Journal article
Predicting schistosome transmission in rural Uganda using water contact data from wearable GPS
- Abstract:
- Granular spatial data and models of human behaviour are currently lacking for schistosomiasis. We collected 10 days of wearable GPS logger data from 452 individuals in rural Uganda to model water contact as a proxy indicator of usage at 69 georeferenced open water sites and 32 public taps/boreholes. Among participants, 63.9% and 33.6% visited ≥1 water sites and taps/boreholes, respectively. Exponential spatial decay models accurately predicted site-specific open water contact (auROC 0.87) and tap/borehole usage (0.92). There was no evidence of tap/borehole usage influencing open water contact. Incorporating mobility terciles did not improve simple spatial decay models. Integrating spatial decay-based estimates of open water site usage into an individual-based transmission model produced realistic estimates of one-year Schistosoma mansoni reinfection, and provided a ranking of water sites contributing to transmission. Our spatial decay models offer scalable tools for focal interventions for schistosomiasis.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 10.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s44360-026-00118-w
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 204826/Z/16/Z
+ UK Research and Innovation
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/001aqnf71
- Grant:
- EP/X021793/1
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Health More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-05-22
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-03-28
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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3005-0693
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2397021
- Local pid:
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pubs:2397021
- Deposit date:
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2026-03-30
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Reitzug et al
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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