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Ciara Weets

@ciaramweets.bsky.social

61 followers 130 following 17 posts

junior scientist @ georgetown | M.Sc. in Global Infectious Disease | interested in disease ecology, vaccination, modeling health implications of policy | (she/her)

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

NEW 🧪🦠😷🚨 Vaccine-preventable diseases pose a resurgent threat, yet enforceable policies offer a chance to boost routine vaccination when paired with healthcare access. Here, we identify and analyze vaccination policies from 194 nations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Strengthening health security through routine vaccination policy: A comprehensive analysis of childhood vaccination laws across 194 countries

Vaccine preventable diseases (VPD) present a resurgent threat to global health security and jeopardize decades of advancements in public health and ec…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

I will forever be grateful to my team of mentors and coauthors for their counsel, advice and opportunity to present this work in multiple fora as it progressed. @rebeccakatz.bsky.social @heatherswadley.bsky.social @gucghss.bsky.social @colincarlson.bsky.social + entire AMP EID team

Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

What does this tell us?
-diversity in policy characteristics may reflect cultural perceptions of disease + role of the state
-smallpox vaxx mandate & penalties in obsolete currency suggest lack of enforcement in some places
-layered enforcement mechanisms = more opportunities to ensure compliance

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

87.7% (93/106) of countries with legally-enforceable routine vaccination policies include specific enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with immunization requirements, though there was significant diversity in enforcement mechanisms.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

Diseases w/ historically high morbidity & mortality, for which vaccines have long been available (e.g., diphtheria, measles, polio), were most universally included in policy. Recently emergent (e.g., COVID-19) and regionally endemic diseases (e.g., Japanese Encephalitis) were less commonly included.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

We find that:
54.6% (106) of countries studied currently have legally-enforceable policies at the national level requiring childhood vaccination against at least one disease, yet there was significant variation in the number of diseases for which vaccines are required.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

To date, relatively few studies have evaluated the efficacy of childhood vaccine policies, primarily in high-income countries. Broader evaluations of policy characteristics & impacts have been limited by the lack of a comprehensive global policy database-so we spent the last two years building one.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Apr 15

Strengthening health security through routine vaccination policy: A comprehensive analysis of childhood vaccination laws across 194 countries

Vaccine preventable diseases (VPD) present a resurgent threat to global health security and jeopardize decades of advancements in public health and ec…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Mar 26

Trump administration to cut vaccination funds. "The loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result," reports @stephanienolen.bsky.social Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/h...

U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries (Gift Article)

A 281-page spreadsheet obtained by The Times lists the Trump administration’s plans for thousands of foreign aid programs.

www.nytimes.com

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Mar 6

🧪New!
Access & Benefits Sharing (ABS) has implications for international scientific collaboration, medical countermeasure development, and the equitable exchange of samples & sequence data. We examined domestic policies relevant to ABS in all UN Member States: bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...

Heat map figure demonstrating the percentage of countries with applicable domestic policy in each of the 8 policy categories. Lighter colors indicate a lower percentage of countries in the corresponding region have policies applicable to the category, while darker indicates a larger percentage of countries with policy. Exact percentages are listed in the center of each box.

3 stacked bar graphs and corresponding maps to the right of each bar graph. The top graph/map represents the global and regional heterogeneity of policy pertaining to genetic resource access, the middle graph/map shows the categories of sanctions used to enforce ABS policies by country and WHO region, while the bottom graph/map combination demonstrates countries and regions with policy relevant to digital sequence information. The corresponding legend is located immediately below each portion of the figure.

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · Feb 20

Another way to put this:

Musk and his twerps have exposed us to pandemics, broken science, stolen all your data, endangered the U.S. payments system, threatened air traffic control, and cut off HIV medication to 20m people in order to save ::checks notes:: 2/10th of a percent of the federal budget.

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · Feb 19

DOGE says it has saved $55 billion in federal spending so far, but its website only accounts for $16.6 billion of that

DOGE Says It’s Saved $55 Billion, Itemized Data Show Far Less

The federal cost-cutting effort dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency says it has saved $55 billion in federal spending so far, but its website only accounts for $16.6 billion of that.

www.bloomberg.com

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Charles Ornstein @charlesornstein.bsky.social · Jan 31

This is a big deal, y'all. Federal health websites are being stripped of content or removed in their entirety. Stick with this thread for a look at what's disappeared so far! 1/x

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 27

As always, a huge thank you to my coauthors for the guidance, mentorship, and collaboration on this piece. @colincarlson.bsky.social @haileyrobertson.bsky.social @rebeccakatz.bsky.social (& other coauthors who have not yet migrated over here 🦋)

Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 27

The WHO has improved transparency around decision-making for DON report publication recently, underscoring the value of the DON as a tool for highlighting potential health emergencies and understanding the challenges faced when reporting high-consequence information under time constraints

