Prioritizing Healthcare Worker Vaccinations on the Basis of Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Social network models can be used to derive more effective vaccination policies, which are crucial during vaccine shortages or in facilities with low vaccination rates. Local vaccination priorities can be determined in any healthcare facility with only a modest investment in collection of observational data on different types of healthcare workers. Our findings and methods (ie, social network analysis and computational simulation) have implications for the design of effective interventions to control a broad range of healthcare-associated infections.