Epidemics on networks: Reducing disease transmission using health emergency declarations and peer communication

Azizi, Asma; Montalvo, Cesar; Espinoza, Baltazar; Kang, Yun; Castillo-Chavez, Carlos

The activation process of public awareness takes place within a time framework determined by the actual (reported in general) disease prevalence and so, it is a function of the epidemic outbreak growth rate. We let P à denote the pre-selected level of prevalence identified by public health officials as the triggering threshold after which, a public awareness process campaign is initiated via mass media, word of mouth, social media and the like, with timing selection by public health officials. A disease outbreak may be about to reach unacceptable levels, with P à , being the pre-selected tolerance level before a health emergency is declared. The P à determines the time t à when the information campaign starts (see Fig. 1 ). The t à ¼ t à ðP Ã Þ identifies the public health system threshold that forces public health action aimed at reducing outbreak consequences. The actual changes in behavior are determined by an stochastic process, and so, the shift in behaviors, is a function of "chance".