Toward Epidemic Preparedness: Incorporating Epidemic Analysis and Forecasting in TV Weathercasts.

This presentation describes an ongoing implementation project to 1) pilot the use of local TV weather broadcasts for public communication on seasonal respiratory virus activity and forecasts and 2) develop plans for using that platform seamlessly during public health emergencies. The purpose of this partnership is to improve public communication and individual decision-making during respiratory virus season and during the next public health emergency. This project is being conducted by the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation (CORI), a component of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is part of a much larger endeavor of the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) called the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network. CFA has awarded Cooperative Agreements with 13 institutions around the country to be part of the network and to work on various aspects of CFA mission to enable timely, effective decision-making to improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and analytics. CORI’s scope of work is to research and implement better ways to communicate infectious disease forecasting and analytics. Since February 2024 we have been partnering with WBZ in Boston airing brief weekly updates during their weather segments on seasonal infectious diseases in their broadcast region along with short range forecasts of expected activity. With the successful pilot with WBZ we are now recruiting other stations to widen the scope of the project.