Students Being Tracked To Figure Out How Flu Spreads

PITTSBURGH (NewsRadio 1020 KDKA) - How do social interactions help the spread of the flu? Researchers at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health are finding out with the help of Canon-MacMillan school students.

It's called the Social Mixing And Respiratory Transmission in Schools, or SMART program, and the way it works is students are wearing trackers called motes which record interactions by signaling when they come in close proximity to another mote.

By having 450 students wear these motes, researchers are hoping to see how these interactions work with the spread of the flu.

KDKA-AM's Larry and John talk to Charles Vukotich, senior project manager at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health, about how the project works and what his team is hoping to discover about people and the spread of disease.