Surveillance Systems: The Building Blocks

Dr. Gurley has been conducting public health research in Bangladesh since 2003, with 12 years of service at the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where she led the Surveillance and Outbreak Investigation Unit and directed the Program on Emerging Infections. In collaboration with the US CDC and the Government of Bangladesh, she established national surveillance systems for various diseases, including meningo-encephalitis, respiratory infections, acute gastroenteritis, acute hepatitis, and hospital-acquired infections, while focusing on mentoring junior scientists. Dr. Gurley's research spans multidisciplinary studies on the transmission, burden, and epidemiology of emerging and vaccine-preventable diseases, emphasizing the ecological contexts in which these diseases emerge. Her work explores communication strategies between field epidemiologists and infectious disease modelers and the development of innovative surveillance and outbreak detection methods. Dr. Gurley has focused on the Nipah virus since 2004, identifying its transmission pathways and drivers of person-to-person spread, while designing and testing interventions to mitigate human infections. She currently serves on the WHO Nipah Virus Taskforce, advising on medical countermeasure research and development. Emphasizing a One Health approach, her research integrates ecological factors into the study and prevention of infectious diseases. Dr. Gurley is the Co-Director of the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) site in Bangladesh, which seeks to identify the causes of and reduce child mortality, and she collaborates with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Disease Detection program.