Application Background: Pandemic Influenza Containment Strategy

• Goal /Aspiration for Project
• Develop modeling and analysis capability that will allow us to identify methods for containing a 1918-like pandemic strain of influenza until a vaccine can be developed, distributed and administered. The goal of this analysis is to identify strategies that are robust to uncertainty (reduce the population health impacts without causing serious economic impacts when we  have limited knowledge of the virus characteristics, what level of compliance will be attained with the policy and the population susceptibility).
• Approach/Methods/Models
• Develop community-level model of disease spread at the individual level through multiple, linked social networks (individual-based, interacting social network model of disease spread and mitigation).   Define disease and intervention strategy scenarios to evaluate the uncertainties and identify and compare proposed intervention strategies.  Evaluate network structure and model results for no-intervention cases to identify additional intervention strategies. Run suite ofscenario simulations.   Analyze results and review with healthcare experts.   Address review comments with additional simulations.   Refine and submit containment strategy design.
• Status, Accomplishments and Next Steps
• Working with the National Security Council, this work was used to design the CDC’s policy for responding to potential pandemic strains of influenza. 
• CASoS Goals: General Capabilities
• Loki- Infect
• Interacting, age-based (children, teen, adult, senior) social network models
• CASoS Goals: Other Potential Applications
• Loki-Infect could be used to: design triggered intervention strategies for the full range of influenza strains and potential origins; design containment strategies for other types of diseases; and evaluate the spread of other “contagions” (social norms, ideas, dissent, rioting).
• Acknowledgements
• This application was funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security through the NISAC program. Additional development was funded by the Veteran's Health Administration.