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

传染病的数学模型是告知有效疾病干预措施的重要工具。以病媒传播疾病（如蚊子传播的疾病）模型为依据的疾病管理战略使疟疾从美国和其他国家消失。然而，疟疾继续对世界资源匮乏地区产生巨大影响，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，继续影响着发达经济体和资源匮乏经济体。许多现有建模方法的一个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经济突然转变，影响了疟疾控制规划的进展，导致疟疾相关死亡人数增加。研究人员将与来自非洲的一位生态学家/经济学家、一位昆虫学家和一位生物统计学家合作，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养研究生。关于经济系统和疾病系统之间反馈的讲习班将培养来自不同背景的新一代本科生，使他们了解这一重要主题。这项工作还将涉及来自非洲的学生，非洲是一个受病媒传播疾病严重影响的大陆。通过揭示病媒传播疾病、社会经济条件和短暂事件之间的相互交织关系，将社会经济因素纳入病媒传播疾病（VBD）系统是确定新的干预措施的关键。研究人员的目标是为瞬态疾病动力学建立一个新的机制框架，该框架考虑了vbd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。包括不同种类的蚊虫叮咬和杀虫剂处理过的蚊帐（ITN）更换时间、人口结构和与使用杀虫剂处理过的蚊帐有关的人类行为等因素。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失效。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。尽管该框架将作为一种原型VBD应用于疟疾，使用来自肯尼亚、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，但它的目的是要足够强大，以便适用于其他VBD。此外，该框架将使研究人员能够现实地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口中分配itn，以及如何应对影响经济格局的自发事件。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.