Danon, Leon, Read, Jonathan M., House, Thomas A., Vernon, Matthew C. and Keeling, Matthew James (2013) Social encounter networks : characterizing Great Britain. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 280 (Number 1765). p. 20131037. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1037

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Abstract

A major goal of infectious disease epidemiology is to understand and predict the spread of infections within human populations, with the intention of better informing decisions regarding control and intervention. However, the development of fully mechanistic models of transmission requires a quantitative understanding of social interactions and collective properties of social networks. We performed a cross-sectional study of the social contacts on given days for more than 5000 respondents in England, Scotland and Wales, through postal and online survey methods. The survey was designed to elicit detailed and previously unreported measures of the immediate social network of participants relevant to infection spread. Here, we describe individual-level contact patterns, focusing on the range of heterogeneity observed and discuss the correlations between contact patterns and other socio-demographic factors. We find that the distribution of the number of contacts approximates a power-law distribution, but postulate that total contact time (which has a shorter-tailed distribution) is more epidemiologically relevant. We observe that children, public-sector and healthcare workers have the highest number of total contact hours and are therefore most likely to catch and transmit infectious disease. Our study also quantifies the transitive connections made between an individual's contacts (or clustering); this is a key structural characteristic of social networks with important implications for disease transmission and control efficacy. Respondents' networks exhibit high levels of clustering, which varies across social settings and increases with duration, frequency of contact and distance from home. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the transmission and control of pathogens spread through close contact.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) Faculty of Science > Mathematics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Epidemiology -- Great Britain, Epidemiology -- Research, Communicable diseases -- Great Britain, Communicable diseases -- Research, Public health
Journal or Publication Title:	Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher:	The Royal Society Publishing
ISSN:	0962-8452
Official Date:	26 June 2013
Dates:	Date Event 26 June 2013 Published
Volume:	Volume 280
Number:	Number 1765
Page Range:	p. 20131037
DOI:	10.1098/rspb.2013.1037
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Medical Research Council (Great Britain) (MRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Leverhulme Trust (LT)
Grant number:	G0701256 (MRC) ; EP/H016139/1 (EPSRC) ;

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