Helen E Jenkins

About

Helen E Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Boston University School of Public Health. She holds an MSc in Biostatistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from Imperial College, London. Her career focuses on quantitative analysis of infectious disease data with the aim of influencing policy and decision-making to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by infectious diseases. Her research includes extensive modeling of tuberculosis in various settings to address public health questions, such as spatial heterogeneity of drug-resistant tuberculosis and the epidemiology of pediatric TB. Jenkins has analyzed surveillance and lab data from multiple countries, including Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, South Africa, and Peru, to identify disease hot-spots and inform resource allocation. She has contributed to global TB burden estimates, notably publishing work that the WHO has incorporated into their official statistics. Additionally, her work on bovine TB in the UK and poliomyelitis surveillance has directly impacted policy and advanced scientific understanding. Jenkins is also the Co-Director of the Summer Institute of Biostatistics and Data Science, a program dedicated to introducing undergraduates to biostatistics.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Geography
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Nursing
• Public economics
• Development economics
• Biology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Assessment of a COVID-19 Control Plan on an Urban University Campus During a Second Wave of the Pandemic

  JAMA Network Open · 2021 · 54 citations

  Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted US educational institutions. Given potential adverse financial and psychosocial effects of campus closures, many institutions developed strategies to reopen campuses in the fall 2020 semester despite the ongoing threat of COVID-19. However, many institutions opted to have limited campus reopening to minimize potential risk of spread of SARS-CoV-2. Objective: To analyze how Boston University (BU) fully reopened its campus in the fall of 202…

  DOI

• Weekly dengue forecasts in Iquitos, Peru; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Singapore

  PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2020 · 35 citations

  Predictive models can serve as early warning systems and can be used to forecast future risk of various infectious diseases. Conventionally, regression and time series models are used to forecast dengue incidence, using dengue surveillance (e.g., case counts) and weather data. However, these models may be limited in terms of model assumptions and the number of predictors that can be included. Machine learning (ML) methods are designed to work with a large number of predictors and thus offer an a…

  DOI

• Global burden of tuberculous meningitis in children aged 0–14 years in 2019: a mathematical modelling study

  The Lancet Global Health · 2024-12-18 · 26 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Tuberculous meningitis is fatal if untreated and can lead to lifelong neurological sequelae. However, to our knowledge, there are no data on the number of children affected by this disease. We aimed to estimate the global disease burden and attributable mortality of childhood tuberculous meningitis by WHO regions, age groups, treatment status, and HIV status in 2019. METHODS: We developed a Bayesian mathematical model to estimate the number of children aged 0-14 years who developed t…

  PublisherDOI

• Tuberculosis testing patterns in South Africa to identify groups that would benefit from increased investigation

  Scientific Reports · 2023-11-27 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) collects all public health laboratory test results in South Africa, providing a cohort from which to identify groups, by age, sex, HIV, and viral suppression status, that would benefit from increased tuberculosis (TB) testing. Using NHLS data (2012-2016), we assessed levels and trends over time in TB diagnostic tests performed (count and per capita) and TB test positivity. Estimates were stratified by HIV status, viral suppression, age, sex, and prov…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cost-effectiveness of diagnostic tools and strategies for the screening and diagnosis of tuberculosis disease and infection: a scoping review

  BMJ Public Health · 2024-04-01 · 5 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The objective of this scoping review is to understand the cost-effectiveness of current and future tools/strategies for screening and diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) infection and disease. To this end, PubMed, EMBASE and SCOPUS were used to identify any English language reports on the cost-effectiveness of TB infection/disease screening/diagnostic strategies published between 1 January 2017 and 7 October 2023. Studies included high-burden/risk TB populations, compared diagnostic/screening methods…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Tracking tuberculosis patients in Ukraine to understand pathways through care and the impact of geographic movements

  NIH · $165k · 2021–2024

• Evaluating the tuberculosis epidemic in South Africa using a novel ten-year cohort

  NIH · $1.6M · 2020–2026

• Understanding spatial heterogeneity of drug resistant tuberculosis

  NIH · $627k · 2013–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Richard I. Lindley

  University of Sydney

  911 shared

• Yi Wang

  Weatherford College

  740 shared

• Thompson Robinson

  British Heart Foundation

  677 shared

• Joanna M. Wardlaw

  University of Edinburgh

  624 shared

• Lidan Wang

  Jiangsu University

  555 shared

• Hui Wang

  Xian Mental Health Center

  555 shared

• Longfei Wu

  Capital Medical University

  555 shared

• Craig S. Anderson

  491 shared

Similar researchers at Boston University

• Alexa S. Beiserh-188
• Kathryn L. Lunettah-132
• Gina Marie Pelosoh-99