Incentivizing Multiple Objectives in Active Surveillance for Urban Disease Vectors

Large-scale vector control campaigns have successfully reduced infectious disease incidence around the world. In addition to preventing new infections, these campaigns produce a wealth of information about the distribution and density of insect vectors, which can be incorporated into risk maps. These maps can effectively communicate risk map data to technicians on the ground, although encouraging them to use the data remains a challenge. We carried out a series of rolling trials in which we evaluated risk map use under different incentive schemes. Participants in the studies were trained field technicians tasked with house-to-house surveillance for insect vectors of Chagas disease in Arequipa, Peru. A novel incentive scheme based on poker best achieved a dual objective: to encourage technicians to preferentially visit higher-risk houses while surveilling evenly across the search zone. The poker incentive structure may be well-suited to improve entomological surveillance activities and other complex multi-objective tasks.