Demography and social structures shape many aspects of an infectious disease outbreak in a population – from host susceptibility and exposure to transmission and health outcomes. However, the social forces that shape human behavior are difficult to quantify and often omitted from mathematical epidemiological models. In this talk, I will discuss some recent work using data from surveys to...
This talk will focus on the social dilemma aspects of disease control, and in particular on the "hysteresis” effect in bottom-up public health behavior dynamics that is responsible for resistance to top-down public health recommendations, ranging from mask hysteria, distancing disobedience, and vaccine hesitancy. Synergistic integration of top-down and bottom-up perspectives is required to...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals initially responded to epidemic risk through high-cost interventions such as mobility reduction. However, empirical data reveal that mobility reductions became less pronounced in later waves despite persistent death rates. This declining responsiveness likely reflects economic constraints, psychological fatigue, and learning about disease risk that...
A key challenge in infectious disease modelling is to extend beyond classical epidemiological structures to model the interplay between the spread of a disease and how people respond to an outbreak \cite{lejeune2025formulating}. Recent research highlights the potential of incorporating a human behaviour feedback loop into existing model structures as a promising way to advance disease...
Compartmental epidemic models increasingly capture demographic and contact heterogeneities, yet behavioral responses are typically treated as uniform: as cases or deaths rise, an average person perceives greater risk and increases compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., masking), reducing transmission. But is treating societal behavior as a single average feedback loop a safe...
Mitigation measures are essential for controlling the spread of infectious diseases during pandemics and epidemics, but they impose considerable societal, individual, and economic costs. We developed a general optimization framework to balance costs related to infection and to mitigation \cite{muller2025optimizing}. Optimizing the trade-off between mitigation and infection cost, we identify...
Recent measles outbreaks in the United States and the United Kingdom have renewed public health concern over a disease once considered eliminated in these countries. Declining vaccination coverage, driven in part by changing public attitudes and policy discussions, has increased the risk of sustained transmission in previously protected populations. In particular, proposed changes to...
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...
