Health emergencies are events that pose urgent threats to public health. Events such as disease outbreaks, pandemics and natural disasters. Burnet is helping our region prevent, prepare and respond to health emergencies by supporting institutions to connect and work together effectively. These partnerships are often across different sectors. They strengthen health systems and communities so that they can better withstand the shock of a health emergency. Our work also includes real-time disease surveillance and innovation in vaccines and diagnostics.
The concept of health emergencies covers a wide range of complex, overlapping threats. Burnet is addressing challenges such as:
Climate change exacerbates existing health challenges and creates new issues.
It's extending the range of diseases such as malaria, Zika and Japanese encephalitis that are spread by mosquitoes. Some of these diseases have epidemic potential.
Climate change increases the frequency of floods, bushfires and other natural disasters. These can put added strain on health services that are already managing the complex health needs of populations, such as disease outbreaks.
Climate change makes food production and supply less predictable. This makes it more difficult for people to get the nutrition they need. Access to nutrition is a social determinant of health. Social determinants of health are non-medical factors that affect a person’s chances of good health. They include things such as access to education and job opportunities that are often unfairly distributed within and between countries. Social determinants of health make access to good health unequal and climate change can make the situation worse.
Burnet’s expertise covers prevention, preparedness and response. Our approach aligns with the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations and the Pandemic Agreement.
We work to prevent diseases. Our NATNAT project studied vector controls for mosquito-borne diseases in Papua New Guinea. Our Pathway to Clean Indoor Air and ELUCIDAR projects seek to reduce the spread of airborne infections through monitoring and improving indoor air quality and better ventilation in buildings in Victoria, Australia.
One Health recognises the connections and inter-dependencies between human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health. We use this understanding to harness the capabilities of different sectors and respond to threats such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), vector-borne diseases, and disease outbreaks amplified by climate change.
We lead and support disease surveillance systems across Australia, the Pacific and South-East Asia, identifying areas for incremental improvement. We contribute to sentinel surveillance – testing people in the community for diseases – which enables early warning and rapid responses.
Burnet is developing flexible vaccine platforms and rapid diagnostics that can be adapted for emerging diseases.
Our work is built on collaborations with governments, laboratories, hospitals, and international bodies. We help to establish governance structures that enable coordination and decision-making across different sectors. The amended International Health Regulations and the Pandemic Agreement will come to frame globally how we work together to prevent and respond to health emergencies and pandemics. Burnet, in partnership with the AIID, seeks to work collaboratively to support and strengthen the adoption of these international laws.
We co-design communications with community partners, using their own languages and culturally appropriate formats. This ensures trust and encourages people to engage with public health bodies, particularly among communities that are most at risk.
Set up in response to COVID-19, this flagship initiative is taking lessons learned from the pandemic to prevent and prepare for future health emergencies.
Burnet has supported responses to health emergencies and pandemics in Australia and abroad.
Burnet is the grantee of the Fleming Fund Country Grant. The Fleming Fund is a UK aid program that tackles antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Papua New Guinea. Our activities include helping establish an AMR surveillance system that feeds into the World Health Organization’s global AMR database, GLASS.
Burnet is a lead implementing partner in ACCESS (Australian Collaboration for Coordinated Enhanced Sentinel Surveillance of Sexually Transmissible Infections and Blood Borne Viruses). During a global outbreak of the mpox virus in 2022, we rapidly adapted ACCESS’s surveillance platform to monitor mpox in Australia. We have also adapted ACCESS to monitor HIV in Myanmar, including trends from diagnosis to treatment.
Our COVID-19 modelling directly informed public health policy in Victoria during the pandemic. Our Optimise Study helped guide Victoria’s approach to COVID-19. It aimed to prevent new infections and reduce the health, social and economic impacts of restriction and prevention measures. The findings informed equity-based approaches.
TIGER C19 is a collaboration between Burnet Institute and the University of Melbourne. Short for ‘Timely Integration of user-GEnerated Responses to COVID-19', the approach combines big data analytics of social media posts with qualitative research methods. The monthly reports generated were invaluable in understanding community responses to COVID-19 policy and practice. The TIGER methodology and approach is applicable to other health emergencies and public health issues.
Burnet worked with groups such as the North East Multicultural Association and Language Loop and the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria to improve emergency communications as part of the VOICE partnership.
Burnet’s approach is grounded in equity. Our projects focus on ensuring no one is left behind during a health emergency.
This includes:
advocating for equitable access to health products across all countries.
ensuring public health messages reach all communities by using appropriate language and formats.
drawing on the lived experience of communities to design effective interventions.
recognising and addressing the issues that make certain groups of people vulnerable in times of crisis.
Virus Evolution
Shuoshuo Tian, Joshua A. Hayward, Gilda Tachedjian, Joshua A. Hayward, Shuoshuo Tian, Gilda Tachedjian
PLOS Global Public Health
Yasmin I. Mohamed, Rachael Farquhar, Chris Morgan, Annie Dori, Samuel McEwen, Leanne J. Robinson, Annie Dori, Rachael Farquhar, Yasmin I. Mohamed, Chris Morgan
The Medical Journal of Australia
Fenella McAndrew, Romesh Abeysuriya, Nick Scott, Fenella McAndrew, Romesh Abeysuriya, Nick Scott
The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific
S. S. Majumdar
Western Pacific surveillance response journal
Caroline van Gemert
Public Health Action
Aidan Murray, Stefanie Vaccher, Tafireyi Marukutira, Kun Huang, Gabriel Hoi Huen Chan, Stephen M. Graham, S. S. Majumdar, Stefanie Vaccher, Tafireyi Marukutira, Kun Huang
We’re developing a novel class of antibody and delivery technologies to provide enhanced protection and therapeutic performance for coronaviruses and other respiratory infections.
We’ve discovered Hervey pteropid gammaretrovirus, the first replication competent retrovirus circulating in Australian fruit bats, suggesting that bats can deal with multiple viral threats.
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