Practical Modeling Concepts for Public Health: Activity 1, Scenario 3

Activity 1 asks you to decide which analytic approach is best for a given scenario and then determine how to communicate with the modeling and analytics team to get that output. For Case Study 3, you reviewed and answered questions about what type of output would be best and why, when given the options of a qualitative assessment, nowcast, short-term forecast, and a scenario model. You were asked what information should you be prepared to provide to the modeling and analytics team? What other epidemiological information would be useful and how would you explain it? And what sources of uncertainty might affect the outputs the team develops? Case Study 3 describes you as a health officer in a large metropolitan jurisdiction. You received word that a healthcare worker recently returned from international travel and has been diagnosed with a viral hemorrhagic fever. This healthcare worker reports being symptomatic and taking public transit before presenting to CARE, so you are expecting media attention and public concern about wider community exposures and impacts. Sarah is back to help us determine which approach is best. Thanks, Mike. In this case, I would suggest a qualitative risk assessment. Why a qualitative risk assessment? Because it is very early in a potential outbreak and quantitative data are not available. Qualitative risk assessments can draw on previous experiences and expert input to assess the situation and provide a framework for communicating possible impact and likelihood of an outbreak. To create the qualitative risk assessment, data that would be helpful to share with the of viral hemorrhagic fever, such as resources, staff, hospital capacity, etc., demographic information about the various subpopulations within the city that might have been exposed or at higher risk epidemiologically, and transit patterns for public transportation networks. To further inform the assessment, historical epidemiological information on infectiousness of viral hemorrhagic fever viruses would be helpful. This concludes Activity 1, Case Study 3.