Professor Karin Leder

EXPERTISE

  • Clinical Epidemiology
  • Infectious disease
  • Public health
  • Epidemiology
  • Travel health
  • Imported diseases
  • Water & sanitation
  • Emerging infections

Karin is an executive team member for the Monash-led five-year RISE project that investigates the impact of improved environmental health on human health outcomes in informal communities. The project will provide sustainable water and sewage management to 24 slums in Fiji and Indonesia, and will investigate impacts on physical and microbiological health of the environment and inhabitants. Collection of biological samples will include analyses for AMR. Karin researches the burden of waterborne disease; epidemiology and prevention of community- acquired and nosocomial infections; clinical infectious disease epidemiology; health issues associated with exposure to contaminated environments and poor-quality water; imported infections acquired overseas among travellers and immigrants; research design; public health assessment; and parasitic infection management.

Professor Leder is an infectious diseases physician, Head of the Infectious Diseases Epidemiology Unit in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, and Head of Travel Medicine and Immigrant Health Services at the Victorian Infectious Disease Service, Royal Melbourne Hospital. Her specific areas of interest include imported infections and infections associated with exposure to environments contaminated by poor sanitation. She is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and in 2018 she won the Frank Fenner award from the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases. Karin is leader and Melbourne site director of GeoSentinel – a global surveillance network for imported infections. She is also a CIA on an IDEAS grant (2020-2024) assessing the relative importance of pathogen acquisition via various exposure pathways.

AMR FOCUS

  • Assessing exposure pathways for pathogens causing gastrointestinal infection among children living in informal coastal settlements.
  • Health & economic benefits of environmentally sensitive water cycle management in informal urban settlements.
  • Collaborator in the clinical & infection prevention pillar of APPRISE.
  • Assessing the impact of a community-level hygiene intervention & a water intervention using riverbank filtration technology on diarrhoeal prevalence in India.
  • Interactions between environmental & host factors on infection.
  • Planetary health.

IMPACT

  • Clinical aspects of infectious diseases including disease prevention.
  • Infectious disease surveillance.
  • Public health policy.