Recipient Organization
UNIV OF CALIFORNIA (VET-MED)
(N/A)
DAVIS,CA 95616
Performing Department
VM: Extension/Public Programs
Non Technical Summary
Three outbreaks of virulent Newcastle Disease (vND) in Southern California over the last 50 years have resulted in the depopulation of millions of commercial and backyard poultry (BYP) and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. All three outbreaks are thought to have originated and/or worsened as a result of the activities associated with BYP and gamefowl (GF). Due to the unique spatio-temporal and cultural interactivity of BYP-GF and commercial poultry in Southern California, traditional methods of control including biosecurity, depopulation and extension have been relatively ineffective. The value of real-time social media analyses coupled with disease modeling to improve preparedness and response for vND could offer significant new applied research and extension tools. Here we propose to leverage and extend our current mobile app (BYP-central) and web-crawling and web-scraping software to better inform USDA-CEAH's existing vND disease model for Southern California. Our vision is to link Social Network Analysis (SNA) based surveys with attitudes and behavior changes collected from our app with extracted social media data from platforms including Twitter, Craigslist and backyardchickens.com to better inform the parameters associated with the current USDA-CEAH vND disease model. The results will be used to inform and target extension efforts. The above multi-source datasets will also be used to complement the state's diagnostic lab's passive surveillance related to BYP respiratory diseases in order to respond more quickly to a potential vND outbreak and thus improve the commercial poultry industry's ability to reduce the risk of vND in Southern California and beyond.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Network Analysis (SNA) based surveys of BYP-GF owners in Southern California.Objective 2 (Research): Investigate the value of social media as a tool to understand spatio-temporal BYP-GF respiratory diseases to complement the California's passive surveillance animal diagnostic lab services for poultry. Understand movement, sentiment and accuracy of posted media about BYP-GF respiratory diseases by developing robust monitoring of targeted BYP websites and social media platforms frequented by non-commercial poultry owners in Southern California.Objective 3 (Research): To better advise the USDA and CDFA pre and post vND outbreak, leverage and combine UCCEs (Figure 3a) and USDA-CEAHs SEIR vND models. Models will integrate data from objectives 1 and 2 to improve estimates for parameters in the model as well as exploring additional scenarios including the impact of vaccination on disease transmission in BYP-GF populations. A TableauTM based on-line dashboard will be created in order to facilitate disease modeling scenarios during and after the conclusion of the grant.Objective 4 (Research/Extension): Identify and deliver interventions that increase positive behavior changes with respect to husbandry and biosecurity leveraging and expanding our current phone app (BYP Central) to act as a social media and persuasive technology tool to improve husbandry and biosecurity practices among BYP-GF owners.Objective 5 (Extension): To extend knowledge and recommendations to responding agencies (CDFA and USDA), BYP-GF producers and the California commercial poultry industry.Objective 6 (Extension): To extend knowledge and recommendations to BYP-GF owners, leverage our current Cooperative Extension website, YouTube channel and Mobile App. Develop a presence on additional social media platforms and media types (documentary).
Project Methods
Methods: Following Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, traditional and SNA based surveys will be distributed via our extension-based contacts including feedstores, CDFA-CAHEN distribution networks, and commonly used social media sites used by non-commercial poultry owners (e.g. backyardchickens.com, Facebook, Poultry Ponderings Newsletter, UC and SVM list-serves). We will additionally utilize our UCCE website (https://ucanr.edu/sites/poultry/), our mobile app (BYP Central) and YouTube channel (UC Davis Vet Med Poultry University). All survey questionnaires and recruitment ads will be available both in English and Spanish.A combination of the survey platform Qualtrics™, the statistical program R (packages 'sna', 'statnet', 'network' and 'maps') and the SNA software ORA (Pittsburgh, PA) will be used for the development of a movement and contact network. SNA analysis and mapping (Figure 2) will be done to understand both movement of BYP-GF birds and contact networks similar to our previous efforts using SNA to better understand BY poultry connectivity. These data will be used to inform our SEIR disease model and optimize our outreach efforts.With respect to the movement network, nodes will represent individuals or places (e.g. feed stores, hatcheries) and ties will represent live bird movement. Network size, measures of centrality, betweenness, in-degree and out-degree will be calculated. Briefly, in-degree represents the number of sources (e.g. friend(s)) or premises (e.g. feed store(s)) birds are obtained from and out-degree represents the number of sources or premises the birds are moved to. These metrics are assumed to be proxies for potential introduction and/or spread of disease(s) into or out of premises. These data will be used to inform our SEIR vND disease model. In order to capture spatio-temporal changes in BYP-GF movements a total of 2 surveys will be delivered in years 2 and 3..With respect to the contact networks the same SNA based survey will be constructed using premises as nodes and links as BYP movements. However, we will also explore the structure, dynamics, cohesiveness and other characteristics of the network by including organizations such as UCCE, CAHEN and various BYP-GF social media groups with the goal of understanding effective modes of both online and offline information dissemination for Objectives.