Throughout the course of an infectious disease outbreak, estimates of epidemiological parameters are essential for guiding public health interventions and informing mathematical models used to understand, forecast, and mitigate disease spread. Epidemiological parameter estimates are quantitative measures that describe key characteristics of disease transmission and progression, such as how quickly an infection spreads, how long individuals remain infectious, or how many people need hospital care.
However, these estimates are derived using a wide range of methods, from simple calculations to highly complex approaches and are reported in many different ways. This variability limitis timely and consistent ways of finding and using estimates especially during rapidly evolving outbreaks, thus limiting effective use in modeling and public health decision-making.
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., 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 and has 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 with expertise, data, tools or methodological insights to community initiatives.
Mathematical models for infectious diseases are increasingly used to support decision making. These models require reliable epidemiological parameter estimates - such as incubation periods, serial intervals, reproduction numbers and case fatality ratios - to simulate, infer and/or estimate disease transmission dynamics and evaluate intervention strategies.
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.
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, GREP initiative work is organized into five workstreams.