A $1 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will fund a decision-support toolkit being developed by the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory (PHDL) to increase vaccine acceptance and vaccination rates.
Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP, Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management, is principal investigator for the two-year project, “VIMP: A Discourse-Aware, Community-Informed Toolkit to Predict Virality and Impact of Vaccine Misinformation Contents.” The undertaking will foster accurate scientific dialog in local communities to counter misinformation and seek community input during project development.
“There’s been a marked increase in vaccine hesitancy and misinformation since the COVID-19 pandemic started,” said Roberts, who also directs the PHDL. “CDC and its partners could use our tool to rapidly respond to misinformation about vaccines.”
Roberts has conducted research in decision analysis and the mathematical modeling of disease for over 30 years. As PHDL director, he continues to lead the development of simulation tools for representing complex diseases and the evaluation of policies to improve health and public health. The PHDL is currently one of four CDC-funded U.S. COVID-19 and Influenza Scenario Modeling Hubs.
Co-investigators for the project include Beth Hoffman, PhD, Kar-Hai Chu, PhD, and Elizabeth Felter, PhD, all of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health; Antoine Douaihy, MD, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine; Amin Rahimian, PhD, Department of Industrial Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering; and Malihe Alikhani,PhD, Northeastern University.
-Michele Baum