TY - JOUR
T1 - Adaptive human behavior in epidemiological models
AU - Fenichela, Eli P.
AU - Castillo-Chavez, Carlos
AU - Ceddiac, M. G.
AU - Chowellb, Gerardo
AU - Gonzalez Parrae, Paula A.
AU - Hickling, Graham J.
AU - Holloway, Garth
AU - Horan, Richard
AU - Morin, Benjamin
AU - Perrings, Charles
AU - Springborn, Michael
AU - Velazquez, Leticia
AU - Villalobos, Cristina
PY - 2011/4/12
Y1 - 2011/4/12
N2 - The science and management of infectious disease are entering a new stage. Increasingly public policy to manage epidemics focuses on motivating people, through social distancing policies, to alter their behavior to reduce contacts and reduce public disease risk. Person-to-person contacts drive human disease dynamics. People value such contacts and are willing to accept some disease risk to gain contact-related benefits. The cost-benefit trade-offs that shape contact behavior, and hence the course of epidemics, are often only implicitly incorporated in epidemiologicalmodels. This approach creates difficulty in parsing out the effects of adaptive behavior. We use an epidemiological-economic model of disease dynamics to explicitly model the trade-offs that drive person-toperson contact decisions. Results indicate that including adaptive human behavior significantly changes the predicted course of epidemics and that this inclusion has implications for parameter estimation and interpretation and for the development of social distancing policies. Acknowledging adaptive behavior requires a shift in thinking about epidemiological processes and parameters.
AB - The science and management of infectious disease are entering a new stage. Increasingly public policy to manage epidemics focuses on motivating people, through social distancing policies, to alter their behavior to reduce contacts and reduce public disease risk. Person-to-person contacts drive human disease dynamics. People value such contacts and are willing to accept some disease risk to gain contact-related benefits. The cost-benefit trade-offs that shape contact behavior, and hence the course of epidemics, are often only implicitly incorporated in epidemiologicalmodels. This approach creates difficulty in parsing out the effects of adaptive behavior. We use an epidemiological-economic model of disease dynamics to explicitly model the trade-offs that drive person-toperson contact decisions. Results indicate that including adaptive human behavior significantly changes the predicted course of epidemics and that this inclusion has implications for parameter estimation and interpretation and for the development of social distancing policies. Acknowledging adaptive behavior requires a shift in thinking about epidemiological processes and parameters.
KW - Bioeconomics
KW - Reproductive number
KW - Susceptible-infected-recovered model
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79954998174&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79954998174&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1011250108
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1011250108
M3 - Article
C2 - 21444809
AN - SCOPUS:79954998174
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 108
SP - 6306
EP - 6311
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 15
ER -