Predicting Infectious Diseases via Environment and Climate

About the project

The PRIDE-C project follows the full life-cycle of a disease forecasting tool, from development to implementation to evaluation, to understand how disease forecasting can support public health systems. Working in Ifanadiana District in southeastern Madagascar, we use participatory research methods to co-create a disease forecasting platform with Ministry of Health partners from the district, regional, and central levels. The platform takes the form of a DHIS2 application and associated suite of open-source modeling and data processing tools written in R and Python. Partnering with a health-system strengthening organization, we are able to assess the impact of these tools on decision making processes and indicators of health system responsiveness, to evaluate the potential for scale-up.

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Our approach

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A health-system strengthening partnership

Since 2014, the non-governmental organization Pivot has partnered with the Government of Madagascar to build an evidence-driven, district-level model of universal health coverage for replication throughout the country. It began in Ifanadiana District, and began expanding to all of Vatovavy region in 2024 to now serve over 800,00 people.

We conduct multidisciplinary scientific research and analysis to continuously inform our approach to save more lives and generate transferable lessons for health systems around the world. The PRIDE-C project began its pilot phase in Ifanadiana in 2025 and hopes to expand in Vatovavy by 2029.