Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.healthcanal.com/public-h...-research-follows-spread-flu-high-school.html
Stanford research follows spread of flu in high school
14/12/2010 04:08:00
In order to better understand exactly how infectious diseases spread through real-life social networks, a group of Stanford researchers used wireless sensors to track everyone in one American high school during one day of last January's swine flu outbreak...
...After collecting the electronic tracking data, the researchers ran thousands of simulations of what would happen if there were a flu outbreak in the school.
They asked what would happen if there were enough of a vaccine to inoculate only a fraction of the school's population. Would it be better to vaccinate teachers or students? Would it make sense to vaccinate the more popular students, thinking they might have more interactions than their classmates who keep to themselves? Or would it be best to vaccinate a random sample of the population?
They found it hardly matters whom you inoculate, unless you are certain of how people are interacting with others...
...The information gleaned from the high school experiment could be helpful in putting the brakes on the spread of flu in a place like a school, where outbreaks sometimes lead to the closure of an entire facility. But Salath? stresses that authorities must consider the medical, social and ethical ramifications of doing what they did ? tracking the movements and whereabouts of an entire population ? on a larger scale.
Along with Jones, Salath?'s Stanford co-authors on the PNAS article are biologist Marcus Feldman and computer scientists Maria Kazandjieva, Jung Woo Lee and Philip Levis. Their research was funded by a Branco Weiss fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development and the National Institutes of Health.
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Contact
Adam Gorlick, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting**************(650) 725-0224******end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (650) 725-0224 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, agorlick@stanford.edu
Comment
James Holland Jones: (650) 723-4824 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (650) 723-4824 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, jhj1@stanford.edu Marcel Salath?: (408) 386-8916 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (408) 386-8916 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or (814) 867-4431 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (814) 867-4431 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, salathe@psu.edu
Stanford research follows spread of flu in high school
14/12/2010 04:08:00
In order to better understand exactly how infectious diseases spread through real-life social networks, a group of Stanford researchers used wireless sensors to track everyone in one American high school during one day of last January's swine flu outbreak...
...After collecting the electronic tracking data, the researchers ran thousands of simulations of what would happen if there were a flu outbreak in the school.
They asked what would happen if there were enough of a vaccine to inoculate only a fraction of the school's population. Would it be better to vaccinate teachers or students? Would it make sense to vaccinate the more popular students, thinking they might have more interactions than their classmates who keep to themselves? Or would it be best to vaccinate a random sample of the population?
They found it hardly matters whom you inoculate, unless you are certain of how people are interacting with others...
...The information gleaned from the high school experiment could be helpful in putting the brakes on the spread of flu in a place like a school, where outbreaks sometimes lead to the closure of an entire facility. But Salath? stresses that authorities must consider the medical, social and ethical ramifications of doing what they did ? tracking the movements and whereabouts of an entire population ? on a larger scale.
Along with Jones, Salath?'s Stanford co-authors on the PNAS article are biologist Marcus Feldman and computer scientists Maria Kazandjieva, Jung Woo Lee and Philip Levis. Their research was funded by a Branco Weiss fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development and the National Institutes of Health.
-30-
Contact
Adam Gorlick, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting**************(650) 725-0224******end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (650) 725-0224 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, agorlick@stanford.edu
Comment
James Holland Jones: (650) 723-4824 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (650) 723-4824 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, jhj1@stanford.edu Marcel Salath?: (408) 386-8916 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (408) 386-8916 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or (814) 867-4431 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (814) 867-4431 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, salathe@psu.edu
