ArticleBMC public health2012
Dynamic modelling of costs and health consequences of school closure during an influenza pandemic.
Article in BMC public health, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Economic Value of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions for Influenza and COVID-19: A Systematic Review.Applied health economics and health policy · 2026Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of the Costs Relating to Non-pharmaceutical Interventions Against Infectious Disease Outbreaks.Applied health economics and health policy · 2021Pooled it
- Ethical considerations in infectious disease modelling for public health policy: the case of school closures.Interface focus · 2025Article
- Optimal pandemic control strategies and cost-effectiveness of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions in the United States.BMC global and public health · 2025Article
- The role of economic evaluation in modelling public health and social measures for pandemic policy: a systematic review.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2024Article
- Cost effectiveness of preemptive school closures to mitigate pandemic influenza outbreaks of differing severity in the United States.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Economic evaluations of interventions against viral pandemics: a scoping review.Public health · 2022Article
- Challenges for modelling interventions for future pandemics.Epidemics · 2022Article
- Asymptomatic Transmission and the Infection Fatality Risk for COVID-19: Implications for School Reopening.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2021Article
- Costs and benefits of interventions aimed at major infectious disease threats: lessons from the literature.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2020Review
- Home-based management of knee osteoarthritis during COVID-19 pandemic: literature review and evidence-based recommendations.Journal of experimental orthopaedics · 2020Review
- Projected geographic disparities in healthcare worker absenteeism from COVID-19 school closures and the economic feasibility of child care subsidies: a simulation study.BMC medicine · 2020Article
- Disruption of joint arthroplasty services in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic: an online survey within the European Hip Society (EHS) and the European Knee Associates (EKA).Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy : official journal of the ESSKA · 2020Article
- Projected geographic disparities in healthcare worker absenteeism from COVID-19 school closures and the economic feasibility of child care subsidies: a simulation study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2020Article
- Coronavirus Disease 2019, School Closures, and Children's Mental Health.Soa--ch'ongsonyon chongsin uihak = Journal of child & adolescent psychiatry · 2020Article
- The Effect of School Closure on Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease Transmission in Singapore: A Modeling Approach.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2018Article
- Pilot of an Elementary School Cough Etiquette Intervention: Acceptability, Feasibility, and Potential for Sustainability.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2017Article
- Influenza in workplaces: transmission, workers' adherence to sick leave advice and European sick leave recommendations.European journal of public health · 2016Review
- Description of a school nurse visit syndromic surveillance system and comparison to emergency department visits, New York City.American journal of public health · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe purpose of this article is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of school closure during a potential influenza pandemic and to examine the trade-off between costs and health benefits for school closure involving different target groups and different closure durations.
methodsWe developed two models: a dynamic disease model capturing the spread of influenza and an economic model capturing the costs and benefits of school closure. Decisions were based on quality-adjusted life years gained using incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. The disease model is an age-structured SEIR compartmental model based on the population of Oslo. We studied the costs and benefits of school closure by varying the age targets (kindergarten, primary school, secondary school) and closure durations (1-10 weeks), given pandemics with basic reproductive number of 1.5, 2.0 or 2.5.
resultsThe cost-effectiveness of school closure varies depending on the target group, duration and whether indirect costs are considered. Using a case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.1-0.2% and with current cost-effectiveness threshold for Norway, closing secondary school is the only cost-effective strategy, when indirect costs are included. The most cost-effective strategies would be closing secondary schools for 8 weeks if R0=1.5, 6 weeks if R0=2.0, and 4 weeks if R0= 2.5. For severe pandemics with case fatality rates of 1-2%, similar to the Spanish flu, or when indirect costs are disregarded, the optimal strategy is closing kindergarten, primary and secondary school for extended periods of time. For a pandemic with 2009 H1N1 characteristics (mild severity and low transmissibility), closing schools would not be cost-effective, regardless of the age target of school children.
conclusionsSchool closure has moderate impact on the epidemic's scope, but the resulting disruption to society imposes a potentially great cost in terms of lost productivity from parents' work absenteeism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.