Build Computational Autonomy for Indigenous Public Health

Instituto Dourados develops the scientific, computational, and organizational capacity needed for Indigenous communities to guide their own public health futures.

We translate basic research into practical tools for public health planning by combining epidemiology, quantitative social science, computational modeling, and long-term community partnerships. Our work emphasizes computational autonomy: communities should be able to own, operate, and improve the scientific infrastructure they rely upon.

Our long-term goal is to build privacy-preserving AI assistants powered by renewable energy. The same infrastructure will also serve as a publicly accessible distributed scientific computing cluster, strengthening local computational capacity.

We believe sustainable public health depends on strengthening local capacity rather than long-term dependence on external or expensive resources. To support this vision, we develop open-source software and sustainable computing systems that communities can operate, maintain, and improve themselves.

Modern science, artificial intelligence, and the technology industry are built upon an enormous foundation of open-source software. Just as industrial economies depended upon access to transportation networks and energy resources, meaningful participation in today’s computational economy depends upon access to this shared digital infrastructure.

Instituto Dourados helps communities participate in the global open-source ecosystem not only as users, but also as contributors, innovators, and leaders. We believe Indigenous communities should have the same opportunity to build scientific software, computational infrastructure, and new technologies that reflect their own priorities while contributing to—and benefiting from—scientific and technological progress worldwide.

Foundations

Our work builds on a long standing collaboration in the Dourados Indigenous Reserve. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Rezende and collaborators developed epidemiological information systems to track the arrival and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants within the Reserve (Simionatto et al. 2020; Oliveira et al. 2023).

That work demonstrated the importance of understanding local social structure for public health planning. Instituto Dourados extends this foundation by developing computational methods that help communities anticipate future outbreaks, evaluate intervention strategies, and adapt these approaches to Indigenous communities throughout Brazil and beyond.

Figure 1: Time series of COVID-19 spread through the Dourados Indigenous Reserve. Variant B.1.1 was first detected among the Guarani (1), followed about one month later by a rapid rise in cases in Jaguapiru among the Terena (2). Several months later, cases increased in Bororó following a rise among the Guarani (3). The Zeta variant was introduced at the end of 2020 (4), followed by a rapid rise in cases around the holiday season, especially in Jaguapiru among the Guarani (5), and later among the Terena in Bororó (6).

The Dourados Indigenous Reserve

The Dourados Indigenous Reserve is located in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in southwestern Brazil, adjacent to the city of Dourados. The Reserve lies within a region shaped by long histories of Indigenous settlement, displacement, and state-led reservation policies that brought multiple Indigenous peoples together in a shared territory.

Figure 2: Location and geography of the Dourados Indigenous Reserve. The Reserve and its two villages are shown in relation to the city of Dourados and their location within Brazil.

Today, approximately 18,000 people live in the Reserve’s two villages, Bororó and Jaguapiru. The population includes members of several Indigenous peoples, with the Guarani Kaiowá and Terena comprising the largest communities.

The Reserve is both the home of our collaborators and the place where our research is developed and evaluated in partnership with the local community.

Figure 3: Everyday life in the Dourados Indigenous Reserve. The Reserve’s schools, public health facilities, local businesses, and community spaces form the everyday setting in which our work takes place.

Understanding Disease Transmission

Disease transmission depends not only on biology, but also on how people live, work, travel, and interact. We combine epidemiology with quantitative social science to understand how social structure shapes the spread of infectious diseases.

Our current research asks several questions:

1. Which social groupings (village, ethnicity, or village × ethnicity) best explain observed transmission patterns?
2. How important is travel to the city in introducing new variants?
3. Under what conditions does reinfection substantially alter epidemic dynamics?

Figure 4: Conceptual model of mobility and social mixing. Parameters \(c_{gg'}\) represent interaction frequencies between social groups, while \(\gamma_g\) represents travel between each group and the city of Dourados.

Computational Public Health

Understanding disease transmission is only the first step. Our goal is to translate scientific understanding into practical decision-support tools for communities and public health professionals.

We develop computational models that allow alternative intervention strategies to be explored before future outbreaks occur. These models help evaluate how limited resources can be allocated to reduce disease transmission while balancing efficiency, equity, and local priorities.

Figure 5: Evaluating public health interventions under limited resources. Different intervention strategies produce different public health outcomes. Targeted approaches can improve both efficiency and equity while operating under the same resource constraints.

Long-term Vision

Our long-term vision is to build a vibrant community of Indigenous partners, faculty, students, and researchers working together to advance Indigenous public health through open science and computational autonomy.

By combining community partnerships, sustainable computing infrastructure, and open-source scientific software, we aim to create public health systems that communities can understand, govern, and improve themselves. We believe this integration of field research, computational science, and local ownership offers a durable foundation for Indigenous public health in Brazil and beyond.

References

Oliveira, Laís Albuquerque de, Izabela Mauricio de Rezende, Vinicius João Navarini, et al. 2023. “Genomic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 from an indigenous reserve in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.” Frontiers in Public Health 11 (October): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1195779.

Simionatto, Simone, Marcelo Barbosa, and Silvana Beutinger Marchioro. 2020. “Covid-19 in brazilian indigenous people: A new threat to old problems.” Revista Da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical 53: 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1590/0037-8682-0476-2020.