Using operations research to improve mass dispensing and vaccination clinic planning
To react to an outbreak of a contagious disease that requires medication or vaccination, county health departments must setup and operate mass dispensing and vaccination clinics. Carefully planning these clinics before an event occurs is a difficult and important job. This paper describes the development of operations research models for this problem and the use of these tools to improve clinic planning. These tools include capacity planning models, discrete-event simulation models, and queueing system approximations. This work is the result of an ongoing collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Health Services.