Dr. Christopher Whalen, the Earnest Corn Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Georgia College of Public Health, has received a federal grant to better understand how tuberculosis (TB) is transmitted in urban environments in Africa.

The grant is funded by the National Institute of Health and will run for five years. It will be done in conjunction with researchers in Uganda with Dr. Noah Kiwanuka, a professor and physician who teaches at Makerere University, serving as the principal investigator in Africa. Dr. Whalen’s research will center on trying to identify where in a community transmission is occurring and what types of human interaction are facilitating the spread of the disease. The study also will track a group of patients who are not infected with TB over the course of one year in an attempt to closely monitor the types of interaction they are having.

“The whole idea is to try and better understand how TB transmission is occurring within the different communities in Africa,” he said. “We’ve come to realize that in order to effectively control TB, we need to block and reduce the amount of transmission. We have nine million new disease episodes of TB each year,” Dr. Whalen said. “Even though we don’t face the same problems with it in the U.S., it’s important to remember that infectious diseases don’t regard political borders and what is over there could show up here.”