Are you a quantitative scientist with interest in infectious disease modelling and behavioral science? We are developing and improving our epidemic models for advising public health policy makers on disease control. We have started a new project in which we use survey data on behavior and determinants of behavior to improve our epidemic models.
The position is part of the project BEHAVING, which is a collaboration of behavioral scientists, infectious disease modellers and epidemiologists from the different RIVM departments, with two PhD candidates and the advertised postdoctoral researcher. In the project we want to combine behavior with respect to contacts and risk and infectious disease models. By developing new questionnaires, and using questionnaire data from other studies at RIVM, we want to relate this behavior to psychosocial determinants of behavior, such as personal characteristics and external circumstances. We then build this relation into mathematical models for infectious disease transmission, so that we can model what would happen if circumstances change.
As a postdoctoral researcher you will focus on building individual-based transmission models for sexually transmitted infections (STI) and measles. For the STI model you will use behavioral survey data to inform individual-based population models where individuals differ in sexual risk behavior and/or in psychosocial determinants of behavior, and use the model to study the effect of interventions on the transmission of STI among the general population. For the measles model you will use data on vaccine uptake and psychosocial determinants. You will build an individual-based model where individuals are part of a network of schools and households, and use the model to extrapolate trends in vaccine uptake and the potential effects of interventions in the general Dutch population. You will use the models for both infections to study how inclusion of determinants of behavior impacts the transmission dynamics in the models, and to draw conclusions about the use of behavioral theory in infectious disease models for policy advice.
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