Infectious Disease Pandemic Planning and Response: Incorporating Decision Analysis
2020
During a pandemic, decisions must be made under rapidly changing, uncertain conditions. Despite advances in analytical methods for gaining early situational awareness (i.e., of a disease’s transmissibility and severity) and for predicting the likely effectiveness of interventions, a major gap exists globally in terms of integrating this information in policy documents.
The authors argue that mathematical and statistical models are important tools for pandemic planning and response. Once an outbreak of pandemic potential has been identified, models have enormous potential to improve the effectiveness of a response by synthesizing the available data to provide enhanced situational awareness, to predict the future course of the pandemic and likely associated social and economic costs, and to plan mitigation strategies.
The authors caution that a decision model for pandemic response cannot capture all of the social, political, and ethical considerations that impact decision-making, and therefore should therefore be embedded in a decision support system that emphasizes this broader context.
Infectious Disease Pandemic Planning and Response: Incorporating Decision Analysis
Source:
Shearer FM, Moss R, McVernon J et al. Infectious Disease Pandemic Planning and Response: Incorporating Decision Analysis. PLOS Medicine 2020; 17 (1): e1003018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003018