Bridging the Gap Between Human Factors and Epidemiological Models: Recommendations for Future Research
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abstract
Infectious diseases have threatened society for a long time and continue to pose challenges to policymakers and researchers. Although infectious disease epidemiology has been increasingly explored over the last 25 years, studying the complex interaction between human behavior, its epidemiological consequences, and their resultant feedback on human behavior is a relatively uncommon area of investigation. Additionally, most of the epidemiological studies that include some type of human factors are mainly theoretical and lack empirical data on human behavior. Nonetheless, understanding this interplay between human factors and infectious diseases is crucial to understanding the disease dynamics and, consequently, to enable its control and prevention. Therefore, the objective of this work is to present an overview of studies conducted in the area of behavior and disease spread modeling, to discuss some challenges associated with them, and, finally, to raise some insightful questions to be addressed by future research in order to bridge the gap between human factors and epidemiological models. The ultimate goal is to develop a conceptual framework, focused on infectious disease modeling, to guide the design of surveys on human behavior. This will allow for estimating behavioral parameters that can be used to inform epidemiological models, increasing their value and accuracy and, thereby, elevating their role from a theoretical model to a health policy decision support tool.
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AHFE: International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics
