Quantifying the benefits of customized vaccination strategies: A network‐based optimization approach

• Published in: Naval research logistics Vol. 71; no. 1; pp. 64 - 86
• Main Authors: Li, Su, Aprahamian, Hrayer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.02.2024
• Subjects: Community planning; Customization; Decision analysis; Disease control; Disease outbreaks; Infectious diseases; Optimization; Public health; Vaccination; Vaccines
• ISSN: 0894-069X; 1520-6750
• DOI: 10.1002/nav.22134

We study the problem of designing vaccine distribution strategies that maximally mitigate the negative impact of an infectious disease outbreak. This is achieved through a multiperiod optimization‐based framework that embeds important subject‐specific risk and contact information into the decision‐making process. By analyzing the structure of the resulting optimization problem, we identify key structural properties which we use to construct a globally convergent solution scheme (suitable for smaller problem instances) and two, more scalable, heuristic schemes. We demonstrate the benefits of the considered framework through a case study on COVID‐19 in Texas. Our results highlight the importance of considering risk and contact information as doing so substantially reduces the total expected number of fatalities over conventional compartmental‐based approaches. These findings indicate that customization can have a significant benefit, particularly for community‐scale planning.