Epidemiological parameters are quantitative measures that characterize how pathogens spread and diseases progress within populations. They capture epidemiological dynamics, such as how quickly an infection spreads, how long individuals remain infectious, and how many people may require hospital care. As such, they play a fundamental role in guiding public health interventions designed to reduce disease transmission and reduce its impact on affected populations.
However, these estimates are derived using a wide range of methods, and are not reported in a standardized manner. This hinders their timely identification especially during rapidly evolving outbreaks, and limits their effective use in modeling and public health decision-making.
The Epidemiological Parameters Community of Practice (CoP), set up through the Collaboratory initiative of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, is actively addressing these challenges by pooling resources, sharing knowledge, and co-creating solutions through the GREP Initiative.
Since the launch of the Collaboratory initiative by the World Health Organization Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in 2022, the epidemiological parameters area has been endorsed as a high priority for convening a global Community of Practice that will interact together to pool resources, share knowledge, co-create solutions and continuously improve existing practices, methodologies, supporting tools, data availability and quality.
Epidemiological Parameters is a global multidisciplinary community of practice with 100+ active members that connects epidemiologists, mathematical modelers, public health practitioners, data scientists, IT professionals and many others, as well as a wide network of partners that contribute to the overall community work.
Participation is open and flexible. Members and partners engage in different ways, from attending webinars and participating in online discussion forum to contributing expertise, data, tools, or methodological insights to community initiatives.
The Global Repository of Epidemiological Parameters (GREP) initiative is led by a Core Technical Working Group within the Epidemiological Parameters Community of Practice. The initiative aims to create a publicly accessible living global repository of epidemiological parameters to inform public health interventions.
The GREP Core Technical Working Group is comprised of subject matter experts who drive definition, design, development and implementation of an initial pilot of a global repository of epidemiological parameters, providing it with curated data and connecting it with existing epi tools. The members of the GREP Core Technical Working Group are:
Building a global living repository of epidemiological parameters requires not only technical development but shared standards, intentional governance, and a sustainable ecosystem that supports contributors and users alike. To guide this effort, the GREP initiative work is organized into five workstreams.