Added 2026 PLoS ONE SA paper

Author: ccattuto

_publications/2026-03-23-relationship-household-attributes-contact-patterns-south-africa.md

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+---
+title: Relationship between household attributes and contact patterns in urban and rural South Africa
+slug: relationship-household-attributes-contact-patterns-south-africa
+date: '2025-03-23'
+reference: PLoS ONE 21(3), e0344732 (2026)
+bibtex: |-
+  @article{Tjikundi2026PLoSONE,
+      doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0344732},
+      author = {Tjikundi, Kausutua AND Kleynhans, Jackie AND Tempia, Stefano AND Cohen, Cheryl AND Paolotti, Daniela AND Cattuto, Ciro AND Dall’Amico, Lorenzo},
+      journal = {PLOS ONE},
+      publisher = {Public Library of Science},
+      title = {Relationship between household attributes and contact patterns in urban and rural South Africa},
+      year = {2026},
+      month = {03},
+      volume = {21},
+      url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344732},
+      pages = {1-16},
+      number = {3}
+  } 
+pdf_url: /assets/papers/journal.pone.0344732.pdf
+external_url: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0344732
+abstract: |-
+  Households play a crucial role in the propagation of infectious diseases due to the frequent and prolonged interactions that typically occur between their members.
+  Recent studies have emphasized the need to include socioeconomic variables in epidemic models to account for the heterogeneity induced by human behavior.
+  While sub-Saharan Africa suffers the highest burden of infectious disease diffusion, few studies have investigated the mixing patterns in the countries and their
+  relation with social indicators. This work analyzes household contact matrices measured with wearable proximity sensors in a rural and an urban village in South Africa.
+  Leveraging a rich data collection describing additional individual and household attributes, we investigate how the household contact matrix varies according to the
+  household type (whether it is composed only of a familiar nucleus or by a larger group), the gender of its head (the primary decision-maker), the rural or urban context,
+  and the season in which it was measured. We show the household type and the gender of its head induce differences in the interaction patterns between household members,
+  particularly regarding child caregiving, suggesting they are relevant attributes to include in epidemic modeling.
+authors: 
+pid: Tjikundi2026PLoSONE
+layout: publication_item
+---