A low-cost method to assess the epidemiological importance of individuals in controlling infectious disease outbreaks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Infectious disease outbreaks in communities can be controlled by early detection and effective prevention measures. Assessing the relative importance of each individual community member with respect to these two processes requires detailed knowledge about the underlying social contact network on which the disease can spread. However, mapping social contact networks is typically too resource-intensive to be a practical possibility for most communities and institutions.

Methods

Here, we describe a simple, low-cost method - called collocation ranking - to assess individual importance for early detection and targeted intervention strategies that are easily implementable in practice. The method is based on knowledge about individual collocation which is readily availab

SUBMITTER: Smieszek T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3616813 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature