Launched in late 2024, the Tracking Report offers expert analysis of new and ongoing infectious disease outbreaks worldwide. The report fills a critical gap by transforming complex global health data into a centralized, accessible resource. Each week, the team synthesizes key developments and provides context to help readers understand not just what’s happening—but why it matters. With a growing audience the Tracking Report is the Center’s most prominent public-facing research effort.

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The Advance Warning and Response Exemplars (AWARE) project was inspired by the success of the COVID-19 Response project under the Exemplars in Global Health research program. As the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of early detection and rapid response systems, the need for implementing and scaling up these systems for a more comprehensive approach to pandemic preparedness became clear. Recognizing this need, the AWARE project was born, designed to investigate positive outliers in Advance Warning and Response (AW&R) systems that are essential for mitigating infectious disease threats with epidemic and pandemic potential, including climate-sensitive infectious diseases (CSIDs). 

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The pandemic revealed two sides of America's story: a well-known narrative of national failure and polarization, and a lesser-known tale of state and local collaborations that bridged divides and earned trust. While the former undermined faith in democracy, the latter showcased the strengths of democratic governance through innovation and cooperation. American health security and democracy are deeply connected, relying on the ability to protect public health while upholding individual freedoms. Moving forward, we must embrace the lessons of local leaders who demonstrated ingenuity and collaboration during the pandemic, balancing individual rights with the collective good to prepare for future crises. 

We conducted interviews with leaders from various sectors—health, business, education, government, and civil society—who navigated the challenges of the pandemic. Our goal was to uncover replicable solutions that could improve the nation's response in the future. We focused on a diverse cross-section of states, representing a range of geographic, socioeconomic, and political contexts. Each state provided unique lessons through their improvisations. While we do not claim these states performed better or worse than others, our aim is to highlight compelling examples of effective approaches that deserve to be preserved and strengthened for future crises.

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Biosecurity Game Changers initiative is a program with and for early and mid-career biosecurity leaders that aims to fundamentally change how decision-makers are trained to better prevent and prepare for worst-case biological scenarios. Beginning in Africa and the United States, the program can be nationally and globally replicated with a global biosecurity leadership hub that has spokes on each continent. The initiative includes a fellowship program, which will be implemented in parallel with a series of targeted workshops and, eventually, short courses.

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Created on the recommendation of African public health leaders, the Africa Health Security (AHS) Index will provide new data on health security targets across the continent, including new preparedness indicators at the intersection of health and climate security. Launching in 2026, the Index will enable African leaders to track the impact of programs to improve health security on the continent and identify opportunities to advance epidemic and pandemic preparedness.   

The AHS Index will evaluate a broad set of health security indicators, building on the GHS Index framework and will include a focused analysis of African priorities: preventing accidental and deliberate biological events (biosafety and biosecurity), detecting and reporting emerging outbreaks (biosurveillance), bolstering medical countermeasure development and deployment, assessing how climate change affects health security on the African continent and in subregions, and evaluating how the African continent’s five regions have built regional capacities to augment national health security infrastructure.   The AHS Index is developed by the Brown University Pandemic Center, in partnership with NTI | bio and Economist impact, in collaboration with Science for Africa Foundation, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), and University of Tunis El Manar (Tunis, Tunisia).
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Wastewater Surveillance, a proven early warning tool that the US has used to track viruses like SARS-CoV-2, bird flu, mpox and more. The center tracks use cases, monitors the funding and policy environment, and helps develop playbooks to optimize the impact of wastewater surveillance for these biological threats.

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Indoor air quality is one of the greatest unmet public health challenges, with poor indoor air quality contributing to asthma; infectious diseases such as COVID, flu, and RSV; and cognitive impairment (e.g., headaches, dizziness, loss of productivity). The Clean Indoor Air Initiative launched in 2024 with the recognition that clean indoor air is essential for health, productivity, and economic growth. The Initiative advances healthier indoor environments through developing policy roadmaps and playbooks; convening experts in the field; supporting state and federal legislative efforts; communicating the evidence-base for how cleaner air supports health; and creating implementation tools for schools, nursing homes, and other indoor spaces. 
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Our Storied Health Film and Media Series is an integrated media experience that illuminates the importance of our collective health and what can be done to enhance it. Through film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops, this series showcases the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. The Series is curated by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center of the Brown School of Public Health, with epidemiologist and documentary filmmaker Dr. Jennifer Galvin ’95.

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Our ongoing Pandemic & Society Webinar Series explores the connections between pressing public health concerns under the umbrella of pandemics. Each month, experts from around the world engage in discussions on relevant topics, sharing their insights and perspectives. The series is streamed on the Brown University Youtube page and featured on the Pandemic Center’s Events page.
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Released in October of 2023, the Testing Playbook was created to provide US decision-makers at the federal, state, and local level with a clear and evidence-based guide for making rapid and effective decisions regarding the development, implementation, and scale-up of diagnostic testing in an infectious disease emergency. Importantly, 37 public health leaders were consulted to inform its creation with expertise from across federal agencies, state and local governments, commercial and hospital laboratories, academic medical centers, and diagnostic manufacturers.

It was developed collaboratively by subject matter experts at the Pandemic Center, Arizona State University College of Health Solutions and Illumina Ventures, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, and the STAT Public Health Network, with funding from the Peterson Foundation.

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