ABSTRACT
Human mobility patterns have always been an integral component of infectious disease ecology. This factor has taken on greater importance as the magnitude, distances, and speed of human travel have greatly increased in recent centuries. People on the go bring novel parasites and vectors to their destinations, which in turn present disease agents unfamiliar to new arrivals. In addition to the interchange of people and pathogens, movement is linked with various other factors relevant to infectious disease: environmental change (e.g., deforestation, dam construction), political and economic patterns and processes (e.g., wage and employment discrepancies across borders, war), abiotic differences (e.g., temperature, precipitation), and disparities in health care and sanitation.
