University Times

The Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) has created a program in computational and systems modeling that provides start-up funding to investigators who are applying simulations and predictive models to public health.

The goal is to address and solve problems such as obesity, poor food choices and inadequate use of vaccination. “Quantitative tools have become increasingly important to understanding and addressing global health problems,” said GSPH Dean Donald Burke, who is associate vice chancellor for global health. “By using informatics and computational modeling and simulation, we can understand more about current public health challenges and determine the best strategies to prevent disease and improve human health.”

The pilot grant program provides funding for one year. Funding is designed to stimulate collaborations that can be parlayed into more substantial funding from external sources. Five projects were awarded grants of $20,000 each. They will explore:

• Aflatoxin, produced by a food-borne fungus, is the most potent natural liver carcinogen to humans. It is found in corn, peanuts, pine nuts, pistachios and almonds.

To guide public health decision-makers in balancing the tradeoff between human health and food market losses incurred by limiting aflatoxin, Felicia Wu of environmental and occupational health is developing a mathematical programming model to estimate the economic and health impacts of different global aflatoxin standards. This model will help guide policy-makers as they develop global food quality regulations.

• Using a simulation model, Ravi Sharma of behavioral and community health sciences will predict what could happen to obesity rates over time if social and environmental characteristics of a community are changed. Sharma and colleagues will address how changes in a community’s environment combine with personal risk factors to influence obesity.

• To understand more about how people make food choices when they are alone and with others, Christopher Keane of behavioral and community health sciences has developed a game based on food vouchers to examine how people bargain with themselves and others, and how unhealthy food choices spread through social networks.

• To explore why people may refuse vaccination for themselves or their children, Steven Albert of behavioral and community health sciences has developed a lottery-choice game to determine if those who refuse vaccination are more averse to risk generally compared to those who accept vaccination.

• To provide policy-makers, researchers and institutional managers with a fuller understanding of county and regional long-term care market dynamics, Michael Lin of health policy and management and colleagues from GSPH and the School of Arts and Sciences are projecting the growth and stability of formal long-term care organizations throughout Pennsylvania by using area-specific information and simulation analyses.