Collaborative Research: A New Multiscale Framework for Integrating Socio-Economic Processes, Vector-Borne Disease Control, and the Impact of Transient Events

传染病数学模型是为有效的疾病干预提供信息的重要工具。根据病媒传播疾病（如蚊子传播的疾病）模型制定的疾病管理战略导致美国和其他国家消灭了疟疾。然而，疟疾继续对世界上资源短缺的地区产生巨大影响，而其他现有和新出现的病媒传播疾病，如西尼罗河病毒，登革热病毒和寨卡病毒继续影响发达经济体和资源短缺经济体。许多现有建模方法的缺点是缺乏经济因素和疾病传播之间的明确联系-这两个因素相互影响。在一个联系日益紧密和日益复杂的世界中，考虑到这些因素的协同效应对于有效控制疾病至关重要。例如，2019冠状病毒病大流行导致突然的经济转变，影响了疟疾控制计划的进展，导致疟疾相关死亡人数增加。研究人员将与来自非洲的一名生态学家/经济学家、一名昆虫学家和一名生物统计学家合作，建立数学工具来弥合这一差距，这些工具将用于为公共卫生和经济增长政策提供信息。该项目将通过参与研究来培训研究生。关于经济和疾病系统之间反馈的研讨会将在这一重要主题上培养来自不同背景的新一代本科生。这项工作还将涉及非洲的学生，非洲是一个受病媒传播疾病影响很大的大陆。 将社会经济因素纳入病媒传播疾病（VBD）系统是确定新干预措施的关键，通过解开VBD，社会经济条件和短暂事件之间的相互交织的关系。研究人员的目标是为短暂性疾病动态开发一个新的机制框架，该框架解释了VBDs和经济系统之间的反馈，快慢时间尺度的影响以及改变经济格局的突然内源性和外源性事件。将包括各种因素，包括不同的蚊虫叮咬和驱虫蚊帐（ITN）更换时间，人口结构和人类行为与ITN的使用。即使是最简单的经济VBD模型，计算基本流行病学指标和执行结构可识别性分析的标准方法也会崩溃。因此，研究人员还计划建立分析和模拟这些耦合系统所需的数学工具箱。虽然该框架将作为原型VBD应用于疟疾，使用肯尼亚，马达加斯加和西非的社会经济和流行病学数据来校准参数并验证模型的结果，但其目的是足够强大，以适用于其他VBD。此外，该框架将使研究人员能够切实回答重要的公共卫生和经济增长问题，包括如何在相互联系的人群中分发驱虫蚊帐，以及如何应对影响经济格局的自发事件。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Mathematical models for infectious diseases are critical tools for informing effective disease interventions. The disease management strategies informed by models of vector-borne diseases (such as diseases spread by mosquitoes) led to the elimination of malaria from the United States and other countries. However, malaria continues to have an enormous impact on resource-challenged regions of the world, while other existing and emerging vector-borne diseases such as West Nile Virus, Dengue Virus, and Zika Virus continue to impact both advanced and resource-challenged economies. A shortcoming of many existing modeling approaches is the absence of an explicit connection between economic factors and disease transmission – two factors that influence each other. In an increasingly connected and complex world, accounting for the synergistic effects of these factors is essential for effective disease control. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic caused sudden economic shifts that affected the progress of malaria control programs, resulting in increases in malaria-related deaths. In collaboration with an ecologist/economist and with an entomologist and a biostatistician from Africa, the investigators will build mathematical tools to bridge this gap, which will be used to inform public health and economic growth policies. The project will train graduate students through involvement in the research. Workshops on feedback between economic and disease systems will train a new generation of undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds on this important topic. This work will also involve students from Africa, a continent that is highly affected by vector-borne diseases. Incorporating socio-economic factors into vector-borne disease (VBD) systems is key to identifying new interventions, by unraveling the intertwined relationship between VBD, socio-economic conditions, and transient events. The investigators aim to develop a new mechanistic framework for transient disease dynamics that accounts for feedback between VBDs and economic systems, the impact of fast-slow time scales, and sudden endogenous and exogenous events that shift the economic landscape. Factors including heterogeneous mosquito-biting and insecticide-treated-net (ITN) replacement times, demographic structure, and human behavior in relation to ITN use will be included. For even the simplest economic-VBD model, standard methods for computing basic epidemiological metrics and performing structural identifiability analysis break down. Hence, the investigators also plan to build the mathematical toolbox required to analyze and simulate these coupled systems. Although the framework will be applied to malaria as a prototype VBD using socio-economic and epidemiological data from Kenya, Madagascar, and West Africa to calibrate the parameters and validate the outcomes of the models, it is intended to be robust enough to be applicable to other VBDs. Furthermore, the framework will allow the investigators to realistically answer important public health and economic growth questions, including how to distribute ITNs across connected populations, and how to respond to spontaneous events affecting the economic landscape.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.