Population health and infectious diseases

Public health is a field that encompasses all medical, research, and social efforts intended to improve the health of the community and the public, prevent and control diseases, provide education and training to promote public health, and develop and implement public health policies. 

Health systems, in Israel and around the world, face increasingly complex challenges such as preventing the spread of infectious diseases in a world where direct flights allow for the easy transmission of diseases; as well as treating  illnesses albeit budget and manpower limitations.  

Similar to other fields of medicine, public health has undergone a paradigm shift in recent years, moving towards a more individualized approach. There is a growing understanding that a more personalized approach can both render efforts to promote public health more effective and facilitate a smarter investment of resources.  

Personalized Medicine as the Basis for Public Health Policies 

In the field of public health, personalized medicine  is based on the implementation of prevention and treatment strategies that recognize and integrate the uniqueness and diversity of individuals. By understanding the factors that may affect the development of diseases based on each individual’s genetics, environment, and lifestyle, researchers can develop more effective and safer treatments and prevention strategies. 

The field of personalized population health has expanded in recent years due to technological advances such as Big Data analysis and machine learning algorithms, which allow researchers to analyze massive amounts of medical information and identify patterns and trends that lead to new insights on transmission and allow for the implementation of more ideal treatment strategies.  

Technological breakthroughs in the field of genetic sequencing have also led to major advances in the study and treatment of infectious diseases. For example, understanding the mechanisms of disease-causing parasites not only allows for the development of better treatment strategies, but also facilitates the discovery of new treatments for diseases that were once considered incurable. 

Dangoor Center for Personalized Medicine 

The experts at the Dangoor Center for Personalized Medicine at Bar-Ilan University are responsible for some of the most significant and important breakthroughs recorded in the field of population health in recent years, and continue to investigate and develop medical strategies, treatments, and drugs that could help hundreds of millions of people in the future.   

The population health researchers at Dangoor Center incorporate not only medical and scientific data in their analysis, but also bioethical, moral, political, economic, and social considerations when proposing advanced solutions and policies. 

World-wide Collaborations 

The research of population health and infectious diseases spans countries and continents and requires the orchestrated effort of experts from various disciplines, including extensive collaboration with many institutions and key players outside the laboratory. Most, if not all, of Bar-Ilan’s personalized population health research is conducted in collaboration with researchers from multiple universities and research institutes, as well as with leading hospitals and medical institutions in Israel and around the world.