It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
I wrote an off-hand tweet the other day and it did not go down well with MAGA chuds or imperialist liberals. Which tells me it was a good tweet. This was the tweet, which has now clocked one million views.
Responses ranged from ‘“eurofag” (funny) to “retard” (basic) to explanations that tribal leaders themselves approve of and even bless military equipment named after them.
Which is true. But it doesn’t change my opinion. It doesn’t make the practice any less odious. In fact, it makes it worse. Much worse.
The practice of naming imperial killing machines and munitions after native American tribes and their weapons apparently started in the 1940s and was softly codified by an army regulation in the 1960s which mandated all newly commissioned equipment was named to “suggest an aggressive spirit.” This, after consultation with tribal leaders, led to new equipment, primarily helicopters, being named after tribes. In some instances, ceremonies are held in which tribal leaders bless these steel and plastic monstrosities. The practice, which continues to this day, means significant amounts of US army equipment is named after indigenous tribes, from Apache Longbow helicopters, to the C-12 Huron fixed wing plane to “Navajo-class” rescue ships. In 2024 a new ship in this class was named the Narragansett. Then of course you have the Tomahawk missile and the Longbow Hellfire missile. In total, almost thirty pieces of US military equipment bear the names of native tribes.
I would think it’s quite obvious why this practice is so odious: the names of a genocided and mass murdered people have been appropriated by their murderers to genocide and mass murder other people.
The fact that some tribal leaders give their blessing for this practice is hugely depressing, not uplifting or exculpatory.
The missile that slammed into a girls school on the first day of the attack on Iran killing 156 people, including 120 children, was called a tomahawk.
Do the indigenous people in the United States really want to be named after weapons of infanticide? Does it really honour native Americans that a weapon bearing their name operated by the people who genocided and dispossessed them rains out of the sky to kill 156 people? Does a missile launched hundreds of miles away from a civilian target really honour the fighting spirit of the Algonquian who originally created the tomahawk? Of course not. The tomahawk missile is a cowardly stand-off weapon used to mass murder in cold blood.
There is no evidence that the tomahawk missile was ever blessed by tribal leaders, nor that the US Navy consulted with tribes over the name. But it is true that equipment has been blessed by tribal leaders, and that tribes do appear supportive of naming practices (or at least don’t oppose it in any significant way). Indeed, this past April, after the “tomahawk” had mass murdered Iranian children, the new US army attack aircraft the Cheyenne was blessed in a ceremony involving the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
This really is a very dispiriting component of native assimilation into the society of their oppressors. And of course, leaders are leaders in any hierarchy. It may not say much about the general feeling of a group. And it doesn’t take into account the still deeply unequal relationship between the two parties. Tribal leaders may feel they have no choice. But the fact that the practice continues with any native consent at all is dispiriting and depressing, not least because of the massive inequality between tribal communities and non-tribal communities in the US.
Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any racial group in the United States at somewhere between 25% and 30%. South Dakota, home of the Sioux Nation, which comprises the Nakota, Lakota and Dakota peoples, is the state with the highest poverty rate of any single group in the US, at 45%. The Sioux attack helicopter and the Lakota light utility helicopter are named in their supposed honour, and in 2012 Lakota elders blessed helicopters at a ceremony on the Standing Rock Reservation. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that in this case tribal leaders have settled for performative gestures over any true justice. Colonial society has bestowed assimilation on native American tribes by assigning their names to killing machines, in lieu of progress, justice or equality. Poverty rates on reservations can be as high as 50%, with unemployment rates approaching 90%.
Of course some native nations, and especially tribal leaders, have little reason for complaint, having done very well from their arrangements with various state governments via their operation of casinos and gaming resorts.
And acceptance of this appropriation appears significant, but is not total. The first nations activist Vernon Bellecourt led a campaign against US sports teams using tribal land nicknames, and also opposed the naming of the “Black Hawk” helicopter. In 2011, the “Geronimo” code name for the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden was also widely condemned by tribal leaders. As well as this, resistance to US colonial society by indigenous groups is by no means dead, exemplified by the 2017 Standing Rock protests against the DAPL pipeline which saw 200 tribes mobilise to protect a sacred water source.
