In September 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched announced more than $262 million in funding for a unique national network, the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network.
The goal, according to the agency, was to “support state and local decision makers in developing and implementing new tools to more effectively detect, respond to, and mitigate public health emergencies.”
More than a dozen public and private organizations have been selected to lead the initiative, including leading universities and health organizations.
They were grouped as innovators (who developed tools and technologies to support emergency response); integrators (who test these techniques in small-scale implementations) and implementers (who use proven best practices to scale to larger jurisdictions).
The new outbreak response and disease modeling network was launched last month was launched as Insight Net.
The goal is to enable public health decision makers to “better understand the trajectory of the next outbreak, make informed decisions, and take action during outbreak responses,” the CDC said, while also telling members of the public help “make informed decisions to protect their communities, families and themselves during public health emergencies.”
We recently spoke with Dylan George, director of the CDC's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, about the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, how this new effort is designed to respond to other public health emergencies help mitigate and respond, the value of advanced analytics to help enable biosurveillance and more.
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