This project brings together a group of UK and US scholars to push forward a cutting-edge research agenda in the interdisciplinary modelling of complex epidemiological trajectories of wellbeing and place. It is based on the realization that a major methodological challenge in epidemiology and community health today is modelling the complex inter-dynamics of time, place and wellbeing. Of particular concern are the following issues:
- How to bring together mathematical, epidemiological and sociological approaches to model these trajectories;[spacer height=”5px”]
- How to connect these models to social data, social context and human agency;[spacer height=”5px”]
- How to do so in an applied setting that informs social policy and planning.[spacer height=”5px”]
The project seeks to develop two inter-connected, innovative, interdisciplinary approaches (already in development by team members) to address these challenges: the first is grounded in a stochastic, epidemiological, network science approach; the second is grounded in a deterministic, control theory, density-based approach. The theoretical and methodological link between both is the idea that nodes, networks, and aggregate (place-based) densities are types of complex, case-based systems.