Title:Student researchers join Katz in the fight against COVID-19

Battling the COVID-19 pandemic presents copious challenges—to healthcare, the economy, society, government, and people and communities worldwide. Successfully mitigating its destructive impact likewise relies upon effective collaboration among those same disparate forces. All levels of government and society must drive that collaboration by devising and implementing policies informed by accurate and reliable data that answer questions like which policy decisions help control the disease and which exacerbate the outbreak?

To build an effective and compelling evidence base, a Georgetown research team—led by Rebecca Katz, Ph.D., MPH, at the medical center’s Center for Global Health Science and Security (CGHSS), and supported in part by two donor-funded undergraduate assistantships—has developed COVID AMP: COVID Analysis and Mapping of Policies, a platform available online at COVIDAMP.org.

Her team, in close collaboration with the research and development team at Talus Analytics, has accumulated a detailed repository of over 17,000 policies implemented at the international, national, state, and county levels to respond to COVID-19, including timelines and the associated legal authorities upon which they draw.

With every new development, Katz’s team captures the key actions in its dataset, visualized and accessible through a web-based tool—from mandating masks to policies against using tear gas at peaceful protests—which may spread the virus. According to Katz, the platform supports rigorous statistical analysis, allowing for the linking of longitudinal policy implementation with caseload, mobility metrics, and other data, to analyze relationships between policies and target outcomes.

Undergraduate research assistants Timothy Rudolph-Math and May Tan, are recipients of Summer 2020 Academic Assistantships established by the SFS COVID-19 Support Fund, made possible in part by the generous gift of Paul (C’62) and Chandler Tagliabue. Rudolph-Math and Tan help Katz find and track international policies and plans related to the COVID-19 response. Their work consists of policy research, data management, and report writing in support of the COVID Local and COVID-AMP tools.

“We are very thankful for the support and the opportunity to work with talented students across Georgetown,” said Katz, who was named an advisor for President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force in November 2020. “Tim and May have been invaluable members of the research team, and will continue to work with the Center on COVID response efforts during the academic year.”

“This is one of the things that make supporting Georgetown so exciting for Chan, and me” said Tagliabue. “Not many undergraduates get to play a role in research that will almost certainly save countless lives worldwide. We love being able to facilitate that.”

Rudolph-Math and Tan joined the COVID AMP project in early summer, and continue to work with the multidisciplinary team of researchers.

“Working as part of the CGHSS team has helped me develop skills that I will carry with me in the future,” said Rudolph-Math. “I am both honored and grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this most timely and impactful research.”

“The assistantship has been a valuable opportunity, and has led me to pursue research regarding the economic effects of COVID-19 on clean energy innovation,” said Tan. “I’m extremely grateful for the support that has allowed me to work with this impactful project.”

The SFS COVID-19 Support Fund has also enabled Georgetown undergraduates to participate in research related to Middle East security, Japanese foreign policy, American infrastructure, nutrition-smart agriculture, and more.