What We Do

The New York City (NYC) Pandemic Response Institute (PRI) is a resource supporting New York City agencies, organizations, and communities to prepare and respond to critical public health crises as:

An innovator that explores technologies, tools, models, and other approaches to prepare and respond to public health crises

A connector that brings together diverse city stakeholders to create a whole of city response inclusive of governmental agencies, private sector, community organizations as well as academic and research entities.

A facilitator, supporting distillation of lessons learned to inform future preparedness, response, and recovery from major health crises.

Technical Cores

Innovation & Scaling

  • Coordinate with innovation partners ranging from startups to larger life science and technology companies to assess and distribute new and existing innovations (i.e., testing, vaccinations, therapeutics, personal protective equipment [PPE]) that enhance their accessibility to healthcare and community settings.
  • Bring together leading partners in innovation (including corporate, academic, community) to spur innovation in support of public health emergencies through collaborative exchange.

Data Collection, Sharing, & Translation

  • Work with NYC to analyze various public health emergency data streams (including from health, corporate sectors and community organizations) and develop a framework for more sustained and streamlined data collaboration.
  • Identify, develop and support the use of new data streams (e.g., provide by corporations, communities or other New Yorkers) for public health emergency preparedness and response

Workforce Capacity & Preparedness

  • Evaluate existing training programs and increase accessibility to those training programs, based on a gap analysis of the current landscape.
  • Enhance and expand the reach of existing education and workforce development programs.

Epidemiology & Modeling Team

  • Enhance capacity of DOHMH and relevant partners in modeling and use of epidemiological and other data to study disparities in and drivers of future health risk.
  • Lead the production of forecast and projections of health, social, and economic impacts of public health emergencies, and develop simulations of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions.

Cross-Cutting Teams

Community Convening & Learning

  • Integrate the diversity of thought and experience of silenced and at-risk communities into the structure and activity of PRI.
  • Strengthen existing learning networks and resources for community emergency preparedness and response to diffuse successes and innovations.
  • Institutionalize and support the local networks and structures that provide critical services to New Yorkers during and between health emergencies.

Communications

  • Establish a bi-directional communications infrastructure so that prevention and preparedness are ongoing between as well as during emergencies.
  • Generate principles and guidelines for communications at different points in a pandemic/emergency that address use of different technologies, personal risk assessment, misinformation, data and health literacy issues.

Racial Equity & Social Determinants of Health Team

  • Collaborate on the continuous learning, self-assessment, and reflection on the state of anti-racism public health practices in New York City.

  • Ensure the integration of an explicit focus on structural racism and social determinants of health into the PRI’s structures, operations, and interventions and informing the work of all the technical cores.

  • Combine methods, theory, and data to identify pathways through which structural racism had led to worse outcomes for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other people of color (e.g., through employment discrimination, psychosocial trauma, residential segregation, disenfranchisement, and stereotyping). Help NYC address those identified pathways .