The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, is providing funding to local health departments (LHDs) to strengthen LHD capacity to integrate forecasting and analytical tools into infectious disease outbreak planning and response at the local level. We-a group of experienced faculty and public health practitioners at Cornell University—are applying to work in partnership with NACCHO to provide technical assistance (TA) to the assigned LHDs to strengthen their capacity to integrate forecasting and analytical tools into city and county-level infectious disease outbreak planning and response.

Via this partnership, we aim to develop tools, products, and/or educational interventions that strengthen LHD's capacity to integrate forecasting and analytical tools into infectious disease outbreak planning and response at the local level. Via this work, we aim to help LHDs be equipped to proactively anticipate disease outbreaks, and to be able to leverage systems and data to improve their public health response, preventing and mitigating the impact of infectious diseases.