This profile was current as of 2020 when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.
Rose is currently a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences and an Eck Institute for Global Health Graduate Student Fellow. She received a M.S. in Global Health and a B.A. in History from the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on the social epidemiology of helminthic Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) control. Her master’s research involved analyzing the social determinants underlying persistent schistosomiasis in Tanzania despite multiple rounds of mass drug treatment. She has conducted the quantitative analysis for a pilot project in Tanzania funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; this project engaged communities in disease control by enhancing an existing village governance structure in an effort to improve NTD and water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) outcomes. Currently, her research focuses on constructing a spatially-explicit model of vulnerability to soil-transmitted helminth infections in sub-Saharan Africa
My research interests include developing a socio-ecological systems-based approach to better understand neglected tropical disease transmission, applying novel analytical techniques to quantify the role of structural drivers of disease transmission such as poverty and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene, and using these results to inform policy-making. Additionally, I am interested in developing and evaluating more sustainable community-based approaches to disease control which shift efforts from exclusively biomedical approaches to ones that address the more structural determinants of disease and build community resilience.
My dissertation research focuses on using novel analytical approaches to improve the control of helminthic Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a group of diseases which disproportionately burden the world’s poorest communities. While NTD transmission occurs because of the interplay between social and ecological factors, these diseases are treated as a strictly biomedical problem to be solved using a narrow, technical solution. My research interests lie broadly in (i) establishing the importance of approaching helminthic NTD control from a socio-ecological perspective; (ii) evaluating the role of socio-ecological NTD determinants; and (iii) guiding the design and management of NTD control programs accounting for socio-ecological complexity.