Survival itself is also resistance.
But the truth is, through exhaustion, co-option and the brutality of the dominant society, a truly inequitable landscape remains.
The naming practice, then, is a grim indictment not of the oppressed, but of the oppressors.
And it is, quite honestly, a very yankee thing to do.
This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
Monday, September 14, 2026
The Downstream Consequences
Many lakes and streams across the country have been industrialized, polluted, or paved over; this has real consequences for community health and safety, from deadly flooding to toxic taps.
A river runs through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Photo by Matthew Dillon/ Flickr / CC BY 2.0)
Water has always held a sacred place in Black life. Long before environmental policy debates filled congressional hearing rooms, water shaped our stories. Creeks, marshes, and wetlands provided both livelihood and refuge when access to land and opportunity was denied elsewhere. For many Black communities, water is not just a resource. It symbolizes memory, survival, and possibility.
Today, many Black neighborhoods are cut off from the waterways that sustained earlier generations. Despite their cultural and ecological importance, many lakes and streams across the Midwest and the country have been industrialized, polluted, or paved over. This has real consequences for community health and safety, from deadly flooding to toxic taps.
Until now, the rivers, lakes, and streams that flow through national parks and other federally protected landscapes have been spared this fate. Despite bipartisan support for protecting our nation’s most beloved lands and waters, their future is at risk. Some are losing long-standing safeguards, opening the door to mining, fracking, and data center development. We’re seeing this right now in the West, where the administration recently slashed Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by a staggering 91%.
These two landscapes are sacred to Tribal Nations that have called them home for millennia, carefully tending the cliffs, canyons, and plateaus as well as the rivers that run through them. They have fought tirelessly to close them to development. At Bears Ears, the administration abruptly dissolved an Inter-Tribal Coalition meant to co-manage the lands, ignoring the long history of stewardship by the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and the Ute Indian Tribe, and jeopardizing their ability to hunt, fish, and collect plants and medicines. The Tribes are fighting this decision, backed up by a broad range of partners that understand the shared stakes for people and the planet.
Let’s make sure we’re electing leaders who will fight for the rights of communities that have borne the brunt of past injustice, and a future where we can all count on clean water and learn our shared history.
As a Black woman who works at the intersection of parks and water, I am watching the ongoing push to restore protections at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante closely. We know that access to the outdoors is already racialized in this country, much like access to clean air or safe drinking water.
When environmental and health protections get stripped away, Black and Indigenous communities are the first to suffer. But the impacts are not isolated. They cascade across communities, as pollution flows downstream, tainting streams where families boat and swim, and driving up drinking water treatment costs.
Fortunately, parks and clean water are two areas where people across the political spectrum agree: The public good must be put above corporate profit, keeping public lands in public hands, and preventing pollution at the source to ensure safe and affordable water in every home in America. And we’re seeing people rise up.
Black and brown leaders are stepping forward as champions for water protection and climate resilience. They are notching important victories, from restoring a federal environmental justice grants program to historic water funding in Texas and hyperlocal wins like a new well in Allensworth, California, to closing coal plants to build parks and gardens in Chicago.
These bright spots show what’s possible when ordinary people come together to defend our national heritage and demand basic needs like clean water and livable communities.
This fall, we’ll have a chance to make our voices heard at the ballot box. Let’s make sure we’re electing leaders who will fight for the rights of communities that have borne the brunt of past injustice, and a future where we can all count on clean water and learn our shared history by visiting parks and monuments that celebrate the beauty and diversity of this magnificent place we call home.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Crystal Davis Crystal Davis is an executive leader, public policy strategist, and coalition builder working at the intersection of people, place, policy, and purpose. She currently serves as the senior Midwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. Her impact resonates in policies for equity and justice in the Great Lakes region and beyond. Full Bio >
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Global initiative launched to harness wastewater as an early warning system for public health protection
Researchers from CWBE at the University of Bath partnered with Bangor University have launched Global Wastewater Day (GWD), a pioneering international initiative to harness wastewater as an early warning system for public health protection.
