IRC Seminar, presented by Dr Douglas Alem: "Long-lasting insecticidal nets campaigns for malaria control considering prioritization and equity"

Abstract

Malaria is still a major public health concern for several developing countries. Tropical weather and poor environmental and socioeconomic aspects create suitable conditions for increased mosquito activity and disease transmission in impoverished nations. The most effective strategy to prevent and control malaria is based on the use of insecticide-treated nets. Ensuring these resources are efficiently allocated to those that need them the most is particularly challenging in public health since financial resources, especially health investments, are scarce in endemic countries. Through a rich and real-case study conducted in the Brazilian Amazon, which concentrates 99% of malaria cases in Brazil, we evaluate the vulnerability to malaria in endemic areas by proposing a Malaria Vulnerability Index, a composite index that encompasses epidemiological, socioeconomic, and environmental dimensions. Then, we incorporate our MVI into a prioritization-based location-allocation model for long-lasting insecticidal nets distribution to maximize the expected benefit of prioritizing the most vulnerable municipalities to malaria transmission. We also touch on the equity issue by extending our prioritization model to a bi-objective formulation that minimizes the number of underserved municipalities, making the solution more equitable.

Keywords. Malaria; LLINs; location-allocation; prioritization; vulnerability; equity.

Short speaker bio

Douglas Alem is currently Associate Professor in Business Analytics at the University of Edinburgh Business School and Director of MSc in Data & Decision Analytics (online). Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh Business School, he was Assistant Professor in Operations Research at the Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar, Brazil). Dr Alem holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Sao Paulo (USP, Brazil) in 2011. His research interests include humanitarian logistics and food donation campaigns with particular focus on the prioritization of vulnerable group, as well as operations research (stochastic programming and robust optimization) applied to production problems.

Google scholar link: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=pt-BR&user=Nvz3JoIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Research gate link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas-Alem

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-alem-540992a/?originalSubdomain=uk

UoE: https://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/staff/douglas-alem