Dr. O’Donnell’s research interests center around global health, respiratory infections, and sepsis. Current projects are in tuberculosis (TB), HIV, SARS-CoV-2, respiratory epidemiology, sepsis, and global health including ethical issues in global health research. Current research content areas include drug-resistant tuberculosis, emerging respiratory viral infections including Covid-19, global sepsis epidemiology, and global health education. Areas of methodologic expertise include clinical and molecular epidemiology, clinical trials, basic/translational research, and implementation science. Geographic areas where we work include South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Brazil and New York City. Collaborators include the Center for Infection and Immunity, ICAP, the Centre for AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), University of Rwanda, East Africa Training Initiative (EATI), Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas-Fiocruz, and the Larsen lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, among others.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is an important global public health concern because of increasing incidence, low cure rates, and high reported mortality. Nowhere has this increased incidence generated more concern than in South Africa where interactions between TB and generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics are causing explosive increases in TB incidence and TB case-fatality rates. The most drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), is increasingly prevalent in South Africa.

Acute respiratory infections continue to be responsible for approximately 3.9 million deaths worldwide (apart from the COVID-19 epidemic), predominantly in children, without a substantial decrease in estimated mortality over the past two decades. In addition, outbreaks of emergent viral respiratory infections with pandemic potential and periodic outbreaks of severe acute respiratory infection caused by vaccine-preventable pathogens continue to threaten global health security.