Spatial and social patterning of COVID-19 prevention and transmission in Canada

Spatial and social patterning of COVID- 19 prevention and transmission in Canada: Investigating the impacts of risk perception and preventive behaviour on individual activity space  

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Operating Grant: COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding 

Nominated Principal Investigator: Dr. Lu Wang
Principal Investigators: Dr. Lixia Yang, Dr. Dongmei Chen  (external link) 

Emerging global infectious diseases are presenting unprecedented public health challenges, resulting in long-lasting health consequences and sociocultural and economic disruptions for individuals and communities around the world. Our project aims to examine the relationships among health risk perception, preventive behaviour and individual activity space during the on-going global COVID-19 outbreak in The Greater Toronto Area (GTA). As the most populous metropolitan area and the largest immigrant gateway in Canada, the GTA has been a significant receiving geography of a number of infectious diseases in recent decades.

      It is well recognized that human movement in the spatial and temporal dimensions has direct impact on disease transmission at global and local scales. Along the timeline, public health measures have seen great changes and raised numerous debates. Our project will capture the temporal dimension of the process and investigate the relationships of risk perception, prevention behaviour and activity space.