The initiative will bring together scientists, governments, water utilities and public health organisations from around the world to establish one of the first coordinated global wastewater intelligence networks to transform wastewater from an overlooked by-product into one of the world's most powerful tools for understanding public health, environmental change and emerging global risks.
The initiative aims to create a simultaneous global snapshot of health and environmental conditions through wastewater analysis, generating new insights to strengthen disease surveillance, track antimicrobial resistance, protect the environment and improve pandemic preparedness.
Professor Davey Jones, from Bangor University (Wales), who is the leading the partnership, launched the initiative at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, which brought together experts, policymakers, businesses and international organisations from across the globe.
The project will coordinate a single, global day of wastewater sampling on 31 March 2027, with participating partners analysing wastewater at host labs across the world.
Professor Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, Global Wastewater Day co-chair and Director of the University of Bath’s Centre of Excellence in Water-Based Early-Warning Systems for Health Protection (CWBE), will provide the steer and deliver the chemical analysis programme of global wastewater samples with centre’s new cutting-edge mass spectrometry facility.
Professor Julie Barnett, Social Sciences Lead at CWBE, has also joined GWD steering committee to coordinate the ethical oversight of the initiative.
The aim is to generate the first synchronised snapshot of global public health using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE).
Using established and cutting-edge methods, the programme will focus on detecting antimicrobial resistance (AMR), pathogens, pharmaceuticals, chemical indicators and other markers of human health.
The initiative is being delivered in partnership between the University of Bath, Bangor University, Verily Health, the Global Consortium for Wastewater and Environmental Surveillance for Public Health (GLOWACON), the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and a growing international consortium of scientific and public health organisations.
By capturing comparable information from communities around the world, Global Wastewater Day seeks to establish a new global benchmark for monitoring health and environmental change.
With over 31 countries signed up to date, the initiative’s long-term ambition is to create a "Planetary Health Observatory" where wastewater becomes a routine source of intelligence for understanding the interconnected health of people, animals and the environment.
ProfessorBarbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, Director of CWBE at the University of Bath, said: "I am delighted to see this unique initiative moving forward.
“Global Wastewater Day provides an important opportunity to highlight the vital role of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology in protecting public health, safeguarding the environment, and driving sustainable innovation.
“As a powerful tool for monitoring population health and environmental trends, wastewater analysis will deliver actionable insights that support evidence-based decision-making and help build more resilient and sustainable communities worldwide.
“With cutting-edge analytical capabilities we will generate unprecedented insights into population health, including the burden of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, dietary and nutritional patterns, and exposure to hazardous chemicals, including PFAS.”
Davey Jones, Professor of Environmental Science and Public Health at Bangor University, said: "Everything we do in society leaves a footprint in our wastewater.
“With Global Wastewater Day we want to harness the information it provides to supercharge public health research across the world, helping us detect emerging threats earlier and build a stronger early-warning system for future pandemics.
“The initiative will enable a global comparison of public health data using standardised methods, while building a long-term resource through annual repeat sampling and an open-access dataset.
“A core principle of the project is accessibility and inclusivity, with a strong emphasis on supporting participation from low- and middle-income countries.
“We want to encourage as many scientists, organisations and communities as possible to get involved, contribute data and expertise, and share the initiative with colleagues and networks who may be interested.
“By working across borders, we have an unprecedented opportunity to transform wastewater from an overlooked resource into a source of global intelligence, helping to protect populations, strengthen resilience and support better decision-making for future generations.”
Organisations and researchers are invited to register their interest in taking part in Global Wastewater Day.
Catalyzing the community: Chemists, Navajo leaders educate on clean water
By pairing water quality research with community engagement, scientists and tribal leaders help residents identify safe drinking water sources
CHICAGO, Aug. 26, 2026 — Many Native American communities in rural areas rely on well water, but the quality and safety of that water can vary significantly. So, researchers led by Jani C. Ingram measured the levels of heavy metals in well water on tribal lands in a community partnership with the Navajo Nation. After compiling their water quality data, the researchers and tribal leaders developed best practices for distributing educational resources about safe drinking water to residents of Navajo reservations.
