Veterinary Epidemiology and Risk Assessment

The sub-group is a part of the Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Control (VERA) Research Group.

The group’s primary objectives are to 1) develop the area of risk assessment within the department, 2) provide risk assessments and contribute to epidemiological reports for the Danish Veterinary Consortium (DK-VET)  and 3) to contribute to research in risk assessment methodologies. 

We aim to secure easy data access, and to prepare for potential emerging diseases in order to be able to assist the Danish veterinary authorities with risk assessments and epidemiological expertise always under the arm’s length principle.

We have or are involved in research and project activities related to:

• Developing a rapid risk of bias assessment tool for animal epidemiological studies (raRoB-vet)
• Risk factors for highly pathogenic avian influenza in Denmark
• Developing a risk assessment model for predicting the prevalence of human toxoplasmosis from consuming pork in Denmark
• Partner in the EFSA project Living Risk Assessments – LiRA, which aims to develop an on-line, living risk assessment tool, to assess the risk for zoonotic and animal diseases using a holistic, one-health approach (2023-2026).
• Partner in the CoVetLab project Nowcasting to estimate animal disease incidence based on reported outbreaks, which aim to explore the use of analytical techniques, such as nowcasting, to better predict the actual incidence of diseases in affected regions from available databases and develop a proposed methodology for real-time prediction of animal disease incidence (2023-2024).

Group members

• Anette Boklund
• Helene Ane Jensen
• Søren Saxmose Nielsen
• Abbey Olsen