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Assessment of Social Transmission of Food Preferences Behaviors
Published on: January 25, 2018
Diagnosing food-borne illness: a behavioral analysis of barriers to testing
Gülbanu Kaptan1, Baruch Fischhoff
1Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. gkaptan@andrew.cmu.edu
Abstract:
Public health authorities rely on the timely flow of laboratory results to detect and control food-borne illnesses. At times, social and economic barriers limit individuals' ability to get needed tests. We demonstrate a simple behavioral approach to assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions designed to remove three social and economic barriers to testing individuals with acute diarrheal illness: testing costs, income loss, and inconvenience. We use readily available statistics to rank programs by their cost effectiveness to identify those most worthy of studying in greater detail.
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