The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) during the “Community Engagement as a Catalyst for Clean Water Quality Management” symposium in McCormick Place. ACS Fall 2026 is being held August 23-27.
“It became clear that no one was monitoring these wells. Everyone on the reservation in that situation is on their own to find a water source for their households. — Jani C. Ingram
During the Cold War, Navajo Nation tribal lands in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah were heavily mined for uranium, a heavy metal found in rocks that is necessary for nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Ingram remembers hearing stories from relatives who worked in the uranium mines. Her mother is a member of the Navajo Nation.
“I didn't really know the extent of the abandonment of those mines,” says Ingram, an Analytical Chemist and Chair of the chemistry and biochemistry departments at Northern Arizona University. “I think you assume people clean up their messes, and that didn't happen.”
The abandonment of these mines led to uranium and other heavy metals entering nearby water resources. Although efforts are underway to clean abandoned uranium mines, many have had the potential to contaminate the wells that supply drinking water for people and livestock. Negative health effects result from consuming water with elevated levels of uranium, including compromised kidney function.
Most of the U.S. population has access to regulated clean water in their homes because of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But on Navajo lands, up to 30% of homes rely on private well water, which is not regulated by that act.
“It became clear that no one was monitoring these wells,” says Ingram. “Everyone on the reservation in that situation is on their own to find a water source for their households.”
This led Ingram to work with Navajo Nation tribal leaders to investigate potential water contamination. They worked to identify and measure the amount of uranium and other heavy metals in Navajo water wells.
Because many of the wells were on rural lands that are difficult to reach, Ingram relied on members of the Navajo Nation and students to accompany her and locate wells from which to retrieve water samples from. She and her collaborators found uranium levels in some of the wells above 30 parts per billion, the upper limit for safe drinking water set by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. Uranium mining may also increase people’s exposure to other harmful substances, such as arsenic and manganese, which Ingram also found elevated levels of in the well water samples Ingesting arsenic and high amounts of manganese can lead to negative health effects, including cancer and neurological disorders, respectively.
Ingram’s team and her Navajo Nation collaborators designed and distributed educational materials identifying which wells were considered safe for sourcing drinking water. They attended tribal community meetings on Navajo reservations, spoke to community leaders, and identified the most culturally appropriate ways to share their findings with community members.
Ingram also provided data to other community organizations working to educate residents on safe water sources. For example, the data is accessible on a website built by the University of New Mexico that maps wells that have been tested on the reservations.
“You can see where your community is on the website map, and you can click on a well and get information about it. We’ve provided them our data on those wells,” Ingram says.
Ultimately, Ingram’s goal is to provide peer-reviewed water quality data to the Navajo Nation. Then the community members can use that data to support their requests for improved infrastructure on reservation lands.
“Having this data is really good for the community,” Ingram says. “If they request that a new well be dug, it tends to be that the deeper the well, the cleaner it is. Or they request a filter system on a regulated well. Our data gives them another tool to help make those arguments.”
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Cancer Society, the Native American Research Centers for Health, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is one of the world's largest scientific organizations and a global leader in advancing scientific knowledge. Founded in 1876, ACS' mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community, and champion scientific integrity. Guided by its vision of a world built on science, ACS brings together people, ideas, and resources to drive discovery and innovation, support the professional growth of scientists and students, and advance scientific discussion. Through its trusted publications, scientific meetings, community networks, education and career resources, and scientific information solutions, ACS helps scientists, educators, and students make a lasting impact on their communities and the world at large. Together, these efforts support ACS' commitment to improve all lives through the transforming power of chemistry.
Title Working with Navajo communities on water characterization
Tommy Rock, Assistant Research Professor at Northern Arizona University, fills a container with water from a livestock well in Utah.
