Tag Archives: pandemic

2021 in Review: Our Reports on Prevention and Response to the Impacts of COVID-19

As of December, more than 800,000 Americans have now died from the COVID-19 virus. Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the U.S. has recorded nearly 50 million cases. In the past year, we have continued to produce reports that guide researchers, policy makers, public health professionals, clinicians, and others who struggle to save lives and support people dealing with the impacts of COVID-19, as well those who build on the lessons learned from this pandemic to prepare for future health crises. As always, these reports are free to read online or download.

Public Health Lessons for Non-Vaccine Influenza Interventions: Looking Past COVID-19

Public Health Lessons for Non-Vaccine Influenza Interventions: Looking Past COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the world’s preparedness for a respiratory virus event. While the world has been combating COVID-19, seasonal and pandemic influenza remain imminent global health threats. Non-vaccine public health control measures can combat emerging and ongoing influenza …[more]

Globally Resilient Supply Chains for Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Vaccines

Globally Resilient Supply Chains for Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Vaccines

Influenza viruses, both seasonal and pandemic, have the potential to disrupt the health and well-being of populations around the world. The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and prior public health emergencies of international concern illustrate the importance of global preparedness and …[more]

Vaccine Research and Development to Advance Pandemic and Seasonal Influenza Preparedness and Response: Lessons from COVID-19

Vaccine Research and Development to Advance Pandemic and Seasonal Influenza Preparedness and Response: Lessons from COVID-19

The global response to COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of vigilance and preparedness for infectious diseases, particularly influenza. There is a need for more effective influenza vaccines and modern manufacturing technologies that are adaptable and scalable to meet demand during a …[more]

Countering the Pandemic Threat Through Global Coordination on Vaccines: The Influenza Imperative

Countering the Pandemic Threat Through Global Coordination on Vaccines: The Influenza Imperative

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragility of the global system of preparedness and response to pandemics and the fragmentation of our research and development ecosystem. The pandemic has provided a disruptive moment to advance new norms and frameworks for influenza. It also has …[more]

Short-Term Strategies for Addressing the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women's Workforce Participation

Short-Term Strategies for Addressing the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women’s Workforce Participation

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated recession have significantly affected women’s workforce participation. These impacts have varied from job loss to additional caregiving responsibilities. Black and Hispanic women have been particularly affected, bringing into sharp relief historical …[more]

School-Based Strategies for Addressing the Mental Health and Well-Being of Youth in the Wake of COVID-19

School-Based Strategies for Addressing the Mental Health and Well-Being of Youth in the Wake of COVID-19

COVID-19, along with heightened racial trauma, has caused unprecedented disruption in the lives of youth aged 10-18, leading them to experience increases in mental health concerns. Addressing these negative impacts requires that education leaders, school districts, state and local decision …[more]

Addressing Disaster Vulnerability among Homeless Populations during COVID-19

Addressing Disaster Vulnerability among Homeless Populations during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions to key services for populations experiencing homelessness may lead to secondary effects in the context of a disaster, including effects on health and safety, which require additional population-specific support. Reducing disaster vulnerability for people …[more]

COVID-19 and the Present and Future of Black Communities: The Role of Black Physicians, Engineers, and Scientists: Proceedings of a Workshop

COVID-19 and the Present and Future of Black Communities: The Role of Black Physicians, Engineers, and Scientists: Proceedings of a Workshop

While the COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating health and economic impacts in the United States, communities of color, especially Black communities, have been disproportionately affected. On June 23, 2020, the Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine of the …[more]

Rental Eviction and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Averting a Looming Crisis

Rental Eviction and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Averting a Looming Crisis

As the federal moratorium on rental eviction is set to expire on July 31st, 2021, actionable guidance is urgently needed on how to ensure that renters can stay in their homes and housing aid reaches the communities that need it most. This report from the National Academies of Sciences, …[more]

Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders in the Era of COVID-19: The Impact of the Pandemic on Communities of Color: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders in the Era of COVID-19: The Impact of the Pandemic on Communities of Color: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

The Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a virtual workshop, Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders in the Era of COVID-19: With a Special Focus on the Impact of the Pandemic on Communities of Color, on …[more]

Understanding and Communicating about COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Equity

Understanding and Communicating about COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Equity

Effective communication is needed to ensure shared understanding of how well COVID-19 vaccines work and whether they are being equitably distributed. Without clear, consistent, readily accessible communications, people may lose faith in the vaccines and in those providing them. State, tribal, …[more]

Innovations in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing on the Horizon: Technical Challenges, Regulatory Issues, and Recommendations

Innovations in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing on the Horizon: Technical Challenges, Regulatory Issues, and Recommendations

In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched the Pharmaceutical Quality for the 21st Century Initiative to encourage adoption of innovative technologies that would lead to an agile, flexible pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. The goal was to encourage a transition to …[more]

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The spring of 2020 marked a change in how almost everyone conducted their personal and professional lives, both within science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global scientific conferences and individual laboratories and …[more]

COVID-19 Addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation

COVID-19 Addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation

The year 2020’s raging coronavirus pandemic and reckoning with long-standing racial injustice led to widespread disruption and suffering, social unrest, and renewed calls for an accounting of our fragmented public health system and troubled history of racial inequity.

