Public Health

How to navigate a public health crisis

The Covid-19 Intervention Manual offers insights and practical lessons from The Chelsea Project A new handbook from the Center of Complex Interventions is a practical guide for researchers, local governments, and community organizers on how to design an effective, coordinated…

The Chelsea Project COVID-19 Intervention Manual

A guide for getting things done during a pandemic Chelsea, Massachusetts had one of the highest COVID-19 transmission rates in New England in the summer of 2020. The Chelsea Project was a collaborative effort that included government entities, local nonprofits,…

COVID-19 RNA Testing Technology Assessment

Abstract With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and in response to high demand, a multitude of diagnostic tests for the detection and monitoring of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been developed. This living document aims to survey the technical…

Exploring the Complexity of COVID-19 Diagnostic Tests

Clinical diagnoses and epidemiological surveillance of the COVID-19 pandemic relies on the availability of highly sensitive, scalable, and low-cost tests. Given the urgent and massive demand for testing in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been…

Insights from Structured SARS-2 Diagnostics Data

This is the third document in our series exploring SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics. Our first exploratory documents were produced in mid April after a significant increase in the number of new diagnostics being issued Emergency Use Authorisations (EUAs) and in the intervening…

The Complexity Behind Face Masks

To mask or not to mask? Understanding the effect of mask wearing on COVID-19 health outcomes, and what are the drivers behind increased mask wearing are critically important questions – at least until we have enough people vaccinated.  Numerous studies…

The Chelsea Policy Simulator

In an effort to capture lessons from Chelsea’s pandemic response efforts against COVID-19, CCI researchers have built an empirical Bayes agents-based policy simulator for the Chelsea Project. This tool models demographics, mobility, transmission, infection, and disease dynamics using a large number…

COVID-19 Mask Mandates

We extended previous studies on the impact of masks on COVID-19 outcomes by investigating an unprecedented breadth and depth of specifications, and our results demonstrate the policy implications for reinforcing the need to maintain and encourage mask-wearing by the public…