Credit
Jani C. Ingram
Abstract This project aims to determine health risks and community impacts from exposure to environmental toxicants through contamination of water in Navajo communities. During the Cold War, the Navajo Reservation produced the largest supply of both raw and processed uranium ore purposed for US nuclear munitions. Although uranium mining ended in the 1980s, the mining left a legacy on the Navajo people and landscape. Increasingly, research demonstrates that mining activities released other elemental contamination into ground and surface water systems and harm a population’s health. Additionally, some work was focused on analyzing water sources for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). These studies emphasized sampling unregulated water systems and characterizing water quality in sources across the Navajo Nation. Because all samples were collected from water sites labeled as “unregulated,” there is no regulatory obligation to monitor these sites or warn communities of any contamination – an important public and environmental health gap. It is estimated that 30% of the homes on the Navajo Nation do not have indoor plumbing; thus, water hauling from a number of sources is common. This study utilized a community-engaged research model to explore exposure pathways and identify culturally applicable and community constructed models for mitigation and exposure reduction. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and atomic absorption spectroscopy were utilized to detect elemental components within samples collected from unregulated water supplies. The research demonstrated that a large proportion of sampled sites exceeded the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contaminant level for one or more of the elements analyzed. All water quality information gathered from this study has been shared with communities affected via flyers, reports, community presentations, and one-on-one meetings with community members.
Emerging contaminants follow distinct rules when partitioning between sediment and water, study finds
Class-specific mechanistic regimes governing sediment–water partitioning of emerging contaminants. Schematic overview of the study framework and key findings. A nationwide dataset comprising 5,085 paired sediment–water records was compiled across China's major river basins for three emerging contaminant classes: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), antibiotics (ABs), and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Through a multi-branch multi-head attention (MB-MHA) machine learning architecture integrated with molecular dynamics simulations, the study identifies class-specific mechanistic regimes in sediment–water partitioning, quantified by the distribution coefficient log Kd. PFASs are governed by ion-mediated interfacial control, antibiotics are dominated by molecular properties, and EDCs exhibit synergistic multiscale regulation involving molecular, geochemical and basin-scale factors. The framework enables spatially explicit prediction and risk mapping, distinguishing high-log Kd zones where contaminants tend to accumulate in sediments from low-log Kd zones where they remain mobile in the water column. Integrating molecular interactions with geochemical and basin-scale controls reveals class-specific partitioning regimes and improves contaminant risk prediction at the basin scale.
For decades, environmental scientists have struggled to predict where emerging contaminants end up in rivers—whether they linger in sediments or remain mobile in the water. That uncertainty has made risk assessment difficult and management decisions unreliable. Now, researchers have shown that three major classes of emerging contaminants follow fundamentally different mechanistic rules when partitioning between sediment and water, a finding that transforms how these pollutants can be tracked and managed at the basin scale.
Emerging contaminants—including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), antibiotics (ABs), and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs)—are increasingly detected in rivers worldwide. Sediments act as both long-term sinks and potential sources in natural aquatic systems, releasing contaminants back into the water under disturbances. Yet direct monitoring of sediment-water partitioning remains challenging due to ultra-trace concentrations, limited sensing technologies, and high analytical costs. Most available data rely on labor-intensive sampling with limited spatial and temporal coverage. Due to these challenges, there is an urgent need for reliable prediction methods that can work across large or data-scarce regions.
Now, a research team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, has developed a cross-scale predictive framework that reveals exactly how these contaminants behave. Their findings, published (DOI: 10.1016/j.jese.2026.100751) on August 14, 2026, in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, show that antibiotics are primarily governed by molecular descriptors, PFASs are strongly modulated by ion-mediated interfacial processes, and EDCs exhibit synergistic regulation by molecular, geochemical and basin-scale factors.
The team compiled a nationwide dataset of 5,085 paired sediment-water records from 1,093 sampling sites across China's seven major river basins. They then built a multi-branch multi-head attention (MB-MHA) machine learning architecture—a sophisticated framework that processes molecular descriptors, sediment-water properties and basin characteristics through separate but interactive branches. The model achieved exceptional predictive accuracy, with R² values of 0.76 for PFASs, 0.92 for antibiotics, and 0.89 for EDCs—substantially outperforming conventional artificial neural networks. Molecular dynamics simulations further confirmed the class-specific mechanisms at the molecular interface, showing that PFAS compounds form sodium-bridged complexes with mineral surfaces while antibiotics exhibit stronger affinity toward organic matter. The framework also enabled spatially explicit mapping of high-accumulation versus high-mobility zones, providing a quantitative basis for identifying contamination hotspots.
