Speaker
Description
The simultaneous escalation of COVID-19 and drug overdose deaths motivates the development of mathematical frameworks capable of capturing interacting population-level processes across disparate time scales. We propose a coupled dynamical systems formulation that represents the joint evolution of an infectious disease process and a mortality process associated with substance use. The framework allows interactions to be encoded through coupling operators, time-dependent forcing, and feedback mechanisms arising from behavioral and structural drivers. The formulation is amenable to analytical investigation, including questions of well-posedness, stability, and sensitivity to perturbations, and provides a basis for integration with data assimilation. This work establishes a general mathematical foundation for studying the dynamics of co-occurring public health crises.
