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OR Modeling and AIDS Policy: From Theory to Practice

Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143
Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Consultant on Health Care Systems and Government Affairs, 715 Laurel Avenue, #201, San Mateo, California 94401

The AIDS epidemic is a serious, growing public health problem worldwide, but resources for treating HIV-infected patients and for combating the spread of the virus are limited. Governments, public-health agencies, and health-care providers must determine how best to allocate scarce resources for HIV treatment and prevention among different programs and populations. OR-based models have influenced—and can influence—AIDS policy decisions. Mathematical modeling has had an effect on AIDS policy in a number of areas, including estimating HIV prevalence and incidence in the United States, understanding the pathophysiology of HIV, evaluating costs and benefits of HIV-screening programs, evaluating the effects of needle-exchange programs, and determining policies for HIV/AIDS care in California. Further work is needed to model a range of programs using comparable methods, to model overall epidemic control strategy, and to improve the usefulness of OR-based models for policy making.

Key Words: health care; epidemiology; government; public policy