Modeling Consequences of Reduced Vaccination Levels on the Spread of Measles

Introduction: In this thesis we propose a mathematical model for the spread of measles in a closed population. In section 1 we offer a motivation for the project, describe the measles virus as well as its history in the U.S., and provide a brief summary of three epidemiological models from the literature. In section 2.1 we introduce some probabilistic tools used in our model. Section 2.2.1 outlines our stochastic model used for the spread of measles in a population, which is refined in section 2.2.2 to include health interventions from the CDC. We conclude the thesis by presenting in section 3 the results of the simulations of the stochastic model developed and discussing the effects of a decrease in vaccination coverage on the spread of measles in the population