Dr Olivier le Polain
Deputy Director of Operations on the UK-Public Health Rapid Support Team
United Kingdom
I am Deputy Director of Operations on the UK-Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST), a joint partnership between Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine established to support outbreak response, build capacity for epidemic response and help strengthen the evidence-base for epidemic response in low and middle income countries. My background is in medicine, epidemiology and public health, and my main areas of interest and work are in understanding infectious disease dynamics, optimising disease control strategies, as well as surveillance systems and health information to inform public health action, particularly in outbreak and crisis settings.
Affiliations
Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Dynamics
Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health
Centres
Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases
Vaccine Centre
Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre
Antimicrobial Resistance Centre
Teaching
I have been involved in practical teaching on several modules: Epidemiology & Control of Communicable Diseases, Modelling & the Dynamics of Infectious Diseases, Statistics for EPH
Research
My main areas of interest are in surveillance, public health information, infectious disease dynamics and disease control, particularly in crisis and outbreak settings.
Selected Publications
Surveillance for variants of SARS-CoV-2 to inform risk assessments.
2023
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
Mpox in Children and Adolescents during Multicountry Outbreak, 2022-2023.
2023
Emerging infectious diseases
Description of the first global outbreak of mpox: an analysis of global surveillance data.
2023
The Lancet. Global health
COVID-19 Mortality and Progress Toward Vaccinating Older Adults - World Health Organization, Worldwide, 2020-2022.
2023
MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report
Measuring the unknown: An estimator and simulation study for assessing case reporting during epidemics.
2022
PLoS Computational Biology
Surveillance and outbreak response in refugee settings and displaced populations
2021
Handbook of Refugee Health: For Healthcare Professionals and Humanitarians Providing Care to Forced Migrants