OR Forum—Public Health Preparedness: Answering (Largely Unanswerable) Questions with Operations Research—The 2016–2017 Philip McCord Morse Lecture

Margaret L. Brandeau ()
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Margaret L. Brandeau: Department of Management Science and Engineering, Huang Engineering Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305

Operations Research, 2019, vol. 67, issue 3, 700-710

Abstract: Public health security—achieved by effectively preventing, detecting, and responding to events that affect public health, such as bioterrorism, disasters, and naturally occurring disease outbreaks—is a key aspect of national security. However, effective public health preparedness depends on answering largely unanswerable questions such as determining the chance of a bioterror attack in the United States over a given time horizon, or chance of an anthrax attack, or the location and magnitude of such an attack. In “Public Health Preparedness: Answering (Largely Unanswerable) Questions with Operations Research—The 2016–2017 Philip McCord Morse Lecture,” Margaret Brandeau describes the important role that OR-based analyses can play in providing insight into complex public health preparedness planning problems, thereby supporting good decisions. The author presents three examples from her work: logistics of response to an anthrax attack, prepositioning of medical countermeasures for anthrax, and stockpiling decisions for the United States’ Strategic National Stockpile.

Keywords: professional addresses; government planning; ORMS philosophy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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