitlin Rivers
U.S. Army

Caitlin M. Rivers is an American

epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.[1]

Early life and education

In 2011, Rivers received a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of New Hampshire, where she specialized in medical anthropology.[2] She has said that she became interested in public health after reading Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, which was about anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer's work on infectious disease eradication.[3]

In 2013, Rivers received a

Ebola virus disease
(EVD).

Career

During her post-graduate studies, Rivers was a graduate research assistant at

Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, and the 2014-2015 Western African Ebola virus epidemic – the latter in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense. Rivers maintained the only source of digital repository of data during the Ebola outbreak. As part of this work she developed Python tools, interfaces, and tutorials for epidemiologists.[3]

From 2013 to 2015, Rivers was a civilian epidemiologist for the

Science, Mathematics, And Research For Transformation (SMART) Defense Scholarship Program during her second year of her doctoral program.[3]
Rivers worked on the Army's Acute Respiratory Disease Surveillance Program, where she worked with Army data to monitor and track trends in infectious diseases and pinpoint where they occur.

In 2017, Rivers became a Senior Associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her work centers on modeling outbreaks of infectious diseases to help understand how an outbreak unfolds, its trajectory, and what approaches to take to slow—and eventually stop—the spread.[6] She and her colleagues have advocated for integrating these modeling approaches in public health decision-making into an interdisciplinary field they call "outbreak science."[7] She has argued for the creation of a National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center, which would play a role similar to that of the National Weather Service and act as a primary source of epidemiological models during times of crisis, while advancing the field.[8]

COVID-19

As it emerged in late 2019, Rivers has applied her expertise in computational epidemiology to forecast the effects of the

novel coronavirus. She and her colleagues used data from intensive care unit and inpatient bed needs in two Chinese cities (Wuhan and Guangzhou) to project what health care needs would be if and when the outbreak spread to the United States.[9][10]
Their analysis concluded that if an outbreak similar to the scale of the outbreak in Wuhan occurred in an American city, ICU needs of COVID-19 patients alone would exceed hospital capacity.

Rivers has used Twitter as a means of communicating her analyses as new data become available, refining the public's understanding of the trajectory of the pandemic. She has collaborated with researchers at the

flattening the curve" of transmission and reducing infections.[12][13]

In March 2020, she co-authored a policy proposal through the

FDA commissioners Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan, former FDA chief of staff Lauren Silvis, and public health expert Crystal Watson, with a step-by-step timeline on how to safely ease restrictions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.[14][15] The plan outlines four phases, with triggers to move from one phase to the next, build on an epidemiology evidence base. In an op-ed that preceded the policy proposal, Gottlieb and Rivers argued that quarantining entire cities is unnecessary; instead, government officials should focus on well-coordinated mitigation measures across the country to reduce community spread.[16]
Part of these mitigation measures also include providing relief for those who will be economically impacted by closures and medical costs.

Open science

Rivers is an advocate for the

machine-readable format and shared it openly on GitHub, an open repository for collaborative work on software and code.[17] In the wake of the Zika virus outbreak, she co-authored a perspective piece on the importance of making data sharing the norm in order to maximize readiness for public health emergencies, outlining challenges, such as the need for data standards for sharing, and potential solutions.[18][19] She has also worked to develop an ethical framework of research standards for analyzing and reporting on publicly available data, with a specific focus on data resulting from Twitter.[20]

Awards and honors

Selected works and publications

Scholia has a profile for Caitlin Rivers (Q89071989).

References

  1. ^ Shapiro, Ari; Rivers, Caitlin (17 April 2020). "An Epidemiologist Answers What Is Needed To Reopen The Country". All Things Considered. NPR.
  2. ^ Undergraduate Research Conference: April 15–30, 2011 (PDF). Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire. 2011. p. 31. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2020-04-19. Caitlin Rivers, Anthropology; Exploring Childhood Obesity in Rural New Hampshire
  3. ^ a b c d "Former student begins rewarding career at Army Public Health Center". U.S. Army. 23 September 2015.
  4. hdl:10919/52023. Open access icon
  5. PMID 24513169. Wikidata
    ()
  6. ^ "How Computer Modeling Of COVID-19's Spread Could Help Fight The Virus". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  7. PMID 31308372
    .
  8. ^ Enserink, Martin; Kupferschmidt, Kai (2020-03-25). "Mathematics of life and death: How disease models shape national shutdowns and other pandemic policies". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  9. ^ Li, Ruoran; Rivers, Caitlin; Tan, Qi; Murray, Megan B.; Toner, Eric; Lipsitch, Marc (2020-03-10). "The Demand for Inpatient and ICU Beds for COVID-19 in the US: Lessons From Chinese Cities". DASH at Harvard.
  10. ^ "'Flattening the curve' may be the world's best bet to slow the coronavirus". STAT. 2020-03-11. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  11. ^ Schnirring, Lisa (14 March 2020). "US takes more big pandemic response steps; Europe COVID-19 cases soar". Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. University of Minnesota.
  12. ^ Branswell, Helen (20 March 2020). "How some countries are beating back the coronavirus". The Boston Globe.
  13. ^ "When will the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing end?". Science News. 2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  14. ^ McGinley, Laurie; Wan, William (29 March 2020). "Experts converge on plans for easing coronavirus restrictions safely". The Washington Post.
  15. ^ "National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  16. ^ Gottlieb, Scott; Rivers, Caitlin M. "Opinion | Quarantining cities isn't needed. But a fast, coordinated response to covid-19 is essential". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  17. PMID 27708327
    .
  18. PMID 27529422
    .
  19. ^ "Zika, Ebola emphasize need for open, public health data sharing". FierceHealthcare. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  20. ISSN 2046-1402
    .
  21. ^ Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative: Class of 2015 Yearbook (PDF). Center for Health Security. 2015. p. 31.

External links

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