On September 19, 2022, CDC announced the recipients of 13 funding awards to establish a first-of-its-kind national network, the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADMN). The awards, totaling $262.5 million in funding over a five-year period, will support state and local decision-makers in developing and implementing new tools to detect, respond to, and mitigate public health emergencies more effectively. The program will support building and scaling needed capabilities best suited for their respective jurisdictions, based on the best available information.

Reflecting representation from state health departments, tribal organizations, academic and private sector partners, the funding 13 recipients comprising OADMN include:

• Emory University
• Northeastern University
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC)
• Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Michigan School of Public Health
• University of California, San Diego
• University of Minnesota
• Clemson University
• University of Utah
• International Responder Systems
• The University of Texas at Austin
• The Johns Hopkins University

Combined, the grantees will work as a network to perform a landscape analysis—identifying gaps, needs and opportunities for outbreak analytics and disease modeling in the United States public health system; pilot and implement analytic technologies and applications for public health; and prepare for and respond to infectious disease threats.

The network will include innovators from public, private, and academic sectors to design, prototype, test, and scale up advances in data modeling tools and tech that can be used to support decision makers.

“The collaboration with our public health, private, and academic partners over the last year to advance the science of disease forecasting and deliver decision support to leaders has been instrumental in improving outbreak response,” said Dr. Dylan George, Director, Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. “Building upon that experience by establishing this national network will help us better respond to outbreaks and prevent pandemics in the future.” 

The grantees will be organized into three categories of performance, supporting three priority program actions:

• Innovators: these grantees will develop methods, tools, technologies, and other products to support emergency response.
• Integrators: these grantees will take lessons learned and techniques from Innovators and test them in small-scale deployments.
• Implementors: these grantees will take tested best practices and scale up to larger jurisdictions and partners.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, CDC has worked collaboratively with state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments, public health organizations, academia, and the private sector to improve and scale outbreak response and provide support to leaders to prevent infections and save lives.

This national network will build on these collaborations and improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and advanced analytics for ongoing and future infectious disease threats and public health emergencies.

For more information, visit CDC’s website.