A professor from the University of Michigan’s school of Public Health made an interesting connection between expanding road networks and diarrheal pathogens in the remote rainforests of northern Ecuador. His study indicated that higher rates of infection (up to 8 times higher in some cases) were found at closer distances to the main roads, and showed that villages better connected by the new road networks also experienced higher rates of infection. An InFocus article on the University of Michigan’s website focused on his study and noted that the study of epidemiology and the spread of disease needs to account for broad socio-economic, ecological, and economic patterns.