Katharina Staerk
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Katharina is a Professor of Veterinary Public Health and Director of the Centre for Emerging, Endemic and Exotic Diseases (CEEED). She is also the coordinator for the Infection and Immunity Research Group.
Biography
Katharina was born in Frauenfeld, Switzerland and graduated from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Zürich in 1988. Her Doctoral thesis on the Risk factors for Enzootic Pneumonia Re-infection in SPF Pig Breeding Herds undertaken between 1989 and 1991 was honoured with the Karl-Pfizer-Award in 1992.
Between 1995 and 1998 Katharina undertook a PhD programme at Massey University in New Zealand in information systems for the prevention and control of infectious diseases in pigs. Following this Katharina then worked for 2 years in Denmark as a research officer for the Danish Bacon and Meat Council. She then took a post as a Head of Section of Monitoring, at the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office which she held for 7 years. Parallel to this Katharina worked as part-time lecturer in Epidemiology and Veterinary Public Health at the University of Bern in 2000. From 2002-2006 Katharina was also a Member of the Executive Board at the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office, Bern, with responsibility for 30 staff.
In 2005 Katharina spent 4 months as a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Agricultural Life Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medical Sciences, University of Tokyo, Japan. She joined the Royal Veterinary College in January 2007. Katharina has an international role as President of the European College for Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH Website).
Research
The continuing theme of Katharina Stärk’s research is the focus on the design of monitoring and surveillance programmes as part of national disease control efforts. While she was initially conducting projects in the context of respiratory diseases in pigs, the scope was later broadened to infectious diseases in general, including zoonoses and foodborne infections.
A highlight of her early research work was the contribution to the epidemiological understanding of infectious respiratory diseases in pigs and the risk of airborne transmission. This led to the design, pilot testing and eventually implementation of the area-wide eradication of these diseases in the whole of Switzerland. As one of the first countries world-wide, Switzerland achieved this goal and continues to maintain an exceptionally high health status in pigs (Stärk et al., 2007).
Katharina Stärk was later pioneering the use of risk assessment in the context of animal health through applied examples as well as international capacity building. She integrated methods of risk assessment in the design of surveillance programmes providing a methodological basis for risk-based priority setting and resource allocation (Stärk et al., 2006). This method is currently being applied by the Swiss Veterinary Service in a number of programmes, including avian influenza and bluetongue surveillance. There is considerable international interest in courses on this topic.
In her current position, Katharina Stärk is continuing to work on the optimisation of surveillance and disease control methods. She has a strong interest in understanding factors preventing or promoting the change of practice in health systems, specifically in the context of antimicrobial usage. As the director of the new Centre for the Control of Veterinary Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses at the Royal Veterinary College, she aims to develop a portfolio of multidisciplinary research focusing on the interface of human and animal populations and its relation to public health. She has recently had a grant application to look at antimicrobial resistance, specifically in an emerging strain of MRSA in pigs, approved by the EU.
Teaching
Katharina is responsible for all the Veterinary Public Health teaching at the college, primarily the in the BVetMed Undergraduate Course but is hoping to introduce a module into the BSc Bioveterinart Science course. Under the new curriculum she is also a strand leader for the Population Medicine and Public Health strand.
Selected Publications
PRESI, P., STARK, K. D., KNOPF, L., BREIDENBACH, E., SANAA, M., FREY, J. & REGULA, G. (2008) Efficiency of risk-based vs . random sampling for the monitoring of tetracycline residues in slaughtered calves in Switzerland. Food Addit Contam 25, 566-573. PubMed ID 18473211
HENDRIKSEN, R. S., MEVIUS, D. J., SCHROETER, A., TEALE, C., JOUY, E., BUTAYE, P., FRANCO, A., UTINANE, A., AMADO, A., MORENO, M., GREKO, C., STARK, K. D., BERGHOLD, C., MYLLYNIEMI, A. L., HOSZOWSKI, A., SUNDE, M. & AARESTRUP, F. M. (2008) Occurrence of antimicrobial resistance among bacterial pathogens and indicator bacteria in pigs in different European countries from year 2002 - 2004: the ARBAO-II study. Acta Vet Scand 50, 19. PubMed ID 18554407
HAPPOLD, J. R., BRUNHART, I., SCHWERMER, H. & STARK, K. D. (2008) Surveillance of H5 avian influenza virus in wild birds found dead. Avian Dis 52, 100-105. PubMed ID 18459304
PRESI, P., KNOPF, L., REGULA, G., PACCIARELLI, B., FREY, J. & STARK, K. D. (2007) Evaluation of the chemical residue monitoring in animal-derived products in Switzerland. Food Addit Contam 24, 590-597. PubMed ID 17487600
KNOPF, L., SCHWERMER, H. & STARK, K. D. (2007) A stochastic simulation model to determine the sample size of repeated national surveys to document freedom from bovine herpesvirus 1 (BoHV-1) infection. BMC Vet Res 3, 10. PubMed ID 17511856
WIELAND, B., WITTWER, M., REGULA, G., WASSENAAR, T. M., BURNENS, A. P., KELLER, J. & STARK, K. D. (2006) Phenon cluster analysis as a method to investigate epidemiological relatedness between sources of Campylobacter jejuni. J Appl Microbiol 100, 316-324. PubMed ID 16430508
STARK, K. D., REGULA, G., HERNANDEZ, J., KNOPF, L., FUCHS, K., MORRIS, R. S. & DAVIES, P. (2006) Concepts for risk-based surveillance in the field of veterinary medicine and veterinary public health: review of current approaches. BMC Health Serv Res 6, 20. PubMed ID 16507106
RACLOZ, V., GRIOT, C. & STARK, K. D. (2006) Sentinel surveillance systems with special focus on vector-borne diseases. Anim Health Res Rev 7, 71-79. PubMed ID 17389055
HASLER, B., REGULA, G., STARK, K. D., SAGER, H., GOTTSTEIN, B. & REIST, M. (2006) Financial analysis of various strategies for the control of Neospora caninum in dairy cattle in Switzerland. Prev Vet Med 77, 230-253. PubMed ID 16982104