Interdisciplinary applications of ecological and epidemiological models relatring to the welfare of human populations

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Research conducted in one field is often highly relevant to problems encountered in other fields, or in real-world applications of research. However, disciplinary barriers can prevent the communication across fields required to translate this information into progress. In my proposed research, partly through close interdisciplinary collaborations, I will translate tools and methods from population biology into other fields where they are needed. In particular, these methods will be applied to problems in the welfare of human populations: (1) understanding human behaviour under voluntary vaccination policies, (2) improving evidence-based assessments of health technologies, and (3) studying problems in modern demography. With respect to voluntary vaccination policy, for instance, it has been noted that disease prevalence and human vaccinating behaviour can influence one another in a dynamic interplay: higher vaccine coverage causes less disease, which reduces the incentive to vaccinate, which in turn may bring about more disease. My research proposes to combine models of disease transmission through social networks with economic game theory approaches to better understand voluntary vaccination, and why vaccine-averse parents (in game theoretical terms, "cheaters") threaten some voluntary vaccination policies but not others. My research also proposes to investigate how such social network models, as well as other advanced infectious disease modelling techniques, can improve our ability to make rigorous evidence-based assessments of new health technologies such as vaccines and antibiotics. A third project in this proposal involves adopting a population biological perspective to declining birth rates in advanced countries. Population biologists have long studied the relationship between fertility and resources, and therefore may have unique and insightful perspectives on this demographic problem and its long-term implications for both advanced and lower-income countries.