The Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE) team hosted a two-day World Health Organization (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network training workshop. One of the WHO staff members organising the workshop was Dr Tony Stewart—a graduate of the first cohort of the MAE program! The workshop was co-organised with the Acute Response MAE network and involved MAE program alumni as contributors to the workshop.

Several MAE scholars presented at the 9^th Global conference of TEPHINET in Chiang Mai. Siobhan St George received third prize for her oral presentation on sequelae following Salmonella infection.

Welcome to Aidan Zellner, a new student working with Alice Richardson, Katrina Roper, Brett Lidbury and Tony Baldrick at the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Quality Programme (RCPA-QAP).   Aidan is conducting an undergraduate research project working closely with RCPA–QAP on serum IgG, IgA and IgM distribution across age ranges and sex. This project will contribute to the evaluation of antibody reference intervals to improve the accuracy of laboratory diagnoses.

Welcome also to Amee Sangani, an undergraduate international exchange student from Indiana University, US, visiting RSPH for this semester.   Aimee will be working with Martyn Kirk, Tambri Housen and Katrina Roper to investigate whether outbreak investigations are being impacted by any requirements of ethics approval.

Katie Glass and Andrea Parisi attended the PRISM annual conference in Melbourne, and Andrea presented on “Health outcomes from multi-drug resistant Salmonella infections in high-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis”.

Papers

• Tutii IM, Roseveare C, Viney K, Cash HL, Udui TE. Breast and cervical cancer screening in Palau: Have we improved early detection and survival? Hawaii Journal of Medicine and Public Health. 2017 (in press).
• Housen T, Lenglet A, Ariti C, Ara S, Shah S, Dar M, Hussain A, Paul A, Wagay Z, Viney K, Janes S, Pintaldi G. Validation of mental health screening instruments in the Kashmir Valley, India. Transcultural Psychiatry. 2017 (in press).
• Alene K, Yi H, Viney K, McBryde ES, Yang K, Bai L, Gray DJ Clements AC, Xu Z. Treatment outcomes of patients with multidrug-resistant and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis in Hunan Province, China. BMC Infectious Diseases 2017; 17(573): DOI 10.1186/s12879-017-2662-8
• McLure A, Clements ACA, Kirk M, Glass K. Healthcare-Associated Clostridium difficile Infections are Sustained by Disease from the Community. Bull Math Biol. 2017 Aug 3. doi: 10.1007/s11538-017-0328-8.
• Moffatt CRM, Musto J, Pingault N, Combs B, Miller M, Stafford R, Gregory J, Polkinghorne BG, Kirk MD. Recovery of Salmonella enterica from Australian Layer and Processing Environments Following Outbreaks Linked to Eggs. Foodborne Pathog Dis. 2017 Aug;14(8):478-482.