Minimum Resource Threshold Policy Under Partial Interference

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Park, Chan; Chen, Guanhua; Yu, Menggang; Kang, Hyunseung
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0162-1459
• DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2023.2284422
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 2881-2894
• 关键词: INDIVIDUALIZED TREATMENT RULES; Causal Inference; diarrhea; morbidity; fever; time

摘要

When developing policies for prevention of infectious diseases, policymakers often set specific, outcome-oriented targets to achieve. For example, when developing a vaccine allocation policy, policymakers may want to distribute them so that at least a certain fraction of individuals in a census block are disease-free and spillover effects due to interference within blocks are accounted for. The article proposes methods to estimate a block-level treatment policy that achieves a predefined, outcome-oriented target while accounting for spillover effects due to interference. Our policy, the minimum resource threshold policy (MRTP), suggests the minimum fraction of treated units required within a block to meet or exceed the target level of the outcome. We estimate the MRTP from empirical risk minimization using a novel, nonparametric, doubly robust loss function. We then characterize statistical properties of the estimated MRTP in terms of the excess risk bound. We apply our methodology to design a water, sanitation, and hygiene allocation policy for Senegal with the goal of increasing the proportion of households with no children experiencing diarrhea to a level exceeding a specified threshold. Our policy outperforms competing policies and offers new approaches to design allocation policies, especially in international development for communicable diseases. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.