| Article ID: | iaor19991281 |
| Country: | United States |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Start Page Number: | 3 |
| End Page Number: | 22 |
| Publication Date: | May 1998 |
| Journal: | Interfaces |
| Authors: | Brandeau Margaret L., Khan James G., Dunn-Mortimer John |
| Keywords: | government, public service |
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.