Estimating Population Burden of Stroke with an Agent-Based Model

TL;DR

This paper introduces an agent-based model to evaluate how individual risk awareness and preventive actions can reduce the societal burden of stroke, emphasizing the importance of targeted interventions and personal risk knowledge.

Contribution

It presents a novel agent-based modeling approach to assess population-level impacts of stroke prevention strategies based on individual risk awareness.

Findings

Risk awareness leads to significant reduction in strokes.

Agent-based model effectively simulates intervention impacts.

Personal risk knowledge is crucial for stroke prevention.

Abstract

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide but it is believed to be highly preventable. The majority of stroke prevention focuses on targeting high-risk individuals but its is important to understand how the targeting of high-risk individuals might impact the overall societal burden of stroke. We propose using an agent-based model that follows agents through their pre-stroke and stroke journey to assess the impacts of different interventions at the population level. We present a case study looking at the impacts of agents being informed of their stroke risk at certain ages and those agents taking measure to reduce their risk. The results of our study show that if agents are aware of their risk and act accordingly we see a significant reduction in strokes and population DALYs. The case study highlights the importance of individuals understanding their own stroke risk for stroke prevention and the usefulness of agent-based models in assessing the impact of stroke interventions.