Partnerships

The Georgia Department of Public Health (GDPH), in collaboration with county health departments and public health districts, leads efforts to prevent disease, injury, and disability; promote health and well-being; and prepare for and respond to health emergencies across the state.

CIDMATH builds on Emory’s long-standing collaboration with GDPH, strengthening data sharing, staffing, and joint research efforts. Our modeling core analyzes data provided by GDPH to study public health challenges. CIDMATH also supports GDPH through surge staffing plans, high-quality data sources, innovative analytic tools, and the training of early public health professionals.

Kaiser Permanente of Georgia (KPGA) is Georgia’s top-rated health insurance plan, reflecting its commitment to quality, innovation, and improving health outcomes. The Center for Research and Evaluation (CRE) at KPGA conducts and disseminates research that positively impacts health outcomes, improves service delivery, and reduces health disparities.

CIDMATH and KPGA CRE work together to connect clinical data with innovative modeling methods. This collaboration powers two of CIDMATH’s ongoing projects: the ENGAGED study investigating social contact patterns in Atlanta and vaccine evaluation that applies new methodologies to test vaccine effectiveness in real-world settings.

The Emerging Infections Program is a national network of 12 sites that work with the CDC to track, report, and control infectious diseases. Georgia EIP conducts active surveillance and research on food-borne illnesses, invasive bacterial infections, viral respiratory diseases, and healthcare-associated infections to provide critical data to guide public health action.

CIDMATH works closely with Georgia EIP to refine models and explore key research questions to strengthen public health preparedness. This collaboration ensures that modeling efforts are grounded in high-quality data and support effective public health decision-making while providing training opportunities for master’s students interested in infectious disease analytics, data modernization, and data visualization.

WastewaterSCAN is a nationwide wastewater monitoring network based at Stanford University and run in partnership with Emory University. The program collects and analyzes wastewater samples to detect various infectious disease pathogens. Their work demonstrates how public health agencies can use wastewater data to track infectious diseases and better protect public health.

CIDMATH has access to data from eight WastewaterSCAN sites in Georgia, as well as stored samples from sites across the country. CIDMATH’s wastewater team uses this data to create tools to improve disease modeling and develop machine learning methods to forecast outbreaks, strengthening our ability to provide real-time estimates of how disease spread.