“Researchers at RTI International (RTI), a nonprofit research institute, have released a new data driven COVID-19 tool designed to help federal, state, and local public health officials and key stakeholders make informed decisions on how to prioritize important response efforts like contact tracing, placement of testing sites and vaccine distribution. The publicly available tool allows users to overlay local COVID-19 data with zip code information and then pair it with a series of local datasets including demographic trends, mortality trends, doubling time, estimated immunity and more.”
“The tool, which is updated daily with case data from Johns Hopkins, is the only tool freely available to provide a mirrored mock-up of the U.S. population using an original data layer, called RTI SynthPop™. The RTI SynthPop layer was built to map actual household, income and demographic data across the U.S. with the intention of helping public health officials make strategic choices. By using the RTI SynthPop layer, the map could also be used to accurately inform re-opening plans, closure plans or upcoming holiday travel.”
“’This is a unique tool designed specifically for public health officials to make the most of their case data for strategic decisions about their COVID-19 response. It is focused on using data for epidemiologic insights beyond what is available with census data, and other public data sets. With the addition of the RTI SynthPop, we add hyper-local demographic, social, and economic data to epidemiological estimates not available elsewhere,’ said Pia MacDonald, Ph.D., MPH, senior infectious disease epidemiologist at RTI…” Read the full press release here.
Source: New COVID-19 Data Tool from RTI International Will Help Public Health Officials Strategize Contact Tracing, Testing, Vaccine Distribution and Estimate Virus Immunity – October 29, 2020. RTI International.
RTI International was recently named to the updated list of NXT UP firms poised to make big waves in the Federal sector in 2020 and for years to come.