Skip to page content

Disease Outbreak

Featured

Essay
COVID Could Surge Anywhere. This Tool Helps Hospitals Prepare
The number of new coronavirus cases is growing in most states. As the pandemic continues to strain U.S. health care systems, a tool developed by RAND researchers can help hospitals prepare for the worst.
Jul 1, 2020
Report
Health Care Resource Allocation Decisionmaking During a Pandemic
The Core Guidance Checklist can help health systems and policymakers make choices about how to allocate scarce but lifesaving resources—for patients and for health care workers—during the COVID-19 crisis.
Jun 18, 2020

Explore Epidemic

Report
Making Sense of Pathogen Surveillance
Pathogen surveillance—collecting and sharing data about infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance—informs key public health decisions. What pathogen surveillance initiatives exist currently? And what are the main challenges they face?
Nov 15, 2023
Report
Could Artificial Intelligence Be Misused to Plan Biological Attacks?
Previous biological attacks that failed because of a lack of information might succeed in a world in which AI tools like large language models could bridge that gap. And given the rapid evolution of AI and biotechnology, governmental capacity to understand or regulate them is limited.
Oct 16, 2023
News Release
Mental Health Spending for Children and Adolescents Has Risen by More Than One-Quarter Since Beginning of Pandemic
Spending on mental health services for children and adolescents has risen by more than one-quarter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing to rise even as the use of telehealth plateaued.
Oct 3, 2023
Multimedia
Can South Korea Help the World Beat the Next Pandemic?
How can South Korea turn its COVID-19 control success into a successful soft-power asset for health diplomacy? The RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy hosted a webinar discussion to promote the sharing of innovative ideas and best practices.
Sep 29, 2023
Commentary
Pandemics Don't Really End—They Echo
Pandemics have always frayed the social fabric, disrupted economies, deepened social divides, and intensified prejudices, leaving behind psychological scars—all of which have lasting political repercussions. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt long after the last rapid test comes back positive.
Aug 28, 2023
News Release
Patient Experiences with Hospitals Significantly Worsened During First Two Years of Pandemic
The experiences of patients hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic were significantly worse than in the years before the crisis, with hospitals with higher staffing levels holding onto better scores longer.
Aug 25, 2023
News Release
Spending on Mental Health Services Has Risen by More Than Half Since Beginning of Pandemic
Spending on mental health services among Americans with private health insurance has surged since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing to rise even as the use of telehealth has plateaued.
Aug 25, 2023
Report
A Brief Overview of Emerging Vaccine Technologies for Pandemic Preparedness
This report characterizes trends and strategic implications associated with pandemic preparedness in the United States, China, and Russia, focusing on vaccine technologies, broad-spectrum medical countermeasures, and immunization facilitation.
Aug 17, 2023
Report
Funding Global Health Engagement to Support the Geographic Combatant Commands
The authors identify the evolving global health engagement (GHE) priorities of five of the six geographic commands and the challenges they face supporting their combatant command objectives with current funding sources for GHE activities.
Jul 11, 2023
News Release
State Policies During COVID Associated with Increase in Tele-Mental Health; Disparities in Access to Care Persist Despite Expansion
Four state policies introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to spur expansion of telehealth were associated with expansion of such services by mental health facilities, but growth of telehealth was lower among facilities in counties with the greatest proportion of Black residents.
Jun 13, 2023
Journal Article
Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Has COVID-19 Changed American Attitudes?
This study explores how personal experiences of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, attitudes about institutions (government and business), and views of social change could either pose challenges or help with planning for the next pandemic.
Jun 7, 2023
Commercial Book
Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics
In a concise, authoritative, and gripping telling, Brian Michael Jenkins provides an account of what kind of future the planet might be facing by looking at the world's long history of epidemics and discerning what was common about their aftermath.
May 24, 2023
Commentary
Public Health's Failure to Communicate with Communities of Color
Misinformation thrived during the pandemic, exacerbating health inequities. To meet its core mission, the public health field needs to engage more actively, particularly in communities it has historically failed to equitably protect.
May 17, 2023
Commentary
Can the Health Insurance System Handle Massive Medicaid Reductions?
For many who have or will soon lose Medicaid as monthly redeterminations restart, and for millions more who could lose insurance due to other factors like job loss, three recent policy developments might increase the chances that they find new health care coverage.
May 12, 2023
Commentary
The Changing Landscape of Health Literacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic
With the official public health emergency ended, now is a good time to reflect on the changing landscape of health literacy and consider how we can improve health communication in the future.
May 9, 2023
Q&A
The End of the U.S. COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Q&A with RAND Experts
We asked RAND experts to reflect on the past three years: What were the effects on the United States and around the world, what has changed, what are the most important takeaways, what was done right, and what was done wrong? At the same time, they looked ahead to what might be done to mitigate the health and geopolitical impacts of future pandemics.
May 8, 2023
Commentary
An Opportunity to Learn from Our COVID-19 Successes and Failures
COVID-19 showed that the U.S. pandemic response plans of the past were no match for a protracted nationwide health emergency. What lessons were learned that could help the United States effectively protect its population and other vital national interests going forward?
Apr 27, 2023
Commentary
Healthy Nation, Safe Nation: Build Health Security into National Security
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a need for a more-robust health security paradigm within the broader national security context. But addressing preparedness and response shortfalls for national-level challenges might not be fully possible without first addressing the glaring seams and gaps between the various stakeholder communities.
Mar 17, 2023
Journal Article
Optimal Non-Pharmaceutical Pandemic Response Strategies Depend Critically on Time Horizons and Costs
This paper performs a large-scale optimization exercise to find optimal non-pharmaceutical pandemic response strategies.
Feb 14, 2023
Blog
U.S. Gun Laws, China's COVID Outbreak, Space in 2050: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on gun policy in America, the myth of America's “Ukraine fatigue,” the COVID outbreak in China, and more.
Jan 13, 2023

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Next

RAND Topic:
Epidemic

Topic Synonyms:
Disease Outbreak

Research conducted by

RAND Health Care

Researcher Spotlight

Pedro Nascimento de Lima

Associate Engineer

Pedro Nascimento de Lima is an associate engineer at the RAND Corporation. His research leverages simulation modeling, high-performance computing, and Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty methods to inform health policy decision-analytic problems.
Gabriel Hassler

Associate Statistician

Gabriel Hassler (he/him) is an associate statistician at the RAND Corporation. He is interested broadly in computational Bayesian statistics and developing flexible yet highly structured statistical models that are scalable to big data. He has applied his methodological work to study…

Explore Our People »