COVID-19 Emphasizes the Importance of Science Communication and Decision-Support Tools
When the STRIDE program was conceived, the purpose of the training program was to give scientists the necessary tools to communicate their research to the public—not only to fellow scientists, but to policymakers, decision makers, and other lay audiences.
To date, four overarching themes have dominated the program—climate change, marine resource management, deforestation, and the smart grid. Climate change, in particular, has been a focus of communication with the wider public as well as decision-makers. From studying extreme weather patterns such as Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island of Puerto Rico or the discovery of the Adelie penguins of the Danger Islands, the need to communicate clearly through accurate and compelling data visualizations has been emphasized.
When the STRIDE program launched in 2017, the risks of zoonotic spillovers were known, but no one could have predicted a world-wide pandemic would paralyze the world just three years later. Today, as the death count continues to climb, scientists all over the world are in a race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, or Coronavirus Infectious Disease 19. COVID-19, first witnessed in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China in late 2019, quickly spread across the world, devastating Iran, Italy, and Spain, while also bringing human contact and travel to a standstill across the world.
Through this international crisis, citizens look for direction, reliable information, and for swift, actionable decision making. As is evident in the United States at this time, failure to act quickly and responsibly can have catastrophic consequences. A visualization tool such as this one offers updated, detailed information for each country, including numbers of new cases, total cases, death totals, and recovered totals. While we should all be doing our part by staying home and engaging in social distancing due to the virulence of COVID-19, this tool can quell some fears as recoveries far surpass the total deaths.
The COVID-19 crisis further emphasizes the importance of the training elements of STRIDE: analysis, visualization, communication, and decision support. Designed to address each element, the C-STRIDE advanced graduate certificate provides invaluable training, benefiting students’ future career as scientists. But most of all, C-STRIDE prepares this next generation of scientists to communicate and support decisions critical decisions by policymakers. As we have discovered, these can be a matter of life and death.