Translating Wastewater Data into Public Health Action

Mathematica worked with the Rockefeller team to provide technical assistance to grantees, survey public health leaders on the role of wastewater data in pandemic management and develop the Covid-SURGE (Signaling Unprecedented Rises in Groupwide Exposure) toolkit to help policymakers leverage wastewater data for action. 

• Mathematica guided the approaches of grantees leading wastewater monitoring in their communities, identified opportunities for synergy, synthesized insights into a Nature Medicine article on how wastewater surveillance of pathogens can inform public health response, and co-developed a series of issue briefs summarizing implementation needs and challenges for public health officials interested in wastewater monitoring. 
• To gain insights into the value of wastewater data for pandemic management, Mathematica surveyed more than 200 U.S. state and local public health agency leaders. Findings were summarized in a survey brief that describes communities’ capacity for wastewater monitoring, barriers and supports, and future interest in this methodology.
• After analyzing data that States and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided on roughly 31,000 wastewater samples collected from nearly 400 wastewater treatment plants across 13 states, we developed the Covid-SURGE toolkit, which includes Mathematica’s Covid-SURGE Algorithm to flag community-level COVID-19 surges and an interactive Covid-SURGE Risk Estimator tool, which synthesizes wastewater data with traditional public health surveillance metrics into a composite risk score, risk trend analysis, and alerts signaling elevated risk.

The survey brief, grantee issue briefs, and other grantee outputs are publicly available to help communities better leverage their wastewater data for COVID-19 management and response. In the coming months, Mathematica will release the Covid-SURGE toolkit, which will include an Excel calculator that public health officials can use to implement the Covid-SURGE Algorithm locally.