The Health and Economic Impacts of Infectious Diseases and Policy Responses

Ohio State University, Columbus OH

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

This project develops, estimates, and simulates a cutting-edge model of the health and economic impacts of infectious diseases and policy responses to them. The model has four original features: First, it allows for two-way interactions between infections and economic outcomes. These are important because even though infectious diseases are fundamentally a matter of public health, it is essential to account for how diseases and the policy responses to them affect the economy and how, in turn, the economic impacts affect health. Second, it builds policies into a model that accounts for geosocial spread because infectious diseases are spread through contact with others and policy decisions in one area affect the rest of the country. Third, it allows for incidence rates that are measured only through imperfect proxies, which is particularly important for modeling the prevalence of an infectious disease. Lastly, the model accounts for differences in impacts across demographic groups (e.g., by age). This work extends earlier pilot projects that develop a model with the first and second features. Once complete, the model will make it possible to identify the best sets of economic and health outcomes, including infections and mortality, that can been achieved and the policies that would produce those best-case scenario outcomes. It will also make it possible to rigorously quantify the health and economic costs of deviating from optimal policies. The model, which will focus on the United States, can also be applied to cross-country analysis and its features are intended to apply to public health crises more generally, such as the opioid epidemic. The ability to apply the model to a range of epidemics will allow policy makers to compare and contrast the impacts of different epidemics as well as the same epidemic in different locations using a common approach. Additionally, the project conducts several less structured analyses that document the health and labor market impacts of infectious diseases and the policy responses to them. This work will generate results of interest in their own right as policy makers weigh and measure the efficacy of public health responses, will help identify key phenomena to incorporate into our model, and will help us to ensure that the qualitative simulation results are robust to a range of plausible parameter estimates.