"What surprised us was not that the three classes behaved differently, but just how different the governing mechanisms turned out to be," the authors said. "Antibiotics are largely predictable from molecular structure alone. PFASs are much more sensitive to environmental conditions like temperature and pH. And EDCs sit right in the middle—they're influenced by everything from molecular flexibility to water physiochemistry to how urbanized the basin is. If you try to use one model for all three, you'll get it wrong."
The practical implications are substantial. For antibiotics, molecular descriptors alone can drive reliable predictions—simplifying monitoring efforts. For PFASs, environmental factors such as temperature, pH and sediment organic carbon must be carefully tracked. For EDCs, a multi-scale approach is essential, integrating molecular properties, water quality parameters and basin-scale urbanization patterns. The team demonstrated this framework's utility by generating monthly log Kd projections across the Greater Bay Area—one of the world's most densely urbanized regions—identifying areas where contaminants are likely to accumulate in sediments versus those where they remain mobile in the water column. These maps offer risk-relevant guidance for prioritizing monitoring sites, optimizing discharge schedules and designing adaptive wastewater treatment strategies.
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52200112), General Program of the National Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2026A1515010474), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFD1701205).
Environmental Science and Ecotechnology (ISSN 2666-4984) is an international, peer-reviewed, and open-access journal published by Elsevier. The journal publishes significant views and research across the full spectrum of ecology and environmental sciences, such as climate change, sustainability, biodiversity conservation, environment & health, green catalysis/processing for pollution control, and AI-driven environmental engineering. The latest impact factor of ESE is 14.3, according to the Journal Citation ReportsTM 2024.
A new dashboard tracks New World screwworm risk levels county by county. Here, UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute Research and Development Engineer Tommy Sharkey presents the public health tool built for County of San Diego partners.
Credit: Scott Blair/UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute
In the 1950s, the New World screwworm cost U.S. livestock producers tens of millions of dollars a year, as much as $50 to $100 million annually in the hardest-hit Southwest, before it was eradicated from the United States and pushed south to Panama. Now the flesh-eating pest has spread north again, reaching Texas and New Mexico and threatening livestock, wildlife and even people.
To help local officials stay ahead of the threat, the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) Public Health Services and University of California San Diego researchers developed a tool to help track the screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae feed on living tissue.
“Our County public health partners alerted us to the need for better situational awareness of New World screwworm,” said Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and affiliate member of the UC San Diego Design Lab and Qualcomm Institute. “We built a dashboard to generate regional risk profiles. This is just one example of how we are responding to County needs with a focus on real-world issues. It’s a model that has brought us great success, like the Tijuana River Crisis Environmental Dashboard.”
The new dashboard combines reports of confirmed detections, environmental suitability for the fly and its larvae, and media coverage to estimate risk nationwide on a county-by-county level. The dashboard is currently available only to project partners and public health officials, although the team ultimately hopes to make a public version available.
Seema Shah, MD, MPH, who is medical director of the Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch for the County of San Diego’s Public Health Services Department, noted the incorporation of news articles was one of the dashboard’s innovations. “Traditional reporting mechanisms for public health are often delayed,” she said. “Lab confirmation can take days or weeks. By incorporating media reports, we can identify potential threats sooner and stay one step ahead.”
“The tool gives you a sense of where you might expect to see cases next,” added Mark Beatty, MD, MPH, the assistant medical director for the County’s Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch. “That’s helpful in determining how we should be preparing. Is the threat imminent, or do we have six months? We're in a very concerning phase right now, and the tool backs that up.”
Why the screwworm is different
Unlike most fly larvae, which feed on dead or decaying tissue, New World screwworm larvae burrow into living flesh. The female fly lays her eggs in open wounds or natural body openings, and once the larvae hatch, they feed on healthy tissue, causing wounds to grow larger and deeper, and leaving them vulnerable to secondary infections. Left untreated, infestations can severely injure or even kill livestock and wildlife.
