“There’s a gap between the sophisticated methods used by experts and what actually happens on the ground during an emergency. CIDMATH is stepping in to address that gap. We will work closely with the CDC and our community partners to create important new datasets, advance novel methods, and provide training for the community of epidemiologists and decision makers.”

“In outbreaks big and small, situational awareness is vital. Despite the wealth of data that surround us, and despite advances in analytics during the pandemic, there is still much work that remains. Our center will promote the timely and reliable use of data for decision-making, while also building the public health workforce who can deploy these tools. Our goal is to undertake the ‘peace time’ work needed to ensure readiness for a future public health emergency.”

“CIDMATH will work towards bringing quantitative modeling and statistical analyses to public health practitioners. This will involve learning on both the academic side and the public health practice side. On the academic side, we need to learn what analytics would be most useful for public health decision-making and how to develop those analytics in ways that provide transparency in how the results were obtained and the degree to which results (such as forecasts) are uncertain.”

“It brings Emory’s expertise even more closely aligned with the practitioners so that we can help them advance their skills. We also will learn from them about how they conduct surveillance for different diseases and what data points they often collect or can’t collect. This will help us refine our models and what we’re collectively attempting to do, which is prevent future pandemics.”