Modelling interactions between disease dynamics and human social dynamics

Abstract: The interplay between disease dynamics and vaccinating behaviour driven by social processes has been receiving increasing attention from mathematical modellers, due to vaccine refusal and other behavioural phenomena. Vaccine scares could become more common as eradication goals are approached for more vaccine-preventable diseases, on account of effects like herd immunity. Mathematicians have developed various coupled “disease-behaviour” models, often based on systems of nonlinear differential equations, to capture this interplay. Salient challenges to the field include how to reconcile model predictions to empirical observations, and how to incorporate greater realism, both in epidemiology and in terms of how human behaviour is represented. I will give a broad overview of my lab’s research devoted to addressing these challenges, using tools such as dynamical systems, agent-based network simulations, and data science. The end goal of my research is to develop disease-behaviour models that could help us predict how vaccine scares might unfold and thereby assist efforts to eliminate and eradicate infectious diseases that are sustained through phenomena such as vaccine refusal.