Related papers: Fitting and projecting HIV epidemics: Data, struct…
A central challenge in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) public health policy lies in determining whether to universally expand treatment access, despite the risk of sub-optimal adherence and consequent drug resistance, or to adopt a more…
Frequently, empirical studies are plagued with missing data. When the data are missing not at random, the parameter of interest is not identifiable in general. Without additional assumptions, we can derive bounds of the parameters of…
Local estimates of HIV-prevalence provide information that can be used to target interventions and consequently increase the efficiency of the resources. This closer-to-optimal allocation can lead to better health outcomes, including the…
The spread of certain diseases can be promoted, in some cases substantially, by prior infection with another disease. One example is that of HIV, whose immunosuppressant effects significantly increase the chances of infection with other…
When modelling HIV epidemics, it is important to incorporate set-point viral load and its heritability. As set-point viral load distributions can differ significantly amongst epidemics, it is imperative to account for the observed local…
The contact structure between hosts has a critical influence on disease spread. However, most networkbased models used in epidemiology tend to ignore heterogeneity in the weighting of contacts. This assumption is known to be at odds with…
Network surveys of key populations at risk for HIV are an essential part of the effort to understand how the epidemic spreads and how it can be prevented. Estimation of population values from the sample data has been probematical, however,…
Accurate HIV incidence estimation based on individual recent infection status (recent vs long-term infection) is important for monitoring the epidemic, targeting interventions to those at greatest risk of new infection, and evaluating…
One of the cornerstones in combating the HIV pandemic is being able to assess the current state and evolution of local HIV epidemics. This remains a complex problem, as many HIV infected individuals remain unaware of their infection status,…
This paper describes a novel approach to modeling homphily, i.e. the tendency of nodes that share (or differ in) certain attributes to be linked; we consider dynamic networks in which nodes can be added over time but not removed. Our…
Epidemic spreading of infectious diseases is ubiquitous and has often considerable impact on public health and economic wealth. The large variability in spatio-temporal patterns of epidemics prohibits simple interventions and demands for a…
Forecasting transmission of infectious diseases, especially for vector-borne diseases, poses unique challenges for researchers. Behaviors of and interactions between viruses, vectors, hosts, and the environment each play a part in…
The Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) is an ongoing project that conducts nationally representative HIV-focused surveys for measuring national and regional progress toward UNAIDS' 90-90-90 targets, the primary strategy to end…
HIV transmission within serodiscordant couples remains a significant public health challenge, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Estimating the rate of such infection, alongside the rates of introduction of infection from outside the…
Recent work has focused attention on statistical inference for the population distribution of the number of sexual partners based on survey data. The characteristics of these distributions are of interest as components of mathematical…
Like many chronic diseases, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is managed over time at regular clinic visits. At each visit, patient features are assessed, treatments are prescribed, and a subsequent visit is scheduled. There is a need for…
Deterministic compartmental models have been used extensively in modeling epidemic propagation. These models are required to fit available data and numerical procedures are often implemented to this end. But not every model architecture is…
Knowledge of the time at which an HIV-infected individual seroconverts, when the immune system starts responding to HIV infection, plays a vital role in the design and implementation of interventions to reduce the impact of the HIV…
Our chances to halt epidemic outbreaks rely on how accurately we represent the population structure underlying the disease spread. When analyzing global epidemics this force us to consider metapopulation models taking into account intra-…
This article introduces novel methodologies for estimating contextual exposure to HIV population viral load using GPS data. We propose a comprehensive analytical framework comprising (i) local (grid-cell level) estimation of HIV population…