Assistant Professor
Department of Epidemiology
704 Parran Hall
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15261
Voice: 412-624-7693
Fax: 412-624-3775
E-mail: wav10@pitt.edu








Research Interests

Infectious disease epidemiology and global health. I am interested in methods for data collection and analysis of infectious disease surveillance data and how this information can be used for disease control, in particular for vector-borne and childhood diseases in low- and middle income countries. I am involved in the Vaccine Modeling Initiative (www.vaccinemodeling.org) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I am also a faculty in the Public Health Dynamics Lab (www.phdl.pitt.edu). Currently, I am the lead investigator on project Tycho (www.tycho.pitt.edu) that provides open access to public health data and includes the entire digitized history of the US weekly Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System in computable form. The web interface is currently in beta testing. I also work with Ministries of Health in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam to study spatial-temporal transmission dynamics of dengue fever by using surveillance data and we recently started as similar project in Brazil. Increasingly, I am working on data access and sharing in public health to advance the use of public health data for informed decision making. Most public health data are poorly preserved and still in paper format. We started a project to rescue public health data in Laos in collaboration with IRD and IFMT: https://www.vaccinemodeling.org/index.php/laos-field-blog


Education & Training

• Vrije Universiteit Medical Center Amsterdam, The Netherlands- MD, 2004



• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health- PhD, 2009

Positions Held

• 2011-present Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh



• 2009-2011 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh



• 2007-2009 Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health



• 2006-2009 Graduate Research Assistant, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health



• 2004-2005 Research Fellow, WHO Collaborating Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. University of Louvain, Brussels Belgium

Honors

• Phi Beta Kappa-Alpha Chapter of Maryland (Elected 2010)

Teaching

• PUBHLT 2025 Concepts and Methods in Global Health (primary instructor)

Selected Publications

Van Panhuis WG, Luxemburger C, Pengsaa K, Limkittikul K, Sabchareon A, Lang J, Durbin AP, Cummings DA. Decay and persistence of maternal dengue antibodies among infants in Bangkok. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2011 Aug;85(2):355-62.

Van Panhuis WG, Gibbons RV, Endy TP, Rothman AL, Srikiatkhachorn A, Nisalak A, Burke DS, Cummings DA. Inferring the serotype associated with dengue virus infections on the basis of pre- and postinfection neutralizing antibody titers. J Infect Dis. 2010 Oct 1;202(7):1002-10.

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG. Disease Occurrence in Natural Disasters, An analysis of the Health Impact of the 2004 Andaman Nicobar Earthquake and Tsunami in Indonesia. Prehosp Dis Med 2009;24 (6): 493-499

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG, Lagoutte J. Patterns of chronic and acute diseases after natural disasters, a study from the International Committee of the Red Cross field hospital in Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Trop Med Int Health 2007;12 (11):1338-41.

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG, Lagoutte J. Aid after disasters: evidence for psychosocial services needs strengthening. BMJ 2005 Jul 2;331(7507):50.

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG, Degomme O, Teran V. Civil conflict in four African countries, a five year review of trends in nutrition and mortality. Epidemiological Reviews 2005;27:66-77

Hales S, Van Panhuis WG. A new strategy for dengue control. Lancet 2005 Feb 12;365:551-2

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG. Conflict related mortality: an analysis of 37 datasets. Disasters 2004 Dec;28 (4):418-428

Guha-Sapir D, Van Panhuis WG. The importance of conflict related mortality in civilian populations. Lancet 2003; 361:2126-28.