Nine challenges in incorporating the dynamics of behaviour in infectious diseases models

• Challenges in incorporating the dynamics of behaviour in infectious diseases models are identified.
• A fundamental challenge is how and at which level of detail behavior should be modeled.
• Practical challenges include quantifying changes in reporting behavior and predicting the impact of health campaigns.
• Further challenges involve the role of movement and travel, novel data sources, and real-time data collection.
• A final challenge is to engage in a dialogue across disciplines.

Traditionally, the spread of infectious diseases in human populations has been modelled with static parameters. These parameters, however, can change when individuals change their behaviour. If these changes are themselves influenced by the disease dynamics, there is scope for mechanistic models of behaviour to improve our understanding of this interaction. Here, we present challenges in modelling changes in behaviour relating to disease dynamics, specifically: how to incorporate behavioural changes in models of infectious disease dynamics, how to inform measurement of relevant behaviour to parameterise such models, and how to determine the impact of behavioural changes on observed disease dynamics.