Understanding human behaviour for pandemic preparedness with epigames

Journal article

Infectious diseases that spread from person to person by direct transmission, including respiratory pathogens such as influenza and coronaviruses, impose a large global health burden and remain the most likely causative agents for future devastating pandemics¹. For many such diseases, transmission occurs when individuals are in close proximity for a sufficient time and through highly structured social contact networks². Data on the properties of these networks, including their temporal and spatial structures, how pathogens spread in them, and how interventions might alter this spread are scarce or inconsistent and seldom incorporate behavioural features. This produces a knowledge gap between policy-relevant models of pathogen transmission and the data they require: details of contact networks at high spatial and temporal resolution and their variability and malleability under different conditions.

Authors: Colubri, A; Williams, D; Valente, T; Bauch, CT; Drake, JM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Journal: Nature Health
• Publication date: 2026-02-24
• DOI: 10.1038/s44360-026-00071-8
• EISSN: 3005-0693
• Language: English
• Keywords: medical humanities; medical research