Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Mar;6(3):e005207.
doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005207.

A participatory modelling approach for investigating the spread of COVID-19 in countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region to support public health decision-making

Keyrellous Adib  1 , Penelope A Hancock  2   3 , Aysel Rahimli  2 , Bridget Mugisa  2 , Fayez Abdulrazeq  2 , Ricardo Aguas  3   4 , Lisa J White  3   5 , Rana Hajjeh  2 , Lubna Al Ariqi  2 , Pierre Nabeth  2
Affiliations
Review

A participatory modelling approach for investigating the spread of COVID-19 in countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region to support public health decision-making

Keyrellous Adib et al. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Mar.

Abstract

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office recognised the importance of epidemiological modelling to forecast the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic to support decisions guiding the implementation of response measures. We established a modelling support team to facilitate the application of epidemiological modelling analyses in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) countries. Here, we present an innovative, stepwise approach to participatory modelling of the COVID-19 pandemic that engaged decision-makers and public health professionals from countries throughout all stages of the modelling process. Our approach consisted of first identifying the relevant policy questions, collecting country-specific data and interpreting model findings from a decision-maker's perspective, as well as communicating model uncertainty. We used a simple modelling methodology that was adaptable to the shortage of epidemiological data, and the limited modelling capacity, in our region. We discuss the benefits of using models to produce rapid decision-making guidance for COVID-19 control in the WHO EMR, as well as challenges that we have experienced regarding conveying uncertainty associated with model results, synthesising and comparing results across multiple modelling approaches, and modelling fragile and conflict-affected states.

Keywords: COVID-19; epidemiology; health policy; mathematical modelling; public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

References

    1. World Health Organisation . WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020, 2020. Available: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-re... [Accessed 9 Sep 2020].
    1. World Health Organisation Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean . Who coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Dashboard, 2020. Available: https://covid19.who.int/ [Accessed 1 Sep 2020].
    1. Al-Mandhari AS, Brennan RJ, Abubakar A, et al. Tackling COVID-19 in the eastern Mediterranean region. The Lancet 2020;396:1786–8 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33220856 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32349-7 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organisation . Strategic preparedness and response plan: COVID–19 strategy update 2020.
    1. World Health Organisation . Strategic preparedness and response plan for the novel coronavirus 2020.

LinkOut - more resources