Enhancing Tools for Response, Analytics and Control of Epidemics in Latin America and the Caribbean - GRANT TRACE

Research is most valuable when it seeks to have a positive social impact, working closely with stakeholders and decision-makers. The project will address a regional gap in the response to epidemics in Latin America by developing a dynamic platform for interaction with interoperable analytical tools that will strengthen the understanding and prediction of infectious disease epidemics, assess the impact of interventions and inform the public health response.  Based on two major epidemic challenges such as respiratory and mosquito-borne infections, the Tools for Response, Analytics and Control of Epidemics (TRACE)-Latin America project will articulate with the TRACE-UK and Epiverse initiatives to change how analytics are used in infectious disease epidemic response, moving from inflexible analytical tools and ad-hoc collaboration to an integrated, generalizable, and scalable community-driven software. Under the TRACE and Epiverse umbrella, the Colombian Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) and Universidad de los Andes (UniAndes) will form part of a regional node to adapt the core data tools to the Latin American context and develop complementary activities that focus on research, software development, and training. The aim is to use the infrastructure built for TRACE and expand its use, by developing locally relevant tools and by involving research users and governmental staff from the outset of the project.  The expected outcomes of this project are  to strengthen the response to epidemics in Colombia and Latin America and reduce the gender gap in data health analytics throughout the following components: 1) Stakeholders, sociotechnical and gender barrier identification; 2) Local adaptation of tools, epidemic e-training kit and training program; 3) Co-development of new analytical packages on real-time vaccination data, serological survey tools and mosquito-borne diseases; 4) Building a community of users diverse and inclusive that engages government and academic stakeholders to operationalize TRACE tools in the health system response to epidemics.