FluAid

RESOURCE DESCRIPTION

FluAid is a public planning tool for pandemic influenza scenarios that estimates the overall impacts to human health and healthcare systems in a local area, including the effects of vaccination campaigns. It is developed and used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assist state and local planners in preparing for the next influenza pandemic by providing estimates of potential impacts specific to their localities, based on their local data. Given the user’s local data, FluAid estimates the minimum, most likely, and maximum total number of deaths, hospitalizations, and outpatient visits due to pandemic influenza. The results can be used during the planning process to help determine whether there will be sufficient hospital beds for patients, and whether there will be sufficient healthcare providers to serve the estimated number of outpatients. They can also be used to determine what age and risk groups should be high priority for vaccination. Various inputs for FluAid rely on user-input local data and do not have default values, including the average length of a hospital stay for influenza-like illness, the number of healthcare providers available to see outpatients per week, the number of hospital beds available for influenza-related illness, and others. Research may be necessary to collect these local data. Suggested local data sources are available at the indicated website. Other inputs to FluAid do have default values (national averages), but can still be customized, and include the total population at risk by age group; high risk percentages by age group; the minimum, most likely, and maximum deaths, hospitalizations, and outpatient visits per 1,000 population by age and risk group; and the lowest, middle, and highest influenza gross attack rates.

BROAD DATA CATEGORIES

• Disease metric
• Disease surveillance

SPECIFIC DATA ELEMENTS

• Disease outbreak (natural)
• Flu
• Vaccinations

GEOGRAPHIC COVERAGE

US