1st Edition

Monitoring the Health of Populations by Tracking Disease Outbreaks Saving Humanity from the Next Plague

216 Pages 55 Color Illustrations
by Chapman & Hall

216 Pages 55 Color Illustrations
by Chapman & Hall

216 Pages 55 Color Illustrations
by Chapman & Hall

With COVID-19 sweeping across the globe with near impunity, it is thwarting governments and health organizations efforts to contain it.  Not since the 1918 Spanish Flu have citizens of developed countries experienced such a large-scale disease outbreak that is having devastating health and economic impacts. One reason such outbreaks are not more common has been the success of the public... Read more

The Next Plague

Separating Signal from Noise

Types of Public Health Surveillance

Traditional Surveillance

Syndromic Surveillance

Indirect Approaches

Steps in Investigating an Outbreak

The Nipah Virus

Smallpox and the Aralsk Incident

Syphilis and the Internet

The 2001 Anthrax Attack

Cancer in Los Alamos

Discovering the Cause of Yellow Fever

Microcephaly and Zika

In Conclusion

Biography

Dr. Steven E. Rigdon is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College for Public Health & Social Justice at Saint Louis University. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Statistics from the University of Missouri-Columbia, as well as an M.A. and B.A. in Mathematics, from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is also Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Author of several books, including Statistical Methods for the Reliability of Repairable Systems published by John Wiley & Sons, and Calculus, 8th Ed. published by Pearson, Dr. Rigdon has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and a member of the International Society for Disease Surveillance. He is also editor of Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. In his spare time, Dr. Rigdon plays the french horn and trumpet and he is an ice hockey official.

Dr. Ronald D. Fricker, Jr. is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Administration in the Virginia Tech College of Science. He is also a professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Statistics and is a past head of the department. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Statistics from Yale University, an M.S. in Operations Research from The George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree from the United States Naval Academy. Author of Introduction to Statistical Methods for Biosurveillance published by Cambridge University Press and nearly 100 papers, monographs, reports, and articles, Dr. Fricker is Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He is a former chair of the Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security and a former chair of the Committee on Statisticians in Defense and National Security, both of the ASA.