By: Lola Scott Russell, Health Communications Lead Office of the Associate Director of Communications Center for Global Health Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Scientists in public health are typically portrayed in laboratory settings or laboriously crunching data on computers. But public health also finds answers in people as sources of data collection. Last year, the HHS Ignite Accelerator Program (Ignite) Summer 2019 Cohort provided six Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientists the opportunity to pursue happiness through laboratory science and integrated human centered design (HCD).
In 2010, conversations with more than 70 staff at CDC identified a lack of early stage funding as a top barrier to innovation. To fill this "pioneer gap" the Office of the Associate Director for Science (OADS), Office of Technology and Innovation sponsors the Innovation Fund (iFund).
The advances in our ability to store, retrieve and send large amounts of information during the last decade has resulted in opportunities to manage and use big data to improve public health. These advances are helping us to more quickly identify and control local and global threats.
