2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Strategies for Pandemic Emergency Response

When a pandemic spreads, health officials must quickly formulate a strategy to limit infections and deaths. The logistics of handling panicked people, health care workers, vaccinations, clinics, and forms are dizzying. And while health departments have plans in place, it is very difficult to know how well those plans will perform when time is critical and  minutes could mean life or death for thousands of people. This symposium touches upon multilevel interventions via information and systems modeling that are critical for containing a pandemic and mitigating casualties. When limited vaccines are available, prioritized vaccination is considered the best strategy to contain a pandemic. The first talk discusses a mathematical-computational decision framework that couples a disease propagation model with a vaccine queuing model and an optimization engine; it enables public health personnel to determine the optimal prioritized coverage in a mixed vaccination strategy that results in minimum infection and mortality. The second talk deals with allocation of vaccines and deployment of non-pharmaceutical interventions in controlling influenza, examining how various policies can minimize societal impact. The third talk aims to reduce medical surge during a severe pandemic via a network of triage lines that can help callers determine the most appropriate site for care, provide clinical advice, and provide access to antiviral medications.