Topic: Translational Readiness

This paper calls for re-thinking how data are leveraged in planning for and responding to disasters in the United States, by calling for preempting the needs of medically vulnerable populations, and provisioning for disruptions in major utilities during natural disasters.

"The Use of Human Mobility Data in Public Health Emergencies" is a white paper that summarizes key learnings from a four-part seminar, “Safe, Fair, Equitable and Responsible Use of Human Mobility Data,” which convened in March and April 2021 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.

The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network (CMDN) is a network of infectious disease epidemiologists at universities around the world working with technology companies to use aggregated mobility data to support the COVID-19 response. The goal of the CMDN is to provide daily updates to decision makers at the state and local levels on how well social distancing interventions are working, using anonymized, aggregated data sets from mobile devices, along with analytic support for interpretation.

This white paper identifies the technical, regulatory, and translational gaps that preclude the effective integration of novel data streams into field response.

Despite the long standing excitement about the potential for digital tools, Big Data and AI to transform our lives, these innovations–with some exceptions–have so far had little impact on the greatest public health emergency of our time, explains Satchit Balsari, Caroline Buckee, and Andrew Schroeder in Plos Digital Health.

Building integrated translational pipelines that use data rapidly and effectively to address health effects of natural disasters will require substantial investment, which must rely on evidence of which approaches improve outcomes. But promising solutions are available.