Some of the outreach and educational work done by staff at the Midwest Center of Excellence – Vector-Borne Disease on tick-bite prevention was recently highlighted by Science Friday. Read or listen to the story at https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/mannequin-tick-checks/. Story reposted below:

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Excerpt of the Science Friday story, originally written by Lina Tran for WUWM:

Nationwide, Wisconsin is a hot spot for Lyme disease. And cases are rising, as climate change and development alter how humans interact with the ticks that transmit this disease. In Wisconsin, cases reported annually have more than doubled in the last two decades.

With tick season underway, tick checks are one of the most important ways you can prevent infection. I recently visited the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-borne Disease, which is housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers are using a new tool to teach people how to do tick checks — mannequins.

Their names are Vanessa and Valerie. Both are tall brunettes. Both dressed in sportswear. And both are covered in dead blacklegged ticks, also known as deer ticks, the species that carries Lyme.

Tela Zembsch is a research specialist at the lab, where scientists are studying ways to control ticks and prevent infection. The lab found the mannequins on Facebook Marketplace, she says. At first, Vanessa was supposed to stand in for a human, in a study on how ticks attach themselves to people. But soon they realized she could be a useful educational tool.

Now, they have a whole family of mannequins.

“We’ve got child mannequins, we’ve got teenagers, we’ve even got pre-teen mannequins,” Zembsch says. “That way, the event that we take it to, it’s set up for who’s going to be looking at the mannequins.”

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Read or listen to the rest of the story at https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/mannequin-tick-checks/.

This article was posted in News and tagged Susan Paskewitz, Tela Zembsch.