This workshop is co-sponsored with the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (Harvard).
Background:
Testing interventions for the control of infectious diseases raises several distinctive issues that are not generally present in interventions for non-communicable diseases. Many infectious disease control interventions have indirect effects, changing the transmission risk of those receiving the intervention and also of those not receiving it. Moreover, the urgency and in some cases high lethality of infectious diseases motivates innovative designs for trials to balance concerns of maintaining scientific validity, obtaining an answer rapidly, and performing the trial in a way that is ethically and culturally acceptable. All of these concerns were at the forefront in the case of Ebola, but they have also arisen in many other contexts. The use of novel designs in particular raises questions about the effect measures being estimated and their relationships to familiar quantities such as measures of direct efficacy and indirect effectiveness. While some of these issues can be addressed analytically, many require simulation to incorporate the details of the setting and the associated transmission dynamics and logistics.
For more information, please contact Stephanie Shadbolt: sshadbolt@fredhutch.org