Talk abstract:
Modeling Within-Group and Between-Group
Contact Processes:
Implications for the Spread of HIV
Lisa Sattenspiel
Department of Anthropology
University of Missouri-Columbia
anthls@showme.missouri.edu
The incorporation of realistic contact structures to allow
for nonrandom interactions among subpopulations engaged in different
types and/or frequencies of risk behaviors has been a major
focus of efforts to model the spread of HIV and AIDS. Yet the
epidemic has spread across space as well as among risk groups.
Furthermore, the kinds of behaviors defining risk groups are
not rigidly defined; flexibility of individual behavior is a
keynote of human life. I describe a model for the geographic
spread of infectious diseases that can also be used to address
questions of behavioral flexibility. This model has been applied
to the geographic spread of influenza, and analysis has pointed
to the importance of the type and rates of contact within communities
for the transmission of infectious diseases. The implications
of these results will be discussed with regard to modeling contact
processes for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
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