PROJECTS

Current and Future Projects

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change has led to an increase in mosquito-borne diseases. To address this, the Foundation is currently supporting investigations of four serious mosquito-borne diseases: dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and malaria. These investigations will provide important evidence on the medium- and long-term duration of symptoms, the psychosocial impact of these diseases, and the cost to travelers associated with acute disease management during and immediately upon return to their home country.

UKRAINE

Together with local partners, the Foundation is addressing the medical shortages in Ukraine by ensuring that hospitals have the supplies they need.

MPOX (MONKEYPOX)

The Foundation is providing support for a prospective study of the natural history of the virological and serological response to mpox (monkeypox) being conducted by the GeoSentinel Network.

COVID-19

The Foundation is supporting validation of sample pooling for testing multiple nasopharyngeal samples concurrently to reduce the cost of testing for COVID-19.

International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) Research Awards – 2022

The Foundation provided funding for five ISTM Research Awards:
 

1. Impact of oral iron supplementation on right ventricular function and exercise performance at moderate to high altitude – a pilot study. Principal investigator (PI): Lindsay Forbes, USA
    
2. The TRAvel Vaccine Aids for Decision-making (TRAVAID) Project. PI: Sara McGuinness, Australia
    
3. Development of a recombinant protein immunoassay for cysticercosis screening in the US. PI: Eva Clark, USA
    
4. Japanese encephalitis vaccine risk-benefit analysis tool. PI: Deborah Mills, Australia
    
5. The role of anti-parasitic treatment for returning travelers with persistent abdominal pain and negative molecular stool tests. PI: Asaf Biber, Israel

Past Projects

COVID-19

The Foundation is supporting validation of sample pooling for testing multiple nasopharyngeal samples concurrently to reduce the cost of testing for COVID-19.
Funding from the GeoSentinel Foundation was instrumental in rapidly addressing two critical challenges in the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, the Foundation provided support to help develop novel diagnostic tools to determine which patients would more likely have severe outcomes and triage them accordingly. This approach has now been validated in multiple countries and is used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in low-resource settings where hospital beds are extremely limited.

Second, since there were no specific treatments or vaccines early in the pandemic, funding from the GeoSentinel Foundation permitted the prompt initiation of trials to determine if any currently available drugs could be repurposed to prevent or treat COVID-19. Foundation funding early in the outbreak enabled the rapid establishment of a multi-site randomized placebo-controlled trial to rigorously test such therapeutics.

The Foundation also supported:

• A public COVID-19 PCR testing site in New York City in the beginning of the pandemic (April 2020) offering same-day results to quickly identify cases, institute isolation and contact tracing, and break the cycle of transmission.
• Genomic sequencing of positive COVID-19 specimens to identify new and emerging viral variants.
• The development of a finger-stick test to predict the severity of COVID-19 for individual patients. This non-invasive test helped determine who could recover safely at home and who needed hospitalization.