Abstract:
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Numerous examples exist of infectious disease models that incorporate spatial distance and other covariates at the individual level. This has been most noticeable perhaps in agricultural case studies such as the UK 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic. However, both in agriculture and public health, many salient covariates that display spatial structure are collected at a regional level. Here, we extend individual level infectious disease models to incorporate such spatially structured regional/aggregate level information. This is done primarily within the context of regional data from the public health system of Alberta, Canada. We discuss issues of both inference and computation.
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