On Sept. 22, 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (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.