Resources Repository
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ReviewPublication 2016Decision Support for Infectious Disease Control
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to …
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to infectious disease prevention, detection, and response and aligns these tools with real-world policy questions that the tools can help address. This overview is designed to help modelers and other technical experts understand the questions that policymakers will raise and the decisions they must make. The report also presents policymakers with the capabilities and limitations of the different tools that may…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | State-Transition | Dynamic Transmission | Microsimulation | Global Governance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Military/Defense | Global -
ArticlePublication 2015Broader Economic Impact of Vaccination: Reviewing and Appraising the Strength of Evidence
Economic evaluations of public health programs such as immunization often consider only direct health benefits and …
Economic evaluations of public health programs such as immunization often consider only direct health benefits and medical cost savings. Evidence linking immunization to important benefits in indicators such as childhood development, household behavior, and other macro-economic data are unclear. A conceptual framework of the pathways between immunization and these broader economic benefits was developed through expert consultation. The authors obtained articles from previous reviews, snowballing, and expert consultation, and associated them with one of the pathways and assessed them using modified Grading…
Preferences/Values | Infectious Diseases | Priority Setting/Ethics | Costing Methods | Evidence Synthesis | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Social Determinants | Economics/Finance | Education/Labor | Health/Medicine -
Tutorial/PrimerPublication, Teaching Resource 2015Economic Evaluations with Agent-Based Modelling: An Introduction
This tutorial presents the basic concepts and important features of agent-based models, and provides a …
This tutorial presents the basic concepts and important features of agent-based models, and provides a case study of a simple cost effectiveness analysis of screening for an infectious disease. Agent-based modelling (ABM) is a relatively new technique, which overcomes some of the limitations of other methods commonly used for economic evaluations. These limitations include linearity, homogeneity and stationarity. Agents in ABMs are autonomous entities, who interact with each other and with the environment. ABMs provide…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Health/Medicine | Graduate | Doctoral | Professional | Conceptual Mapping | Quantitative Literacy -
Tutorial/PrimerPublication, Teaching Resource 2015Calibration of Complex Models through Bayesian Evidence Synthesis: A Tutorial
This tutorial demonstrates how to implement a Bayesian synthesis of diverse sources of evidence to …
This tutorial demonstrates how to implement a Bayesian synthesis of diverse sources of evidence to calibrate the parameters of a complex model. To illustrate these methods, the authors demonstrate how a previously developed Markov model for the progression of human papillomavirus (HPV-16) infection was rebuilt in a Bayesian framework. Transition probabilities between states of disease severity are inferred indirectly from cross-sectional observations of prevalence of HPV-16 and HPV-16–related disease by age, cervical cancer incidence, and…
Calibration/Validation | Infectious Diseases -
ReviewPublication 2014Valuing Vaccination
Vaccination has led to remarkable health gains over the last century. However, large coverage gaps …
Vaccination has led to remarkable health gains over the last century. However, large coverage gaps remain, which will require significant financial resources and political will to address. In recent years, a compelling line of inquiry has established the economic benefits of health, at both the individual and aggregate levels. Most existing economic evaluations of particular health interventions fail to account for this new research, leading to potentially sizable undervaluation of those interventions. In line with…
Preferences/Values | Infectious Diseases | Priority Setting/Ethics | Costing Methods | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Health Systems | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2014Cost-Effectiveness of Female HPV Vaccination in 179 Countries: A PRIME Modelling Study
The authors present a simple generic model, Papillomavirus Rapid Interface for Modelling and Economics (PRIME), …
The authors present a simple generic model, Papillomavirus Rapid Interface for Modelling and Economics (PRIME), used to assess cost-effectiveness and health effects of vaccination of girls against HPV before sexual debut in terms of burden of cervical cancer and mortality. The PRIME models incidence according to proposed vaccine efficacy against HPV 16/18, vaccine coverage, cervical cancer incidence and mortality, and HPV type distribution. It assumes lifelong vaccine protection and no changes to other screening programs…
Calibration/Validation | Infectious Diseases | Health Outcomes | Mathematical Models | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Global | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2013Validation and Calibration of a Simulation Model of Pediatric HIV Infection
The authors developed a microsimulation model of pediatric HIV disease progression using the Cost-Effectiveness of …
The authors developed a microsimulation model of pediatric HIV disease progression using the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) model framework. This CEPAC-Pediatric model was then validated by varying CD4 data and comparing the corresponding model-generated survival curves to empirical survival curves obtained from the International Epidemiologic Database to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA). The model was calibrated to other African countries by systematically varying immunologic and HIV mortality-related input parameters. In the calibration analyses, the model-generated…
Calibration/Validation | Infectious Diseases | Microsimulation | Child/Nutrition | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa -
GuidelinesPublication 2012Dynamic Transmission Modeling: A Report of the ISPOR-SMDM Modeling Task Force-5
This paper reports the consensus-based guidelines on dynamic transmission modeling in health care. The transmissible …
This paper reports the consensus-based guidelines on dynamic transmission modeling in health care. The transmissible nature of communicable diseases is what sets them apart from other diseases modeled by health economists. The probability of a susceptible individual becoming infected at any one point in time (the force of infection) is related to the number of infectious individuals in the population, will change over time, and will feed back into the future force of infection. These…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Dynamic Transmission | Health/Medicine -
ArticlePublication 2011Dynamic Policies for Controlling Spread of Emerging Infections
This paper illustrates the design and implementation of a dynamic health policy for the control …
This paper illustrates the design and implementation of a dynamic health policy for the control of a novel strain of influenza, where two types of interventions are assumed to be available during the epidemic: (1) vaccines and antiviral drugs, and (2) transmission reducing measures, such as social distancing or mask use, that may be turned "on" or "off" repeatedly during the course of epidemic. A modeling approach is described for developing dynamic health policies that allow…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Dynamic Transmission | Health Systems | Policy/Regulation | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global