Managing vector-borne diseases on federal lands: protecting public health and the environment

Efficient management of vector-borne diseases requires accurate surveillance and well-targeted interventions, as well as theoretical advances on ways to efficiently integrate control methods. The schedule of efficacy of a method is the incremental decline in the number of vector bites, or in pathogen prevalence in vectors, that results from increasing application of the technique. Probabilistic models of pathogen transmission suggest that efficient integration of management methods requires data on the schedule of efficacy of each technique, so that the effects on vector abundance and infection rate that will result from various combinations of techniques can be estimated. Efficient management can minimize negative effects on natural resources by carefully targeting management methods and avoiding large scale, environmentally damaging interventions, and can simultaneously optimize public health protection by minimizing the number of human cases of disease with the resources applied.