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CDC Awarding More Than $250 Million For Network Of 13 Infectious Disease Forecasting Centers
Northeastern University is one of the recipients of new funding from the CDC that establishes a ... [+] national network of infectious disease forecasting centers.
gettyThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced it's awarding an estimated $262.5 million, pending the availability of funds, over the next five years to establish a national network of 13 infectious disease forecasting and analytics centers.
The effort is being led by the CDC's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), which was officially launched in 2022 in response to the needs and lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The purpose of the CFA is to "improve the nation's ability to prepare for and respond to infectious disease threats using data, modeling, and analytics." Often likened to the National Weather Service's warnings of impending storms, the CFA works to understand and predict the course of infectious disease outbreaks, providing public health officials with the information they need to mitigate the spread and severity of health emergencies.
"Infectious disease outbreaks have and will continue to threaten our communities, friends and families," said Dylan George, Director of the CFA, in an earlier agency news release. "This network will increase our national capacity to use disease models, analytics, and forecasts to support public health action, prevent infections, protect people, and safeguard economies. The network will also provide desperately needed tools to fight outbreaks quickly and effectively in our communities, where critical response decisions are made."
CFA funding will be directed to three program components:
Here are a few examples of the new CDC-supported centers.
As one of the five national innovation centers in the new network, Northeastern University in Boston will receive $17.5 million over the next five years to head a center called "EPISTORM: The Center for Advanced Epidemic Analytics and Predictive Modeling Technology." The funds will enable Northeastern to coordinate the work of 10 research institutions, healthcare systems and private companies that will use wastewater surveillance, AI, machine learning and other predictive tools to help officials make better informed decisions during future outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Another innovation center was funded at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. It will receive $4.5 million annually for five years to support the Atlantic Coast Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Analytics (ACCIDDA).
"These centers will create a national network to provide data and modeling support to public health responders as they prepare for future infectious disease outbreaks," said Justin Lessler, co-leader of ACCIDDA and professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School. "We want to ensure that, the next time an incident like COVID-19 happens, there are known and trusted sources for modeling and data analysis that can produce relevant and valid projections."
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, received a five-year, $23.5 million award from the CFA to conduct a project called "Toward Epidemic Preparedness: Enhancing Public Health Infrastructure and Incorporating Data-Driven Tools." It will establish large-scale partnerships with traditional and nontraditional public health stakeholders across the country, as well as train public health students, practitioners, and modelers to use data analysis tools to better understand epidemics.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have received a $17.5 million CFA award to launch a project entitled "Resilient Shield: A Network for Outbreak Data Integration and Modeling to Support Rapid Public Health Action." The consortium includes the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency as well as experts from UCLA, UCSF, UC Riverside, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Washington.
A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Massachusetts Amherst will lead a project that will take the predictive tools that have proven successful during previous outbreaks and scale them for use across multiple areas. It will be led by Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas Center for Pandemic Decision Science, and Nicholas Reich, director of the UMass COVID-19 Forecast Hub. The five-year, $27.5 million project will include collaborations with more than two dozen other partners many of them public health agencies in Texas and Massachusetts.
The other funding recipients in the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADMN) are Emory University, Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC), Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan School of Public Health, the University of Minnesota, Clemson University, the University of Utah. And International Responder Systems.
Planning for CFA began in August 2021, with start-up funding of $200 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. At the time, Rochelle Walensky, who was then CDC Director, said, "I am excited we have launched CDC's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. This new center is an example of how we are modernizing the ways we prepare for and respond to public health threats."
Northeastern Among Sites Chosen By CDC To Establish 'National Weather Service' For Infectious Disease
Northeastern University has been selected for a leading role in a new national network formed to better forecast the spread of a future pandemic.
The university announced Tuesday the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded it $17.5 million over the next five years to develop a center focused on detecting and preparing for the next outbreak of infectious disease, especially in rural areas.
Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern's Network Science Institute, is leading the project, called "EPISTORM: The Center for Advanced Epidemic Analytics and Predictive Modeling Technology."
The money comes through the CDC's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which was formed last year with the goal, Vespignani said, of creating "what would be a National Weather Service for epidemic threats." NU is among 13 centers in the CDC's new outbreak response network. Boston University is a subcontractor working with NU.
Vespignani will coordinate a consortium of 10 research institutions, health care systems, and private companies "that would provide innovation, tools, and technologies that can be used in this endeavor," he said.
The center will devise algorithms that can draw on data from hospital admissions, waste water surveillance, social media, and other sources, as well as individuals' travel patterns, to project where and how fast an infection is spreading.
NU researchers have been working on disease modeling for some time. They advised the White House on the expected effects of social distancing guidelines in the early days of the pandemic.
"Northeastern University is the perfect place for this (innovation) center because of Alex Vespignani and his expertise in pandemic tracking," Jared Auclair, director of bioinnovation at NU, said in a statement.
"We are expected to basically design the most innovative ways we can be better prepared for epidemics and ongoing diseases," said Mauricio Santillana, director of Northeastern's Machine Intelligence Group for the betterment of Health and the Environment at the Network Science Institute.
Samuel Scarpino, director of artificial intelligence and life sciences, who also has a role in the project, said in a statement the innovation center will use methods from artificial intelligence and network science to integrate waste water and genomic and mobility data into forecasting models.
Although the CDC is planning a nationwide network, it provided no information about it on Tuesday.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security reported Tuesday that it has received a five-year, $23.5 million award to participate in the project. "This initiative is a crucial step in fortifying our nation's defenses against future epidemics," said Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who is co-leading the project there.
Felice J. Freyer can be reached at felice.Freyer@globe.Com. Follow her @felicejfreyer.
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