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International Conference on Mathematical Biology and

Annual Meeting of The Society for Mathematical Biology,

July 27-30, 2009

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

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Program

CTB7a
Samit Bhattacharyya
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Guelph, Canada
Title Imitation dynamics, delaying strategies, and vaccination in an age-structured population
Abstract While overall vaccination coverage level is reasonably high at present for most of the vaccine-preventable paediatric infectious diseases, vaccination does not always take place at the recommended age. A number of field studies (for Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine for example) report that many parents delay the age at which their child is vaccinated due to a perception of higher vaccine risk at the recommended age of vaccination. At the same time, because of herd immunity, there is also a strategic interaction between individuals when they are deciding whether or not to vaccinate their child, since the probability that an individual becomes infected depends upon how many other individuals are vaccinated. So, dynamics of age-appropriate vaccination uptake is a potentially complex interplay between vaccinating behaviour, disease dynamics, and age-specific risk factors. As a first step toward exploring this issue, we have constructed an age structured game dynamic model, where individuals adopt strategies according to an imitation dynamic (a learning process), and base vaccination decisions on disease prevalence and perceived risks of vaccines and disease. The perceived vaccine and infection risks are age-dependent, with higher risks from both vaccine and infection at younger ages. We present here some early findings with this model. For instance, at certain parameter regimes, the model shows that populations can switch between a strategy of vaccinating at a young age and a strategy of vaccination at an older age at a certain timescale, and that this switching is coupled with the inherent oscillatory tendency of infectious disease incidence. We also discuss possible future directions for analysis.
LocationWoodward G57/59