Speakers
Description
Recent infectious disease outbreaks highlighted the critical role of human behavior and social processes in shaping infectious disease dynamics. Individual decisions—such as whether to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or work remotely—are not made in isolation, but are strongly influenced by the current state of the disease and individuals’ perceptions of risk. Such behavioral responses are also not fixed and change over the course of a pandemic. As these behavior changes accumulate across individuals, they scale up to shape population-level outcomes, including the timing, magnitude, and geographic spread of outbreaks. In order to curtail disease spread with minimal impact to a population, governmental interventions to control epidemics must therefore account for individual decision-making and, particularly, noncompliance or even defiance of recommended or even mandated policies. Modeling techniques developed to account for such dynamic human responses are therefore essential for understanding and managing infectious disease spread.
This minisymposium will feature researchers from a range of disciplines, from theoretical to applied, and talks will focus on recent advances in modeling human behavior as it relates to the spread of infectious diseases, encompassing several disease applications.
