  The 2014 Ebola outbreak in west Africa raised many questions about the
control of infectious disease in an increasingly connected global society.
Limited availability of contact information made contact tracing difficult or
impractical in combating the outbreak. We consider the development of
multi-scale public health strategies and simulate policies for community-level
response aimed at early screening of communities rather than individuals, as
well as travel restrictions to prevent community cross-contamination. Our
analysis shows the policies to be effective even at a relatively low level of
compliance. In our simulations, 40% of individuals conforming to these policies
is enough to stop the outbreak. Simulations with a 50% compliance rate are
consistent with the case counts in Liberia during the period of rapid decline
after mid September, 2014. We also find the travel restriction to be effective
at reducing the risks associated with compliance substantially below the 40%
level, shortening the outbreak and enabling efforts to be focused on affected
areas. Our results suggest that the multi-scale approach can be used to further
evolve public health strategy for defeating emerging epidemics.
