Virginia TechMarathe, AchlaLewis, Bryan L.Barrett, Christopher L.Chen, JiangzhuoMarathe, Madhav V.Eubank, StephenMa, Yifei2014-06-172014-06-172011-09-22Marathe A, Lewis B, Barrett C, Chen J, Marathe M, et al. (2011) Comparing Effectiveness of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies in Containing Influenza. PLoS ONE 6(9): e25149.1932-6203http://hdl.handle.net/10919/48986This research compares the performance of bottom-up, self-motivated behavioral interventions with top-down interventions targeted at controlling an “Influenza-like-illness”. Both types of interventions use a variant of the ring strategy. In the first case, when the fraction of a person's direct contacts who are diagnosed exceeds a threshold, that person decides to seek prophylaxis, e.g. vaccine or antivirals; in the second case, we consider two intervention protocols, denoted Block and School: when a fraction of people who are diagnosed in a Census Block (resp., School) exceeds the threshold, prophylax the entire Block (resp., School). Results show that the bottom-up strategy outperforms the top-down strategies under our parameter settings. Even in situations where the Block strategy reduces the overall attack rate well, it incurs a much higher cost. These findings lend credence to the notion that if people used antivirals effectively, making them available quickly on demand to private citizens could be a very effective way to control an outbreak.en-USIn CopyrightAntiviral therapeuticsDiagnostic medicineProphylaxisPublic and occupational healthPublic policySchoolsSocial networksVaccinesArticle - Refereedhttp://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025149https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025149