Sharing Data and Guidance on the 2023-2024 Respiratory Threat Season

Why the effort matters:

Visualizing and sharing insights to protect health and improve lives is a primary public health data goal.

A 2023 PHDS milestone was to develop a viable product for a centralized data dissemination platform in partnership with CDC’s Office of Readiness and Response to share timely and actionable data publicly.

CDC launched the Respiratory Virus Data Channel was launched in September 2023 to deliver the public health information Americans needed during the 2023-2034 fall and winter respiratory threat season.

CDC combined data from a wide variety of sources including hospital capacity from the National Healthcare Safety Network and emergency department visits from the National Syndromic Surveillance Program to provide insight on respiratory threats across the country.

The development of data channels like this one demonstrates major progress in helping everyone understand public health threats and make decisions to protect the health of individuals, families and communities.


Key outcomes:

• More than four million visitors since the Data Channel was launched in September 2023 (with more than one million page visits in March 2024).
• Nine different data sources across 20 subject areas of CDC integrated in the Data Channel, with the channel updated every seven days.

What users are saying…

“Provided good information making me aware of the situation in the zone I live [in]. Since I am older, and a diagnosed type 2 diabetic, such information is great for me.“ – Data Channel user

“I like the graph format. [Easily seeing] the escalation in cases has led to an increase in my encouragement for patients to get vaccinated, particularly before the holiday season.” – Data Channel user