Scenario Planning for Novel Disease Outbreaks

MADMC is building an interactive tool for public health jurisdictions across the U.S. to use for scenario planning in the early phases of a novel disease outbreak. Early on, many features of a novel disease are unknown or highly uncertain and there is little to no data to inform more advanced analytic and forecasting tools. However, urgent public health planning and prevention response decisions must be made before more robust data becomes available. Public health agencies need an easy-to-use analytic tool that supports scenario planning based on available data.

Our Work

MADMC’s tool to support early scenario planning during a novel infectious disease outbreak was developed in collaboration with subject matter experts at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). The tool allows users to explore how different disease characteristics and mitigation measures may impact community transmission, hospitalizations, and deaths, given the number of initially detected cases in a user’s jurisdiction. The tool is designed to be used at the city, county, regional, or state levels in the first few months of a novel disease outbreak. This simple tool fills a gap in information needed for early-phase scenario planning, while allowing time for teams to collect more robust data and parameterize advanced forecasting and scenario models.