Effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions during an outbreak under the influence of behavioral and cultural aspects
It is a common practice to employ non-pharmaceutical interventions during an outbreak, especially when the battle is with a brand-new virus where neither medical treatment nor vaccination are possible in immediate future. However, the effectiveness of interventions is said to be ambiguous given that it is under the influence of behavioral aspects of people. This study proposes a compartmental, age and region stratified system dynamics model that considers an outbreak case with no medical treatment, no vaccination and with finite period immunization. By the means of this model, one can elaborate on the course of events under different combinations of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as school closure, remote working, travel restrictions and self-quarantine by taking cultural and behavioral differences into account. Numerical studies inform that policy uptake level of individuals increases the effectiveness of interventions. Moreover, combination of non-pharmaceutical interventions reveal higher levels of effectiveness, where the highest marginal effect is reported with travel restrictions. Additionally, we have found that longer duration of interventions is required to kill of a pandemic, depending on transmission proportion and length of immunization period, whereas recurring on-off intervention policies aids to keep the spread of the disease at tractable levels.
Short Bio
Dr. Gözdem Dural Selçuk has been working as an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration at Social Sciences University of Ankara (SSUA) since 2022. She received her Ph.D. in Management from Hacettepe University (2015). She has an MBA degree from Bilkent University (2010) and holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering Department from Middle East Technical University (METU) (2007). Before she joined SSUA, she worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering atAtılım Unversity (2019-2022). She also worked as a post-doctoral research associate at University of Bath, School of Management in 2016, as a research assistant at Hacettepe University (2015-19) and METU (2011-15). Her research interests have been focused on operations research methodologies applied in healthcare services, healthcare policies and evaluation of their sustainability and effectiveness. She particularly works on systems modelling and simulation.
Venue
Friday, November 17th, 2023, 4:00 pm
IE Building, Halim Doğrusöz Auditorium (Ground Floor-03)