The crises of 2020 …[more]

Meeting Regional STEMM Workforce Needs in the Wake of COVID-19: Proceedings of a Virtual Workshop Series

Meeting Regional STEMM Workforce Needs in the Wake of COVID-19: Proceedings of a Virtual Workshop Series

The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the global economy and significantly shifting workforce demand, requiring quick, adaptive responses. The pandemic has revealed the vulnerabilities of many organizations and regional economies, and it has accelerated trends that could lead to significant …[more]

Rapid Response by Laboratory Animal Research Institutions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief

Rapid Response by Laboratory Animal Research Institutions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to explore lessons learned at animal research institutions in response to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Expert scientists conducting COVID-19 research, as well as institutional leadership …[more]

Learning from Rapid Response, Innovation, and Adaptation to the COVID-19 Crisis: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief

Learning from Rapid Response, Innovation, and Adaptation to the COVID-19 Crisis: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief

The world continues to grapple with the profound and unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which by January 2021 had infected more than 90 million people worldwide and taken over 1.9 million lives. The crisis quickly mobilized action by universities, industry, and federal, state, and …[more]

Emergency Evacuation and Sheltering During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Emergency Evacuation and Sheltering During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Fundamental shifts in preparedness planning are needed to ensure health, safety, and smooth operations during emergencies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To prepare for emergency events requiring evacuation, it is necessary to revise shelter planning and mass care operations, shelter …[more]

Critical Findings on COVID-19: Select Publications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Critical Findings on COVID-19: Select Publications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

For more than 150 years, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have issued reports detailing leading research on public health and infectious disease. In response to the global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, the National Academies has continued this work by issuing …[more]

Science for Fighting a Pandemic: Coronavirus Resources

As the United States and other countries respond to the outbreak of respiratory illness caused by the COVID-19 infectious disease, it is critical that science-based information guide public health strategies. Our publications provide guidance for federal, state, and local public health officials, transportation officials, and policy makers as they grapple with this crisis. As always, all are free to read online or download. For additional publications, please visit our Coronavirus Resources Collection.

Exploring Lessons Learned from a Century of Outbreaks: Readiness for 2030: Proceedings of a Workshop

In November 2018, an ad hoc planning committee at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planned two sister workshops held in Washington, DC, to examine the lessons from influenza pandemics and other major outbreaks, understand the extent to which the lessons have been …

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Stronger Food and Drug Regulatory Systems Abroad

Ensuring the safety of food and the quality and safety of medicines in a country is an important role of government, made more complicated by global manufacturing and international trade. By recent estimates, unsafe food kills over 400,000 people a year, a third of them children under 5, mostly …

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Reusable Elastomeric Respirators in Health Care: Considerations for Routine and Surge Use

Protecting the health and safety of health care workers is vital to the health of each of us. Preparing for and responding to a future influenza pandemic or to a sustained outbreak of an airborne transmissible disease requires a high-level commitment to respiratory protection for health care …

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Emergency Working Groups at Airports

Airports—especially in the past two decades—have generally sought to promote and increase collaboration among the members of the airport community, particularly between an airport and its airlines. One metric of this trend has been the increase in the number of U.S. airports with full-time …

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Airport Roles in Reducing Transmission of Communicable Diseases

TRB’s Conference Proceedings 55: Airport Roles in Reducing Transmission of Communicable Diseases summarizes a 2-day Insight Event convened by the Airport Cooperative Research Program and its Insight contractor, Eastern Research Group, Inc., March 6 and 7, 2018, in Washington, D.C. The event …

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Building Communication Capacity to Counter Infectious Disease Threats: Proceedings of a Workshop

Building communication capacity is a critical piece of preparing for, detecting, and responding to infectious disease threats. The International Health Regulations (IHR) establish risk communication—the real-time exchange of information, advice, and opinions between experts or officials and …

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Engaging the Private-Sector Health Care System in Building Capacity to Respond to Threats to the Public’s Health and National Security: Proceedings of a Workshop

Disasters tend to cross political, jurisdictional, functional, and geographic boundaries. As a result, disasters often require responses from multiple levels of government and multiple organizations in the public and private sectors. This means that public and private organizations that normally …

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Preparing Airports for Communicable Diseases on Arriving Flights

TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 83: Preparing Airports for Communicable Diseases on Arriving Flights examines current disease preparedness and response practices at U.S. and Canadian airports in coordination with public health officers and partners. While larger …

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The Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious Disease Crises

Since the 2014 Ebola outbreak many public- and private-sector leaders have seen a need for improved management of global public health emergencies. The effects of the Ebola epidemic go well beyond the three hardest-hit countries and beyond the health sector. Education, child protection, …

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Emerging Viral Diseases: The One Health Connection: Workshop Summary

In the past half century, deadly disease outbreaks caused by novel viruses of animal origin – Nipah virus in Malaysia, Hendra virus in Australia, Hantavirus in the United States, Ebola virus in Africa, along with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), several influenza subtypes, and the SARS …

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Crisis Standards of Care: A Systems Framework for Catastrophic Disaster Response: Volume 1: Introduction and CSC Framework

Catastrophic disasters occurring in 2011 in the United States and worldwide–from the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, to the earthquake in New Zealand–have demonstrated that even prepared communities can be overwhelmed. In 2009, at the height of the …

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