Contact Information
Biography
Professor of Epidemiomlogy and Geography (health/medical); Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Medicine, (Division of Infectious Diseases), Dept. of Family Medicine, and Health Services, Global Health.
Program Director, joint degree: MPH in Epidemiology/PhD Biocultural Anthropology
The overriding emphasis in my career has been synthesizing the epidemiologic, geographic, and clinical understanding of health and disease. Health and disease cannot be easily separated into individual disciplines, and so doing may introduce bias into the overall understanding. My current position, spanning three different schools at UW (Public Health, Arts and Sciences, and Medicine) is ideal for this. Similarlly, my joint position in Epidemiology and Geography facilitates this. In addition, I have adjunct appointments in 2 clinical departments: Internal Medicine (Div. of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) and Family Medicine, as well as 2 additional department in the School of Public Health: Health Services and Global Health. Several leadership positions in the School of Public Health have further facilitated insights into an integrative understanding.
Specific interests include: 1) 2) diarrheal diseases esp. in sub-Saharan Africa 2) tuberculosis (TB), especially in densely settled slum areas; 3) vectorborne diseases, including malaria, dengue, and Zika 4) Emerging infectious diseases--previously unrecognized or genuine de novo diseases, such as Ebola, HIV, Zika, and the emergence of new forms of anticmicrobial ("antibiotic") resistant infectons. I am passionate about understanding the underlying epidemiologic, social, demographic, and political factors underlying disease emergence. Recent attention has been devoted to the epidemiology and geography of pain--especially chronic pain--and the conditions that underlie pain, such as low back pain, postherpetic neuralgia, and injury.
I am also interested in health services and the provision of health care. Recent work includes organ transplantation, esp. inequities in access to organs; access to pain treatment and pain medications; evolution of hospital systems, and consolidation; and, throughout my career, rural health and the urban-suburban-rural inequities in access to care. DISEASE SPECIALIZATIONS: emerging infectious diseases (Ebola) ; influenza; cholera; malaria. dengue, Zika); antimicrobial resistant infections; diarrheal diseases (travelers diarrhea and E.coli 0157:H7; tuberculosis
Research
Selected Research
- Colombara, Danny, Abu Faruque, Karen Cowgill, and Jonathan Mayer. "Risk Factors for Diarrhea Hospitalization in Bangladesh, 2000-2008: A Case-case Study of Cholera and Shigellosis." BMC Infectious Diseases 14 (2014): 440.
- Psoter, Kevin J., Margaret Rosenfeld, Anneclaire J. De Roos, Jonathan D. Mayer, and Jon Wakefield. "Differential Geographical Risk of Initial Acquisition in Young US Children With Cystic Fibrosis." American Journal of Epidemiology 179, no. 12, 1503-513.
- Paige, Sarah, B. Frost, Simon Gibson, D. Jones, W. Shankar, Mhairi Switzer, A. Ting, and James Goldberg. "Beyond Bushmeat: Animal Contact, Injury, and Zoonotic Disease Risk in Western Uganda." EcoHealth11, no. 4 (2014): 534-43.
- Oren, E., M. Narita, C. Nolan, and J. Mayer. "Neighborhood Socioeconomic Position and Tuberculosis Transmission: A Retrospective Cohort Study." Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, 2014, 227.
- Psoter, K.J., A.J. De Roos, J. Wakefield, M. Mayer, and Rosenfeld. "Season Is Associated with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Acquisition in Young Children with Cystic Fibrosis." Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 2013, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 2013.
- Bell, Janice F., Frederick J. Zimmerman, Gunnar R. Almgren, Jonathan D. Mayer, and Colleen E. Huebner. "Birth outcomes among urban African-American women: a multilevel analysis of the role of racial residential segregation." Social science & medicine 63, no. 12 (2006): 3030-3045.
- Mayer, Jonathan D. "Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases."Social science & medicine 50, no. 7 (2000): 937-952.
- Mayer, Jonathan D. "The political ecology of disease as one new focus for medical geography." Progress in Human Geography 20 (1996): 441-456.
Research Advised
- Sutton, A. M., & Mayer, J. D. (2023). Modeling the social and political contexts of United States health protective interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Gause, E., & Mayer, J. D. (2020). Identifying disproportionate burden through the spatial covariance of two acute deaths of despair : firearm suicide and opioid overdose. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Hollenhorst, O., & Mayer, J. D. (2017). A rights-based evaluation of humanitarian information and communication technology policy. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Naslund, S., & Mayer, J. D. (2012). Portraits of parasites : geographic imaginaries in the production of health knowledge. University of Washington.
Courses Taught
Honors 222: Pain. Multidisciplinary understanding of pain--perspectives from epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical, literature and art, philopsophy, psychology.