Skip to main content

BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1357908
This article is part of the Research Topic Single and Multi-Pathogen Epidemiology and Control View all 6 articles

An Inaugural Forum on Epidemiological Modeling for Public Health Stakeholders in Arizona

Provisionally accepted
Joseph R. Mihaljevic Joseph R. Mihaljevic 1*Carmenlita Chief Carmenlita Chief 1Mehreen Malik Mehreen Malik 1Kayode Oshinubi Kayode Oshinubi 1Eck Doerry Eck Doerry 1Esma Gel Esma Gel 2Crystal Hepp Crystal Hepp 1,3Tim Lant Tim Lant 4Sanjay Mehrotra Sanjay Mehrotra 5Samantha Sabo Samantha Sabo 1
  • 1 Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, United States
  • 2 University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States
  • 3 Pathogen and Microbiome Division, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
  • 4 Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States
  • 5 Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Epidemiological models -which help us understand and forecast the spread of infectious disease -can be valuable tools for public health. However, barriers exist that can make it difficult to employ epidemiological models routinely within the repertoire of public health planning. These barriers include technical challenges associated with constructing the models, challenges in obtaining appropriate data for model parameterization, and problems with clear communication of modeling outputs and uncertainty. To learn about the unique barriers and opportunities within the state of Arizona, we gathered a diverse set of 48 public health stakeholders for a day-and-a-half forum. Our research group was motivated specifically by our work building software for public health-relevant modeling and by our earnest desire to collaborate closely with stakeholders to ensure that our software tools are practical and useful in the face of evolving public health needs.Here we outline the planning and structure of the forum, and we highlight as a case study some of the lessons learned from breakout discussions. While unique barriers exist for implementing modeling for public health, there is also keen interest in doing so across diverse sectors of State and Local government, although issues of equal and fair access to modeling knowledge and technologies remain key issues for future development. We found this forum to be useful for building relationships and informing our software development, and we plan to continue such meetings annually to create a continual feedback loop between academic molders and public health practitioners.

    Keywords: Public Health, stakeholder engagement, Predictive Modeling, Collective knowledge building, Infectious diseases epidemiology

    Received: 18 Dec 2023; Accepted: 13 May 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Mihaljevic, Chief, Malik, Oshinubi, Doerry, Gel, Hepp, Lant, Mehrotra and Sabo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Joseph R. Mihaljevic, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.