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 27

Surprisingly, neither Covid-19 nor mpox featured heavily in the DON, and most reports occurred before the declaration of a PHEIC. Info was then disseminated through periodic situation reports - except when novel variants emerged. Notably, no DON report was released regarding the Omicron variant 🦠

Two epidemic curves with dots denoting when Disease Outbreak News reports regarding each disease were published. The solid black line shows the date at which the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) was declared, while the dashed line shows the date at which it was declared over. Green dots in the top frame are Covid-19 DON reports, orange dots denote mpox clade II reports, and the dot shows the lone mpox clade I DON report

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 27

Studying reports from the WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) between 2020-2023, we find that outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers and the avian influenza panzootic dominate the DON. We also find an increase in reports of climate-sensitive diseases, especially those that are vector- or water-borne 🦟💧

A country-level choropleth (world map) demonstrates that the greatest number of Disease Outbreak News reports came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but reports were spread across 89 countries. Bar graphs along the bottom show the top 5 diseases reported by the DON, top 5 countries from which reports were received, and top 5 disease-location outbreak clusters. Ebola virus, the DRC and Ebola in the DRC were the most frequent disease, location, and outbreak reported in the DON.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 27

🧪😷NEW: What happened to outbreak reporting during Covid-19 and the mpox clade II outbreak? We highlight shifts in what was reported and how information was communicated, providing insight into how decisions were made and communicated during these health emergencies🔓 journals.plos.org/globalpublic...

The WHO Disease Outbreak News during the Covid-19 pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) was an important public source of information – not only about the pandemic, but also thousands of other potential health emergencies....

journals.plos.org

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Hailey Robertson @haileyrobertson.bsky.social · Jan 16

Couldn't ask for a better first Bluesky post! Our new paper, "Pathogens and planetary change," is out now in @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social. We discuss the linkages between biodiversity loss + pandemics and how we can address these interconnected crises 🧪😷

Give it a read: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity

This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.

www.nature.com

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 15

I’m so proud of this work and eternally grateful to @colincarlson.bsky.social @danjbecker.bsky.social @ctrlalttim.bsky.social and to my fellow trainees for the mentorship, opportunity to contribute, and chance to learn during this process.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 15

Read our paper, Pathogens and Planetary Change, out today in the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity

This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.

www.nature.com

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Jan 15

🧪😷 Biodiversity loss and disease emergence share common drivers - meaning that there are opportunities to create shared solutions for biodiversity and health. Global and national governance efforts to combat disease events must be integrated with environmental protection and sustainable development

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jan 15

If you take one thing away from our paper, I hope it's this: there's no safe path through the Pandemicene without action on environmental protection, sustainable development, and health system strengthening. Single-issue advocacy and siloed solutions put the world at greater risk from pandemics.

header of our paper "Pathogens and planetary change"

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Nature Reviews Biodiversity @natrevbiodiv.nature.com · Jan 15

Carlson and colleagues explore the relationships between emerging infectious diseases, biodiversity loss, and global environmental change. go.nature.com/4gT0za1

Biodiversity loss can drive disease emergence, and vice versa; they also share many of the same upstream drivers.

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jan 15

Popular science narratives about pandemics - specifically, that they happen because of disordered relationships with nature - just aren't true. Half of modern pandemics have been one virus (influenza), and only a modest fraction of pandemic pathogens (3 of 10) have jumped from wildlife to humans.

A map of 10 pandemic since 1900. Four (all influenza) were related to agriculture; two (HIV and Covid-19) were related to wildlife use; one (cholera) was related to climate change; and three (cholera, plague, and influenza) were not related to any planetary change drivers.

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Rory Gibb @roryjgibb.bsky.social · Jan 15

How are pathogens and parasites responding to planetary change, what does this mean for people and biodiversity, and what is to be done? New @viralemergence.org synthesis out today in Nature Rev Biodiversity (@natrevbiodiv.bsky.social) with a fantastic author team🧪😷
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity

This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Ciara Weets

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jan 15

🚨😷🧪 NEW: A growing body of evidence shows that pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are part of a broader polycrisis - but there are no simple solutions. A sweeping overview of "Pathogens and planetary change" for the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, out now 🔓 rdcu.be/d6lHl

Top panels: graphs showing increases in spillover events, extinction rates, and temperature anomalies over the last few centuries. Bottom panel: a map of 10 pandemics since the year 1900. Four were linked to agriculture, two to wildlife use, and one to climate change.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · Dec 13

Navigating the proliferation of GAI and determining how/if to use it in research is difficult. Published in PLOS One today, we evaluated the performance of GAI against a team of SMEs to highlight limitations and regional biases in a GAI tool. Read our study here: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Evaluating generative artificial intelligence’s limitations in health policy identification and interpretation

Policy epidemiology utilizes human subject-matter experts (SMEs) to systematically surface, analyze, and categorize legally-enforceable policies. The Analysis and Mapping of Policies for Emerging Infe...

journals.plos.org

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