Research summary
To protect human and animal health, we need appropriate water and sanitation control measures—but to develop those, we need to identify and understand how enteric pathogens move through water and the environment. An enteric pathogen is a microbe that can invade the body and cause intestinal illness.
As Canada Research Chair in One Health, Dr. Heather Murphy is combining microbiology, engineering, risk assessment and epidemiology to better understand enteric pathogens and their transmission pathways in the environment. Ultimately, she and her research team hope to quantify the burden of disease associated with enteric pathogens and to identify, evaluate and propose interventions to reduce disease.