title: Approximate disease dynamics in household-structured populations.
abstract: We argue that the large-dimensional dynamical systems which frequently occur in biological models can sometimes be effectively reduced to much smaller ones. We illustrate this by applying projection operator techniques to a mean-field model of an infectious disease spreading through a population of households. In this way, we are able to accurately approximate the dynamics of the system in terms of a few key quantities greatly reducing the number of equations required. We investigate linear stability in this framework and find a new way of calculating the familiar threshold criterion for household systems.
authors: Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, St Mary's Campus, Norfolk Place, London, UK. peter.dodd@imperial.ac.uk
authors: P J
authors: PJ
authors: Dodd
authors: N M
authors: NM
authors: Ferguson
mesh_terms: D004194:Disease; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005191:Family Characteristics; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D049490:Systems Biology