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Pandemic Data Initiative

Building modern data management systems for local, state, federal, and global public health agencies is critical to preparing the nation and the world for the next major public health crisis. The Pandemic Data Initiative explores the lessons learned throughout the pandemic for how best to support government efforts to collect and deliver comprehensive real-time information to the public, policy makers, and the media.

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Pandemic Data Outlook

Expert Insight

Q&A: Establishing Global Genomic Surveillance to Prevent and Respond to Pandemics

For many nations genomic sequencing has been at the core of their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the world needs to expand upon and connect those independent efforts into a global network to better predict and manage future disease outbreaks.

Pandemic Data Outlook

Leveraging the Law with Public Health Data

The public health data infrastructure developed for the COVID-19 pandemic response should become a permanent government fixture refined to inform policy making that addresses long-standing health disparities across the nation.

Expert Insight

Q&A: Data on Behaviors and Beliefs Empowers Countries to Combat COVID-19

Throughout the pandemic, some in the public have acted in opposition to data-driven efforts such as vaccination and masking. The COVID Behaviors Dashboard presents a rich dataset on human behavior and beliefs around the globe that guides governments’ and health departments’ strategies to effectively mitigate COVID-19 in their areas.

Pandemic Data Outlook

Constrained Testing Efforts Require Data on Testing Accessibility

COVID-19 testing data are crucial for the continued pandemic response, but testing utilization and availability began to decrease following vaccine rollout. Data on testing accessibility are necessary to ensure equitable and effective distribution of testing, which will in turn improve the quality of testing data for monitoring COVID-19 transmission.

Expert Insight

Q&A: High-Quality Data Lost Amid Noise of Fragmented Media

Politicians remain divided on how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic despite an abundance of high-quality data and analysis indicating the effectiveness of mitigation efforts such as masking. Dr. Filipe Campante attributes this to a decrease in trust in U.S. institutions and siloed social networks fueled by a plethora of biased media outlets and politicians spewing contradictory information.

Pandemic Data Outlook

Collecting Comorbidity Data to Identify COVID-19 Correlations

Little data on comorbidities is currently reported publicly. Comorbidity data is critical to better design treatments, craft health policy and response strategies, and aid in patient care for those infected by SARS-CoV-2. If they aren’t already, States should begin producing, using and sharing this data.

Expert Insight

Q&A: Building and Maintaining Public Health Data Pipelines

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has been a key player in the international public health data field for over 20 years. APL was responsible for teaching local, state, and federal health agencies how to collect and use data for future planning, and is now a key contributor to delivering real-time COVID-19 data to the world.

Pandemic Data Outlook

Equipping Educators to Lead with Data for Safe Schools

The second Pandemic Data Initiative Expert Forum highlighted data’s vital role in shaping and assessing policy for schools and vaccination of school-age children, particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Expert Insight

Q&A: Hunger for Data to Track Global Food Insecurity

Data collection on food security and nutrition has often received low priority, especially during a crisis. This is counterintuitive as poor diet and obesity are major risk factors for COVID-19 and key contributors to negative public health outcomes. We need more and better-connected data on food systems and health to combat this pandemic and strengthen the world.

Pandemic Data Outlook

Filling in the Map of COVID-19 Demographic Data

Many states are releasing demographic data on COVID-19 cases, deaths, tests, and vaccinations to the public, but inconsistent, incomplete, and missing information persists.

Expert Insight

Q&A: Public Health Lessons from Historic (and Current) Pandemic Data

COVID-19 is just the most recent pandemic in a long history of health crises whose lessons could have helped prepare public health data infrastructure for COVID-19. What are those lessons and how can we ensure that this time they stick?



QUESTIONS ABOUT DATA STANDARDS

What is the Pandemic Data Initiative?What has been the biggest challenge during the pandemic for effectively using data?What are the consequences of such a hodgepodge data management effort?How have issues of inconsistent data impacted vaccination rollouts?
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