Discrete simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation for resource allocation in public health

In this paper, we consider the application of discrete simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (DSPSA) towards developing optimal public health strategies for containing the spread of influenza given limited societal resources. We use DSPSA to do the simulation based optimization to solve the optimal intervention method for H1N1 to achieve the minimal loss to the economy. The loss to the economy includes the cost related to the interventions and the cost induced by people infections. Based on open source software for intervention strategies (FluTE) we use DSPSA to determine the optimal intervention strategy instead of just doing sensitivity analysis on the effect of each intervention method.