PolicyLab

We are living in a time of extreme uncertainty as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact our communities. There is an urgent need to project how the virus will advance to help local, state and federal leaders make evidence-informed decisions about public policy solutions to manage the crisis and safely re-open society.

That is why an interdisciplinary team across Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, led by PolicyLab Director David Rubin, MD, MSCE, PolicyLab researcher Gregory Tasian, MD, MSc, MSCE, and Faculty member at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Jing Huang, PhD, is using actual case data to longitudinally project, in real-time, the spread of the epidemic across 18 major U.S. cities. They are investigating the impact of weather and climate on virus transmission, how city characteristics are influencing spread and how different social distancing measures are modifying the trajectory of COVID-19. They expect to develop a series of informative data visualizations as resources for decision-makers.

Be sure to read more about the goals of this project, and a recent blog post on the many undiscussed impacts of COVID-19 on the well-being of children and their families.