# Investigation of within Household Transmission of Influenza in Low-Resource Settings

> **NIH NIH K23** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $183,541

## Abstract

Abstract:
Seasonal influenza causes a significant burden of disease in low-middle income countries, specifically in some
of the most vulnerable populations such as infants, pregnant women, and the elderly. Influenza spreads
primarily within households and while this has been extensively studied in the high-income countries, there
remains a significant gap in the literature around household transmission of influenza in low-middle income
countries. Differences in population structure, household membership, vaccine availability, and contact
patterns make it difficult to apply knowledge from high to low-middle income countries. Understanding
household transmission of influenza in this setting will help to generate key epidemiologic parameters of
influenza such as secondary attack rate and help to model potential interventions to decrease transmission.
This K23 offers an outstanding opportunity to leverage respiratory and serologic samples from a household-
based cohort with self-reported and sensor-based social contact data who were followed prospectively for any
respiratory illness in three low-middle income countries: Guatemala, Mozamique, India. Our approach will be to
use established molecular techniques including hemagglutination inhibition assay and RT-PCR to calculate
seroprevalence curves, the force of infection, and with-in household secondary attack rates. We will the
develop a heterogenous chain binomial model of within household transmission by incorporating household
contact data and risk of infectious between pairs of individuals in the household. Aim 1 is to quantify the spread
of with-in household transmission of influenza. Aim 2 is to develop a heterogenous chain binomial model of
within household transmission with the hopes of projecting how effective different interventions such as
vaccination and masking are in mitigating intra-household influenza transmission. To complete this project, I
will require additional training in infectious disease modeling, advanced methods in infectious disease
quantification, influenza epidemiology and emerging infectious diseases. To help ensure this projects success,
I am surrounded an international team of experts in influenza epidemiology and infectious disease modeling
with whom I have established relationships. This K23 award would provide the crucial link in my career from
having a foundation in infectious disease epidemiology to having an expertise in infectious disease modeling.
At the end of this award period, I will be prepared to submit a strong NIH R01 application focused on modeling
emerging infectious diseases transmission in low-resource settings.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10985654
- **Project number:** 1K23AI180337-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Lauren Elizabeth Pischel
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $183,541
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-01 → 2029-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10985654

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10985654, Investigation of within Household Transmission of Influenza in Low-Resource Settings (1K23AI180337-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10985654. Licensed CC0.

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