Disease and the Social Network
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3519324/
College is a convergence of thousands of different people from all over the world. This university allows people to connect from all over the world and increase and diversify their social networks. This convergence of people and cultures, while socially positive, also leads to a convergence of micro-biomes. Everyone is familiar with the sickness that people get after being back at school for a few weeks, and often it is blamed on this social network. However, the paper above argues that social networks also can be instrumental in the prevention of disease.
Zelner et. al. argue that tightly knit communities are more likely to partake in behaviors, and encourage others to partake in behaviors, that help to prevent the spread of diseases. The researchers observed that in more remote communities in Ecuador there were fewer incidents of diarrheal disease. Initially they attributed the reduction to the separation from larger populations and a smaller number of outsiders entering into the population. To test this they observed two different networks and compared them to the disease information. They observed both the social network based on who contacts whom, and also a network representing those they were close with (the people that subjects considered someone they could trust with “important matters”). They found that there was a 45% reduction of risk in the most connected communities compared to the least connected, suggesting that there is some protective effect in a more tightly knit social network, while outsiders entering into the contact network had an insignificant effect on risk.
While I’m not sure that dorms enable people to share positive hygiene behaviors, it is interesting to consider how social networks can not only demonstrate how disease spreads, but also how it is prevented.