Statistical Methods to Assist the Control of Communicable Diseases, and their Application

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/148919

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

A range of programs, such as vaccination schedules and intervention in outbreaks, is in place to reduce our burden of illness from infectious diseases. This project aims to develop new methods, based on models and associated statistical analyses, to help ensure that our control programs are based on the best available evidence. There are five specific themes: 1. Developed methods for predicting major outbreaks of diseases and appy them to Australian data on measles, pertussis and Ross River virus. The new methods will enable timely intervention to reduce the population risk from these diseases, and to guide the proposed elimination of measles from Australia. 2. The current concept of vaccine efficacy, which is central to the epidemiological assessment of vaccines, performs poorly when the vaccine provides only partial protection, when immunity wanes over time and when infected vaccinees have a lower infectivity. A concept of vaccine efficacy will be developed that overcomes these weaknesses. This concept will find widespread use in epidemiology. 3. Data available from 80 outbreak investigations of transmissible diseases will be analysed to assess the relative effectiveness of various intervention steps. 4. A comprehensive model, and associated computer software, will be developed as a tool for assessing the relative merits of different vaccination schedules. It will be applied to address Australian policy issues for vaccination against pertussis, chickenpox and rubella. 5. The method of backprojection for estimating trends in HIV infection and predicting AIDS incidence will be enhanced to incorporate newly available data in which HIV and AIDS diagnoses are linked. This will enable a precise assessment of infection incidence among heterosexuals and other exposure categories with relatively few cases, to ensure that HIV does not spread more widely.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2001

End Date: 01-01-2003

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $211,527.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Applied Statistics

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Analysis of disease incidence data | Assessing the effectiveness of active outbreak control | Assessing vaccination policies | Controlling communicable disease outbreaks | Formulating a comprehensive measure of vaccine efficacy | Predicting epidemics and future disease incidence | Predicting outbreaks of disease | Trends in HIV and AIDS incidence | Trends in communicable disease incidence | Vaccine efficacy

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