Carriage_and_transmission_of_Staphylococcus_aureus_in_schools__a_citizen_science_project

Mathematical models that predict the spread of infectious diseases are an essential part of public health decisions for the introduction of new vaccines. These predictions use self-reported social contacts as a proxy for how likely people are to transmit infections through casual interactions. However, the link between who people report having contact with and how they actually pick up infections has never been tested. We will address this crucial public health question by recruiting school children as citizen scientists to collect social contact data; we will then combine this information with microbial genetics to track the transmission of Staphylococcus aureus within a school environment. This work will also provide a first estimate of the carriage and anti-microbial resistance rates in British school age children of this common, but clinically important, bacteria.