Current Projects

Outbreak Observatory

Center staff and trusted, vetted colleagues with relevant expertise will observe outbreak and epidemic responses on the ground in affected areas, document challenges and success, and share those key takeaways broadly with practitioners, policymakers, and the public to support their efforts to strengthen health security preparedness and response in their own communities.

The absence of dedicated mechanisms to facilitate real-time learning during an outbreak can result in a failure to consistently collect and analyze valuable, ephemeral data that are crucial for learning how to improve outbreak response and resource planning. By capturing and analyzing these data, this project will grow the evidence base pertaining to the health, socioeconomic, and political implications of outbreaks and epidemics and the operational challenges of and requirements for preventing, detecting and responding to them.

The project team will collaborate with local practitioners involved in outbreak response to co-author analyses of lessons learned to fill gaps in existing health security literature. In addition, the Outbreak Observatory will work to disseminate these lessons to the broader policy and practice community.

Project team lead: Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH

Project team: Matthew Shearer, MPH; Diane Meyer, RN, MPH; Elena Martin, MPH; Marc Trotochaud, MSPH; Carolina Andrada; Divya Hosangadi, MSPH; Lucia Mullen, MPH; Christina Potter

Project supported by: Open Philanthropy Project

Resources:

• Outbreak Observatory project website
• @Outbreaks101 on Twitter