An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations

Abstract Hidden populations, such as injecting drug users (IDUs), sex workers (SWs) and men who have sex with men (MSM), are considered at high risk of contracting and transmitting infectious diseases such as AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis etc. However, public health interventions to such groups are proh...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales:	Saran Chen, Xin Lu
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6cd080e402f54e5ba2db393703e3aa32
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:6cd080e402f54e5ba2db393703e3aa32
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6cd080e402f54e5ba2db393703e3aa322021-12-02T12:32:19ZAn Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations10.1038/s41598-017-03379-42045-2322https://doaj.org/article/6cd080e402f54e5ba2db393703e3aa322017-06-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-03379-4https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Hidden populations, such as injecting drug users (IDUs), sex workers (SWs) and men who have sex with men (MSM), are considered at high risk of contracting and transmitting infectious diseases such as AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis etc. However, public health interventions to such groups are prohibited due to strong privacy concerns and lack of global information, which is a necessity for traditional strategies such as targeted immunization and acquaintance immunization. In this study, we introduce an innovative intervention strategy to be used in combination with a sampling approach that is widely used for hidden populations, Respondent-driven Sampling (RDS). The RDS strategy is implemented in two steps: First, RDS is used to estimate the average degree (personal network size) and degree distribution of the target population with sample data. Second, a cut-off threshold is calculated and used to screen the respondents to be immunized. Simulations on model networks and real-world networks reveal that the efficiency of the RDS strategy is close to that of the targeted strategy. As the new strategy can be implemented with the RDS sampling process, it provides a cost-efficient and feasible approach for disease intervention and control for hidden populations.Saran ChenXin LuNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2017)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Saran Chen Xin Lu An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
description	Abstract Hidden populations, such as injecting drug users (IDUs), sex workers (SWs) and men who have sex with men (MSM), are considered at high risk of contracting and transmitting infectious diseases such as AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis etc. However, public health interventions to such groups are prohibited due to strong privacy concerns and lack of global information, which is a necessity for traditional strategies such as targeted immunization and acquaintance immunization. In this study, we introduce an innovative intervention strategy to be used in combination with a sampling approach that is widely used for hidden populations, Respondent-driven Sampling (RDS). The RDS strategy is implemented in two steps: First, RDS is used to estimate the average degree (personal network size) and degree distribution of the target population with sample data. Second, a cut-off threshold is calculated and used to screen the respondents to be immunized. Simulations on model networks and real-world networks reveal that the efficiency of the RDS strategy is close to that of the targeted strategy. As the new strategy can be implemented with the RDS sampling process, it provides a cost-efficient and feasible approach for disease intervention and control for hidden populations.
format	article
author	Saran Chen Xin Lu
author_facet	Saran Chen Xin Lu
author_sort	Saran Chen
title	An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
title_short	An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
title_full	An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
title_fullStr	An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
title_full_unstemmed	An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations
title_sort	immunization strategy for hidden populations
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2017
url	https://doaj.org/article/6cd080e402f54e5ba2db393703e3aa32
work_keys_str_mv	AT saranchen animmunizationstrategyforhiddenpopulations AT xinlu animmunizationstrategyforhiddenpopulations AT saranchen immunizationstrategyforhiddenpopulations AT xinlu immunizationstrategyforhiddenpopulations
_version_	1718394099472531456

An Immunization Strategy for Hidden Populations

Ejemplares similares