Keynote Speakers

Piero Manfredi is full professor in Demography at the University of Pisa (Italy). His research interests have ranged over different areas of population dynamics with special focus on the transmission and control of communicable infections, In the latter area he has contributed on (i) the impact of the Italian Measles National Elimination Plan, (ii) the effects of demographic change on the control of childhood infections, (iii) the estimation of social contact patterns, (iv) the transmission and control of Varicella-Zoster-Virus. He has contributed to the development of the “behavioral epidemiology” of communicable diseases. Piero Manfredi has coordinated an ECDC project on vaccination programs in the EU, has participated to FP6 project "Polimod" and FP7 project "Flumodcont", and has been been advisor of two ERC projects.

Pandemic control and preparedness: thoughts on the different scales of human behavior

The Behavioral epidemiology of infectious diseases (BEID) has been steadily growing for two decades. In the first part of this talk,  i will provide a brief overview of the historical developments of the discipline. BEID was seeded during the first epoch of the HIV/AIDS pandemic when education and individuals’ behavior change soon resulted the only route to curb the epidemic given the absence of effective treatment and vaccines. However, the discipline definitely took-off in the early 2000s when a few scholars started to systematically combine classical mathematical epidemiology principles with ideas and techniques from behavioral sciences. In the second part of my talk, I will present recent results on a problem, so far overlooked, that I consider at the very heart of the discipline, namely the interplay between the agents’ behavioral responses and public policies (i.e., the “policy makers’ behavior”) under major epidemic threats. I will conclude by attempting to suggest a number of possible avenues of future progress of the discipline.