What is the IOA approach for decision-making in public health emergencies?



The seeds for Integrated Outbreak Analytics (IOA) were sown during the 2018 Ebola response in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to collaboratively perform real-time systematic operational research to inform evidence-based response. In 2020, the IOA partnership was formalised to establish a platform for exchange for all partners in the GOARN network. Since then, IOA has operated as a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding outbreak dynamics in many different public health emergencies including the plague, cholera, measles, polio and malnutrition and to inform response with multiple partners.