Although cases are uncommon, humans can also become infected; however, unlike infectious diseases such as COVID-19, New World screwworm does not spread from person to person. The larvae invades wounds or mucous membranes, requiring prompt medical treatment to remove them and prevent further tissue damage.
The geographical expansion of the pest has been facilitated not only by the fly’s natural ability to travel miles looking for hosts, but also the movement of livestock, pets and birds and other wildlife.
“We knew in 2023 that New World screwworm was going to move northward, but I wasn't expecting it to move as fast as it has,” said Beatty. “Although the source of the infections in the U.S. is still under investigation, the fact that it's in the U.S. is 100% clear.
“Once it entered Texas, we quickly saw an increase in detections,” he continued. “It's in a place where it used to live, so it's not surprising it's taking a hold again.”
Fighting back
In the 1950s, the New World screwworm was eliminated from the United States using one of the most successful biological control campaigns ever attempted. Called the sterile insect technique, the approach used the mass release of radiation-sterilized insects into the wild to cause reproductive failure and population collapse.
Officials today are drawing on a similar strategy. Led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the latest eradication effort has reintroduced the technique, combined with pesticides and animal movement quarantines. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval is also being sought for a genetically modified all-male strain, which is now in field testing. Researchers at UC San Diego are also developing next-generation genetic technologies that could strengthen future screwworm control and eradication efforts. (See related story, "Flesh-eating Screwworms Have Returned. Which New Technologies Could Stop Them?")
“We are working closely with the California Department of Food and Agriculture to connect local veterinarians with screwworm resources for surveillance in our region,” said Emily Trumbull, DVM, veterinarian and lead for the Epidemiology Unit's One Health Program. “The flies can affect any warm-blooded animal, so working together with veterinarians serving livestock, pets and wildlife is critical for identifying suspect cases and preventing cases in people. The dashboard takes into account environmental factors that can help us understand how the risk to our local region is changing before the fly arrives. That’s why the dashboard is valuable.”
A New Model for Public Health Response
The screwworm dashboard is the latest project from Resilient Shield, a UC San Diego initiative and U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)-funded center led by Aronoff-Spencer and co-PIs. As one of 13 core facilities in the CDC's new Insight Net, a national outbreak and disease modeling network, Resilient Shield is helping pioneer a new approach to building public health tools — one driven by the needs of public health professionals.
“In public health, we always know our most urgent priorities, but too often we don’t have the immediate resources or in-house technical solutions to achieve them,” said Shah. “The screwworm is a perfect example. It is a critical threat, but it is an issue our academic partners might never have prioritized without our direct ticket. This partnership solves our immediate problem while providing shareable, open reference designs that demonstrate exactly how public health, academia, and industry can successfully work together.”
Instead of researchers guessing what agencies need, organizations facing real-world threats can submit tickets to Resilient Shield for the solutions they require. In addition to San Diego County, Resilient Shield’s partners range from the California Department of Public Health to the Navajo Nation and the broader Insight Net.
This multidisciplinary model allows for rapid, cross-institutional mobilization. The center’s very first ticket was a flu tracking request also issued by Shah; the response was co-led by Resilient Shield co-PI Ruy Ribeiro at Los Alamos National Laboratory. For the current screwworm threat, the response was a direct collaboration between Aronoff-Spencer and mathematical epidemiologist Natasha Martin, DPhil, professor medicine and vice chief in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
To answer those requests, Resilient Shield has engineered a modular, scalable resource hub. Working alongside technology partners like Google and MITRE, the center integrates broad data systems, cross-referencing human disease, livestock, environmental and weather data, national health records, and social listening. When a ticket comes in, the team can rapidly assemble the required tools from the open hub. This allows the team to deploy whatever is needed, whether that requires public-facing web and social media, secure compute, robust simulation engines, or AI agent builders.
“Our central innovation is the true convergence of partner priorities with scalable engineering,” said Aronoff-Spencer. “We do not build in a vacuum. Our infrastructure is built directly on the priorities dictated by our partners. In addition, because our platform is built on an open, modular architecture, every solution we develop strengthens the system and makes it more adaptable for the next public health challenge.”
