JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) represent a rapidly growing public health challenge in the United States. Between 2001 and 2023, over one million VBD cases were reported, driven primarily by mosquito and tick-borne pathogens. Environmental change, including rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, land use change, and suburban expansion into previously inhospitable habitats, has enabled vector populations to establish and thrive across new geographic ranges, accelerating both the incidence and geographic spread of VBDs. Despite this trajectory, VBD control in the U.S. remains highly fragmented and decentralized, organized primarily at the local or regional level with substantial heterogeneity in funding, technical capacity, and surveillance infrastructure. Current approaches to VBD control are predominantly reactive and triggered by outbreaks rather than driven by proactive, data-informed prevention. Critically, existing epidemiological models and control frameworks have not fully incorporated human behavioral variables (e.g., perception, outdoor activity patterns, mitigation behavior) into their assessments of transmission risk. This represents a fundamental gap, given that human behavior is both a driver of exposure and a modifiable target for intervention. Progress has been made in several adjacent areas. Environmental and climatic drivers of VBD transmission are increasingly well-characterized. Mathematical models have advanced considerably in their ability to forecast vector abundance, habitat suitability, disease risk under changing conditions while integrating data on human behavior. Public health communication theory has produced evidence-based principles for designing effective behavior change messaging. And tools from mathematical optimization and adaptive decision-making have demonstrated real-world utility in guiding surveillance and intervention allocation under resource constraints. However, these advances have largely developed in parallel rather than in integration. The 2024 Center for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Human Health Services Vector-Borne Disease National Strategy explicitly call for better understanding of individual exposure factors, improved prevention and control approaches, and more effective dissemination of detection and response tools, situated within a One Health framework to enhance coordination and communication across human, animal, and environmental contexts. This call makes the current moment particularly timely for an integrated framework that bridges biological, environmental, and social science approaches to VBD risk. This viewpoint responds to that need by proposing a dynamic social-ecological systems risk communication framework that integrates environmental surveillance data, vector and pathogen monitoring, mathematical optimization tools, and human behavioral and risk perception data into a cohesive, adaptive feedback system. The framework is designed to be generalizable across regions and VBD types, and to support evidence-based health policy and targeted public communication that is responsive to dynamic and spatially variable risk conditions. It is intended for an audience spanning epidemiology, public health, human behavior, geography, applied mathematics, and health policy.