Request for Proposals: Applied Modeling for Public Health Workshop

The Atlantic Coast Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Analytics (ACCIDDA) is excited to announce the Applied Modeling for Public Health (AMPH) workshop to be held on October 15–17, 2025, in Baltimore, MD. The AMPH workshops are a series of in-person workshops aimed at building capacities in application of infectious disease modeling within public health organizations. These workshops are intended to bring together teams with important public health questions and data and provide hands-on support for the development of simple infectious disease models to answer those questions. The goal is to use this forum to build capacity in model development and communication by addressing real-world modeling questions of public health relevance. These workshops were launched by the Center for Accelerating Modeling Utilization and Synthesis (CAMUS) project and will continue under ACCIDDA, a CFA-funded center of . This year’s workshop will focus specifically on the ACCIDDA Forecasting Suite, a set of models and tools being compiled to enable efficient and robust establishment of respiratory infection forecasting for public health institutions. All travel costs will be covered for accepted individuals.

We are seeking teams* (2 people per team) to participate in a 3-day in-person workshop. Teams should have expertise in both public health response and decision-making, and in basic disease modeling, statistical computing, or analytics across team members. Teams ideally should include one senior-level epidemiologist from a public health organization (e.g., government public health agency at any level, hospital systems, tribal health agencies, non-profit health organizations) and one individual with a strong analytic and technical background who is well-versed in R or Python. Specifically, each team must include:

Individual(s) whose professional work and/or expertise requires or could benefit from use of infectious disease forecasting or scenario projection to answer important questions about the populations they serve, particularly for decision-making or communications, and
Individual(s) whose professional work and/or expertise is in data analysis, analytics, disease modeling, or forecasting; this person should have the coding skills necessary to develop a disease model under guidance (e.g., data importation, data cleaning and manipulation, and visualization, specifically in R, Python, or similar).

Please note, we are only seeking teams from domestic organizations within the United States of
America. International travel will not be covered for participants.

*Teams are not required to have any history of working together in the past and may be newly formed for this purpose.

Workshop Overview

Dates: October 15–17, 2025

Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Audience: 5–6 teams consisting of epidemiologists and analytic individuals from public health institutions, including hospital systems, tribal health agencies, and others, and research institutions

Format: The workshop will be structured as a combination of seminars and hands-on sessions for expert-guided model development and training on a forecasting suite of tools. The goal is for teams to leave the workshop knowing how to apply the forecasting suite of tools presented to their research question of interest.

Summary of Activities

Pre-meeting	JHU workshop facilitators will work with each team independently to discuss goals, needs, and support at their organization for infectious disease modeling and analytics. This will consist of at least one Zoom call between teams and workshop facilitators prior to the in-person workshop.
Day 1	Teams will introduce themselves and present their goals, research questions of interest, and available data to the larger group. Workshop facilitators will provide instruction on the types of questions modeling can answer, refining models, translation of modeling results and communication, and the types of data needed for certain questions.
Day 2	Teams and facilitators will work together intensively to understand how to use forecasting tools and interpret outputs for decision-making. Teams will have the opportunity to apply data they have brought in from their organization for their research question of interest and identify any remaining gaps in the data they have available.
Day 3	Intensive work will continue. At the end of the workshop, each team will debrief and set a plan for continued collaboration between teams and modelers.

Application Process

A two-step application process will be followed to select teams for participation in the workshop. Interested teams should submit a letter of interest to the JHU team by August 1, 2025. After reviewing letters of interest, the JHU team will contact a select group of applicant teams to schedule a Zoom call to discuss their interest and determine if they are good candidates for the workshop. Final decision on workshop participants will be made by August 22nd, at which point the JHU team will work with selected participants to arrange travel.

Formulating a Research Project

Applied modeling topics in respiratory diseases. Infectious disease modeling has been used in numerous public health contexts, including predicting hospital capacity for intensive care and planning optimal testing and vaccination strategies. We expect teams to possess the data necessary to propose a project to answer applied public health questions. Potential topics could include the following; however, all topics are required to focus on respiratory diseases:

Building a state-based forecasting hub for influenza hospitalizations
Integrating nowcasting or forecasting estimates into situational awareness reports or a dashboard for COVID-19, RSV, or influenza
Predictive modeling for future scenarios: vaccine allocation, waning immunity, introductions of novel strains
Producing forecasts for sub-state health regions to provide early warning for health care systems

Letter of Interest (1–2 pages)

The first step of the application process is to submit a short letter of interest to cmckee7@jhu.edu by August 1, 2025. IMPORTANT: Please consider scope and feasibility of your proposed project – it is fine to propose a minimally scoped project (i.e., focusing on only 1 pathogen for 1 jurisdiction). It is better to use this as an opportunity to build something complete and that can be integrated into public health practice and then expand from there than to be overly ambitious and not succeed at all. The letter should include the following components, scored as detailed below:

Team Description (1–2 paragraphs, 15 points): Please list and describe the team members, including institutional affiliation(s), relevant expertise, experience, and interest in the use of applied modeling for public health. Also include details on the proposed partnership between institutions and/or team members. This should include details of past collaborations, any agreements that are already in place, and a brief description of how this partnership will continue following the workshop to facilitate application of methods learned to meet your organization’s goals.
Organizational Goals and Needs (2–3 paragraphs, 30 points): Please describe the goals and needs of the �ٱ𲹳�’s organization(s) in terms of forecasting and infectious disease analytics. Indicate research questions your organization(s) are interested in that are connected to a public health policy or decision-making and could be answered using infectious disease analytics. This should include a problem/question statement, background, aims, methods, and public health impact.
Diseases of Interest and Data Available (2–3 paragraphs, 20 points): Briefly describe any respiratory diseases of interest for your team and provide details regarding non-public data you have access to through your organization that could be ready for use during the workshop.
Plan for Integration into Practice (1–2 paragraphs, 20 points): Briefly describe a plan for how this work will be integrated into decision-making at your institution and result in lasting impact, rather than a singular effort towards your project of interest.
Institutional Support (1–2 paragraphs, 15 points): Please provide details on whether leaders of the respective organization(s) are supportive of the �ٱ𲹳�’s participation in the workshop and the utilization of infectious disease analytics and forecasting for decision-making.

Application Timeline

Letter of Interest submitted to JHU from applicant teams – due by Aug 1, 2025
Notification of moving forward in the selection process – Aug 8, 2025
Zoom calls with a selection of applicant teams – Aug 11–21 , 2025
Final application decisions sent – Aug 22, 2025
Workshop – Oct 15–17, 2023 (Baltimore, venue TBD)

Accommodation and travel expenses will be provided for selected teams. We look forward to reviewing your applications and working with your teams. Please feel free to contact Clif McKee cmckee7@jhu.edu if you have any questions prior to submitting your application materials.

Funding for this workshop is made possible by cooperative agreement CDC-RFA-FT-23-0069 from the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. The views expressed in written materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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