The Clarity and Limitation of Epidemiology

Standard epidemiology makes great strides toward our understanding of how malaria spreads throughout human populations, but it is less helpful for understanding how people might disrupt the life cycle of mosquitos and malaria. That is, we cannot rely solely on public health, epidemiology, and malariology to understand the private and social incentives people face, which might encourage private responses to collective action problems. To show this analytical deficit and motivate the subsequent chapters, this chapter reviews standard epidemiology and malariology with a focus on the MacDonald model of malaria transmission, the literature on social malariology and community participation, and reports on malaria transmission and prevention from major public health organizations. Moreover, this chapter discusses the black box nature of epidemiology as it relates to community participation. To advance subsequent models of malaria transmission and prevention, this chapter argues we should clearly identify the private and social incentives people face. To that end, the science of economics and collective action will be particularly helpful.