Modeling the health burden of risks that vary by age and exposure duration and influence the development of multiple diseases (such as air pollution, obesity, and smoking) poses two main challenges that existing approaches often overlook. First, health risks accumulate over time and worsen with age. For example, a 40-year-old who has been exposed to polluted air for years faces a higher risk of disease and death than a 30-year-old with the same exposure levels due to cumulative effects. Second, when risks affect multiple diseases but each person ultimately dies from a single cause, competing causes of death must be accounted for to avoid overstating mortality effects.
Develop a modeling framework that jointly accounts for cumulative exposure effects and the competing risk of death over a population's lifetime, applying calibration techniques and statistical modeling to recover age-, sex-, and birth-cohort-specific incidence and case-fatality.
Health policy evaluation often relies on mathematical modeling and simulation to quantify intervention effects and inform decision-making. However, models ideal for detailed analysis are difficult to calibrate, whereas models suitable for efficient calibration often lack the necessary depth of analysis.
Develop a two-model framework that combines the calibration efficiency of ordinary differential equation models for calibrating and recovering unknown natural-history parameters with the analytical depth of discrete-event simulation models for policy evaluation.
The long-term effects of ambient air pollution exposure, especially fine particulate matter (PM2.5), have been associated with an increased risk of death from multiple chronic diseases, including ischemic heart disease (IHD), stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer. Air pollution has become a serious public health problem in Mexico City. In response, the local government has implemented strategies to achieve a 30% reduction in total air pollution emissions by 2030.
Provide decision-makers with an evaluation of the long-term health and economic impacts of existing strategies to mitigate air pollution, enabling them to explore various future policies to achieve goals beyond 2030.