Disease risk analysis: a paradigm for using health-based data to inform primate conservation and public health.

Risk analysis is a multidisciplinary process used to evaluate existing knowledge in order to prioritize risks associated with the spread of disease. A principle aim of risk analysis is to facilitate the development of cost-effective management strategies. Risk analysis calls for a multidisciplinary approach to piece together and integrate the numerous factors that influence disease transmission. The seven papers included in this volume of AJP present current primatological research as viewed through the prism of risk analysis. Issues such as interspecies disease transmission, public health, and conservation of endangered species are addressed, and risk analysis is put forward as a possible paradigm to promote understanding of infectious disease and its impact on nonhuman primate and human populations. Am. J. Primatol. 68:851–854, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]