Dynamic modelling of the impact of public health education on the control of emerging infectious disease

Abstract

Public health education, including mass and interpersonal communication, has been recognized as an effective control of infectious disease. Compared to the well-studied mass communication by dynamic modelling, not much mathematical study has been done on the effect of interpersonal communication. Here, we build a model, to study the overall impact of mass communication and interpersonal communication on disease spread and disease control during the transmission process. By analysing the dynamic behaviour of our model, we find two threshold parameters on which the disease persistence and extinction condition depend. We further prove that the endemic equilibrium, whenever existing, is locally asymptotically stable. Its global stability is also verified. And the impact of public health education on the behaviours of the model is considered by numerical simulation. Our study confirms the value of various education activities and shows that public health education may affect the epidemic threshold.

Keywords

• public health education
• emerging infectious disease
• stability
• dynamic modelling