ArticlePLoS computational biology2022
There are no equal opportunity infectors: Epidemiological modelers must rethink our approach to inequality in infection risk.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrating mathematical modelling and artificial intelligence to combat emerging viral syndemics: A systematic review.New microbes and new infections · 2026Review
- Social contact patterns in the United Kingdom following the COVID-19 pandemic: The Reconnect cross-sectional survey.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Health inequalities in infectious disease modelling.Communications health · 2026Article
- Relationship between household attributes and contact patterns in urban and rural South Africa.PloS one · 2026Article
- Individual and neighborhood based socioeconomic factors relevant for contact behaviour and epidemic control.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Dynamics of social inequalities in severe COVID-19 outcomes in metropolitan France from 2020 to 2022.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Closing the Gap in Race-based Inequities for Seasonal Influenza Hospitalizations: A Modeling Study.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2025Article
- Social inequalities in vaccine coverage and their effects on epidemic spreading.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Possible connections between health equity and primary health care: a scoping review.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Influenza Vaccination, Household Composition, and Race-Based Differences in Influenza Incidence: An Agent-Based Modeling Study.American journal of public health · 2025Article
- Timing of Infection as a Key Driver of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Mortality Rates During the Prevaccine Period.Open forum infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Generalized contact matrices allow integrating socioeconomic variables into epidemic models.Science advances · 2024Article
- Where did public health go wrong? Seven lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.European journal of public health · 2024Article
- Evaluating equity-promoting interventions to prevent race-based inequities in influenza outcomes.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Importance of social inequalities to contact patterns, vaccine uptake, and epidemic dynamics.Nature communications · 2024Article
- What's next: using infectious disease mathematical modelling to address health disparities.International journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- An inaugural forum on epidemiological modeling for public health stakeholders in Arizona.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Quantifying the impact of SARS-CoV-2 temporal vaccination trends and disparities on disease control.Science advances · 2023Article
- Invited Commentary: To Make Long-Term Gains Against Infection Inequity, Infectious Disease Epidemiology Needs to Develop a More Sociological Imagination.American journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Accounting for historical injustices in mathematical models of infectious disease transmission: An analytic overview.Epidemics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mathematical models have come to play a key role in global pandemic preparedness and outbreak response: helping to plan for disease burden, hospital capacity, and inform nonpharmaceutical interventions. Such models have played a pivotal role in the COVID-19 pandemic, with transmission models-and, by consequence, modelers-guiding global, national, and local responses to SARS-CoV-2. However, these models have largely not accounted for the social and structural factors, which lead to socioeconomic, racial, and geographic health disparities. In this piece, we raise and attempt to clarify several questions relating to this important gap in the research and practice of infectious disease modeling: Why do epidemiologic models of emerging infections typically ignore known structural drivers of disparate health outcomes? What have been the consequences of a framework focused primarily on aggregate outcomes on infection equity? What should be done to develop a more holistic approach to modeling-based decision-making during pandemics? In this review, we evaluate potential historical and political explanations for the exclusion of drivers of disparity in infectious disease models for emerging infections, which have often been characterized as "equal opportunity infectors" despite ample evidence to the contrary. We look to examples from other disease systems (HIV, STIs) and successes in including social inequity in models of acute infection transmission as a blueprint for how social connections, environmental, and structural factors can be integrated into a coherent, rigorous, and interpretable modeling framework. We conclude by outlining principles to guide modeling of emerging infections in ways that represent the causes of inequity in infection as central rather than peripheral mechanisms.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.