PHASE: Facilitating Agent-Based Modelling in Population Health

Agent-based modelling (ABM), despite numerous successes in various disciplines of the physical and natural sciences, remains at the fringes of population health research. ABM can contribute to public health policy-making by providing a means to develop and test ambitious policies on virtual populations prior to roll-out, and to incorporate detailed individual-level modelling of relevant behavioral processes. Here we introduce PHASE: Population Health Agent-based Simulation nEtwork, a research network started in October 2019 and funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership that will develop and support the community of agent-based modellers in population health. We then present a worked example of ABM being applied to social care provision in the United Kingdom, demonstrating how our model facilitates the development of complex policy interventions in this area. We propose that ABM for population health research can thrive when underpinned by a strong collaborative network and supported by open-source tools and exemplar models.