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The most deadly Ebola outbreak in the history, which started in December $2013$, is currently under control. The high case fatality rate of the Ebola outbreak inspired local and international control strategies. In this paper, the dynamics of Ebola virus disease is modeled in the presence of three control strategies. The model describes the evolution of the disease in the population when educational campaigns, active case-finding and pharmaceutical interventions are implemented as control strategies against the disease. We prove the existence of an optimal control set and analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions, optimality and transversality conditions. We conclude through numerical simulations that containing an Ebola outbreak needs early and long-term implementation of joint control strategies.

How to make value-based care a reality?

Impactful interventions to maximise healthspan.

Viral hepatitis in Arkhangai: How Asia’s first micro-treatment program’s successes can be leveraged to treat a “silent killer”.

The long-suffering challenge of vaccination.

Systems design utilizes top-down and bottom-up approaches to influence social or economic systems such that a desired outcome is obtained. We characterize different approaches like network controllability, network interventions, nudging and mechanism design and discuss the problems involved. We argue that systems design cannot be reduced to solving complex optimization problems.

We study variations in the risk-neutral distributions of the exchange rates in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru due to interventions implemented by these countries. For this purpose, we first estimate the risk-neutral densities of the exchange rates based on derivatives market data, for one-day and one-week horizons. Second, using a linear regression model, we assess possible effects on the distributions of the expected exchange rates due to these interventions. We find little evidence of an effect on the expected exchange rates' means, volatilities, skewness, kurtoses, risk premia, and tails' parameters. In the few cases for which we do find some statistical evidence of an effect, it tends to be short-lived or not economically significant. On the other hand, we find evidence that interventions which objective is to restore and/or assure the proper functioning of exchange rate markets have a higher probability of success. This probability increases as the amount of resources to intervene at the disposal of the central bank increases. Needless to say, there are limits to the methodology we use.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are emergent phenomena resulting from exposure to a traumatic event that causes actual or threatened death or injury and produces intense fear, helplessness, or horror. In order to assess the role of different factors contributing to this kind of emergent phenomenon prevalence rates across gender, cultures, and samples exposed to different traumas are examined. Risk factors for PTSD, including pre-existing individual-based factors, features of the traumatic event, and post-trauma interventions are examined as well. Several characteristics of the trauma, related to cognitions, post-trauma social support and therapeutic interventions for PTSD are also considered. Further work is needed in order to analyze the inter-relationships among these factors and underlying mechanisms. The chaotic nature of traumatic processes, the multiple and interactive impacts on traumatic events require a comprehensive perspective aimed at planning effective interventions. Treatment outcome studies recommended the combined use of training and therapies as first-line treatment for PTSD.