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 landscape where behavioral decisions take place is not fixed. On the contrary, it may be altered from within (individual decisions) or by the use of preventive or active public health policy decisions or recommendations, some "obvious" like vaccination or quarantine, others drastic like mandated social distancing, as in the 2009e10 flu pandemic in Mexico ). Now, whether the dynamical changes experienced by the socioepidemiological landscape are slow or fast, will depend on many factors. It is within this, often altered, complex adaptive dynamical system, that individual decisions such as individually-driven social distancing, the use of face masks, frequent hand washing, increased condom use, and or the routine use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, takes place (Wang, Andrews, Wu, Wang, & Bauch, 2015) . It has been theoretically and computationally documented (Barrett et al., 2009; Funk, Gilad, Watkins, & Jansen, 2009; Funk & Jansen, 2013; Hyman & Li, 2007; Misra, Sharma, & Shukla, 2011; Perra, Balcan, Gonçalves, & Vespignani, 2011; Tracht, Del Valle, & Hyman, 2010 ) that massive behavioral changes can impact the patterns of infection spread, possibly playing a critical role in efforts to prevent or ameliorate disease transmission. Today policies are implemented regardless of our knowledge of who are the "drivers" responsible for inducing behavioral changes. Modeling frameworks exist that allow for the systematic exploration of possible scenarios. Through a systematic exploratory analyses of appropriately selected classes of scenarios, it is possible to identify possibly effective (model-evaluated) public health policies. The use of highly detailed models including individual-based models has some advantages since they can incorporate individuals' awareness of risk based on available of local information. The evaluations carried out on the effectiveness of changes, at the individual level, can be used to assess, for example, the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions in reducing disease prevalence.