Raíssa Nogueira de Brito is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and a recipient of the 2023 UGA SEC Emerging Scholars Award. Watch her feature in the Graduate Studies News here. Congratulations Raíssa! Raíssa Nogueira de Brito holds a Ph.D. in Health Sciences (major: Infectious and Parasitic Diseases). Raissa has dedicated her efforts to researching Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) and other zoonotic, infectious diseases that disproportionately impact disenfranchised people, primarily focusing on the control and surveillance of these diseases. She advances this research by fostering collaborations between academic institutions, local/state health departments, and the affected communities. Raíssa’s research has made significant scholarly contributions to the field. These contributions include the implementation of population-based surveys, surveillance systems, and longitudinal studies for emerging infectious diseases (EID), such as COVID-19. She has also developed tools for the surveillance and control of vector-borne diseases, including a smartphone app for the identification and reporting of Chagas disease (CD) vectors by non-specialist users, as well as a statistical modeling approach to advance CD risk assessment. Raíssa’s work engages in new debates to overcome challenging issues for diagnosis, surveillance, and control of infectious diseases. Her research also spans the understanding of fundamental aspects of the biology of vectors, such as the factors contributing to the emergence of vector-borne diseases beyond their current distribution ranges due to the vectors’ responses to environmental changes. Currently, she is working along with UGA and Panama’s Gorgas Memorial Institute of Health Studies on the social and ecological determinants of CD and American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ACL) in Panama. Together, they are combining household surveys, ecological and veterinary assessments, and GIS to study how human activities impact the transmission of these diseases (Graduate School).
