OR modeling and AIDS policy: From theory to practice

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.