RAPID: Structure of Contact Networks and the Spread of Flu-like Infectious Diseases: Implications for Dynamics and Control

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Anthropologist Dr. James Holland Jones and geneticist Dr. Marcus Feldman, both of Stanford University, will use Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology to identify the temporal network dynamics during typical days in a school setting. Understanding the structure of freely-forming groups and how that relates to the overall social structure remains a major social science challenge. The data collected in this project will contribute significantly to improving this understanding. The data also will help to model disease and epidemic dynamics on real-world contact networks, which has never been done before due to the lack of appropriate data. Such dynamic modeling will make it possible to test different control scenarios to prevent the spread of flu-like diseases in schools.Participants will have small wireless sensors attached to them; these sensors send and receive radio signals to and from other sensors nearby. This technology will allow the researchers to collect dynamic contact network data with unparalleled precision. In contract, traditional self-reports of group identities show marked recall biases. Based on the collected data, the researchers will employ and extend classical theories of small group formation and stochastic network evolution. In addition to contributing to social science theory, this project has significant policy importance because social structure and the processes that underlie its formation are fundamental features of the transmission and control of infectious agents. Given the importance of social processes on group formation, and the emergence of novel swine-origin influenza A(H1N1), there is an urgent need for contact network data in order to understand the social structure through which influenza spreads.