Adjusting mobile phone data to account for children’s travel and the impact on measles dynamics in Zambia

Abstract

Models of measles transmission can be used to identify areas of high risk to tailor immunization strategies. Estimates of spatial connectivity can be derived from data such as mobile phone records, but it is not clear how this maps to the movement of children who are more likely to be infected. Using travel surveys across 2 districts in Zambia and national mobile phone data, we compared estimates of out-of-district travel for the population captured in the mobile phone data and child-specific travel from travel surveys. We then evaluated the impact of unadjusted and adjusted connectivity measures on simulated measles virus introduction events across Zambia. The number of trips made by children from the travel survey was 3 to 5 times lower than the general population estimates from mobile phone data. This decreased the percentage of districts with measles virus introduction events from 78% when using unadjusted data to 51% to 64% following adjustment. Failure to account for age-specific heterogeneities in travel estimated from mobile phone data resulted in overestimating subnational areas at high risk of introduction events, which could divert mitigation efforts to districts that are at lower risk.

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