In addition to Agietgey's excellent answer. Look for Non-profits working in this area who do work for the larger NGOs - they tend to be smaller and more access

In addition to Agietgey's excellent answer. Look for Non-profits working in this area who do work for the larger NGOs - they tend to be smaller and more accessible and also have specialists who will understand where you are coming from. For example the Gates Foundation is the NGO but they do a lot of disease modeling through the institute for disease modeling (http://www.idmod.org/ http://www.idmod.org/) - they also fund other R&D in this area. Similar when you review papers in this area - look to see which institute or org the authors are from. One example of an open science journal in this area is: http://www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/infectious-disease-modelling/ http://www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/infectious-disease... There is a lot of work in this area and the community is in general pretty welcoming and helpful. Reach out. Good luck.