CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) is announcing a new notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) to establish an outbreak response network for disease forecasting to support decision-makers during public health emergencies. This NOFO will enhance our national ability to control epidemics and pandemics by developing a network of innovators to design, prototype, test, and scale up disease forecasting and data modeling tools and technologies that can be used to support decision-makers during public health emergencies.
Public, academic, and private sector partners are encouraged to apply by the July 14, 2023 application deadline to participate in the network established via cooperative agreement. The new program will support the advanced development of modeling, forecasting tools, and outbreak analytics through three critical operations: innovation, integration, and implementation. Funding recipients will work alongside CFA to establish a national network to support state and local decision-makers during future public health emergencies. Additionally, the cooperative agreement will fund state and local recipients to plan, prepare, and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks.
The innovation component will support the development of a pipeline of new analytical methods, tools, or platforms for modeling efforts and will ultimately be used to provide information to public health decision-makers.
The integration component will take the most promising approaches from the innovation pipeline and pilot test one or two approaches at the state, local, tribal, or territorial level to gauge the success of the technique in practical application by public health decision-makers.
The third component, implementation, will take pilot projects that have proven successful and scale them for use across jurisdictions. The goal is to have new, effective analytical tools and approaches to deploy at the local level where critical public health action takes place.
Prospective funding recipients can apply here to one of the three components and may also apply to serve as coordinator between performers for each of the three operational components.
The network this NOFO will establish is the next step for CFA towards improving decision support at the state and local level, where many key public health decisions are made during an infectious disease outbreak.
Please share this announcement and opportunity broadly with your networks and encourage prospective funding recipients to visit the following website to learn more and register here for an upcoming informational webinar on May 22, 2023, at 01:00 PM EST.