Seven challenges in modeling vaccine preventable diseases

• Mathematical models have informed vaccination from the underlying science to program design.
• This is an exciting time as novel challenges are emerging from changing biology and advancing vaccine technology.
• Population scale challenges range from modeling immune heterogeneity to dynamics near elimination.
• Within host challenges include modeling immune memory, evolution of escape, and new vaccine biology.

Vaccination has been one of the most successful public health measures since the introduction of basic sanitation. Substantial mortality and morbidity reductions have been achieved via vaccination against many infections, and the list of diseases that are potentially controllable by vaccines is growing steadily. We introduce key challenges for modeling in shaping our understanding and guiding policy decisions related to vaccine preventable diseases.