Global Health Programming, Policy, and Response: Approaches to and Use of Infectious Disease Models

3 credits · Graduate

Infectious disease modeling is a broad term that covers many different approaches to applying mathematical techniques to describe or explain the infection, spread, or mitigation of a pathogen. Here we focus on models of human infection and population dynamics, exploring models that are based on first-principles as well as those that incorporate real-world data. Interviews with policy-makers from several countries who use models for planning health programming, both routine (as in the case of malaria) as well as pandemic response ( COVID-19), will give a first-hand perspective of the use and shortcomings of models to guide public health response. Introductory statistics at the undergraduate or graduate level recommended.