Neutrosophic Weighting of Epidemiological Criteria Using Jensen-Shannon Divergence: An Extended CRITIC Method for Prioritizing Parasitic Species in Public Health

Intestinal parasitic infections remain a significant public health problem in several regions worldwide. This study evaluates eight intestinal parasite species using five criteria, based on data from patients. The objective is to rank these parasitic species by their epidemiological importance to prioritize those with the greatest health impact. To achieve this, the data are neutrosophied to account for the inherent indeterminacy and uncertainty of clinical measurements. The resulting decision matrix is analyzed using the CRITIC multi-criteria decision-making method to determine criteria weights. Instead of the classical Pearson correlation, the Jensen-Shannon divergence is employed to capture non-linear relationships between criteria. The MARCOS method is then applied to rank the parasitic species. The main theoretical contribution of this work is the integration of neutrosophication, CRITIC with Jensen-Shannon divergence, and MARCOS. The proposed approach is compared with alternative divergence and correlation measures, viz. Kullback-Leibler divergence, and Pearson and Spearman correlations, to examine the role of symmetry and asymmetry in the results. Under the proposed neutrosophication the criteria weights are markedly more balanced than under the midpoint convention, and the mucus rate emerges as the most influential criterion under the Jensen-Shannon divergence. Regarding the parasitic species, Chilomastix mesnili and Blastocystis spp. emerge as the highest-priority targets for public health interventions.