Social networks spread disease—but they also spread practices that reduce disease

I recently posted on the sister blog regarding a paper by Jon Zelner, James Trostle, Jason Goldstick, William Cevallos, James House, and Joseph Eisenberg, “Social Connectedness and Disease Transmission: Social Organization, Cohesion, Village Context, and Infection Risk in Rural Ecuador.”

Zelner follows up:

This made me think of my favorite figure from this paper, which showed the impact of relative network position within villages on risk. Basically, less-connected households in low average-degree villages were at higher risk than more-connected households in those villages, but in high average-degree places there was no meaningful relative degree effect.

Here it is:

high_low

7 thoughts on “Social networks spread disease—but they also spread practices that reduce disease

    • Never mind… I’m assuming it is social connections of the individual family, while the lines stratify by average social connection of the village.

      • Difference (in standard deviations) of household degree from village average degree
        From the link in Zelner follow-up quote.

        Now as soon as I find out what a village average degree is …

        • Err, exactly. The plot must mean something, but what? At the moment it looks like an economist’s graph!
          Note I am not a fan of simple=-minded economic graphs.

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