Donors to the College of Health play a vital role in advancing research and amplifying their impact through philanthropy. By supporting research initiatives, their gifts to the Dean’s Strategic Initiative Fund help fund early-stage projects with the potential to drive groundbreaking discoveries. Lehigh University’s Giving Day/March Mania event is quickly approaching, from March 25th-26th. Together, we can fuel innovation and transform the future of health.
In 2023, gifts supporting pilot funding for research allowed professors Thomas McAndrew and Rochelle Frounfelker to start an innovative new research project in infectious disease modeling and forecasting, forming the basis for a major award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
McAndrew, assistant professor, department of biostatistics and health data science, and Frounfelker, assistant professor, department of population health, collaborated to explore how public health officials and infectious disease clinicians in the Lehigh Valley are making decisions about influenza.
The start of a research fund offering pilot funding was made possible with a generous gift from donors like Dr. Stephen T. C. Wong, who was inspired by the work of faculty in the College of Health early on. Gifts support promising research across health-related disciplines, including pilot studies and concepts, health assessments and data collection, peer reviewed publications and events to educate the community on public health topics.
“Early-stage research drives innovation and advances public health,” said Dr. Wong. “The success of this project—transforming pilot funding into an NSF award—demonstrates the power of strategic philanthropy in catalyzing groundbreaking discoveries. I’m proud to support the College of Health in making a lasting impact on our communities and beyond.”
As a social epidemiologist, Frounfelker led a participatory modeling effort to understand the decision-making strategies of public health experts. She conducted focus groups with local stakeholders to determine how they use data to identify flu outbreaks; generate and evaluate intervention options; and decide upon and implement interventions.
Within two years, the results from this study laid the groundwork for an even bigger opportunity. Recently, they received a major award from the NSF to research and develop a novel approach to forecasting, an innovative technology that looks at how accurately individuals make predictions over time and weighing them accordingly.
The project, “IHBEM: Enhancing Influenza Forecasting Through an Integrated Platform for User-Generated Temporal Forecasts,” will help improve evidence-based public health decision making for infectious diseases.
According to McAndrew, the first research phase provided data that showed that public health officials were interested in engaging with the College of Health, learning about evidence-based decision making and hearing more about forecasting and computer modeling. This information was reported in their NSF proposal and validated their approach. “We can tap that community to learn more about how they think about public health to try and optimize that process. The work funded by the college was directly related to this NSF proposal," he said.
“When it comes to funding from many grant mechanisms like NIH or NSF, it is important to show a working history with the researchers on the team and have preliminary data to support the proof of concept,” Frounfelker said. “Pilot funding from the college allows us to try something that is brand new and maybe higher risk, which external funders may be more hesitant to fund,” she added.
The College of Health pilot funding is also transformational for strengthening relationships with local public health stakeholders, which is critical for McAndrew’s work as a biostatistician. “Public health officials are beginning to look at the College of Health as a place where they can get information or learn something new on a current, ongoing situation,” said McAndrew, noting he is getting calls about the recent bird flu outbreak.
Another output from the pilot funding was the creation of an annual COH symposium, bringing together the individuals who participated in their focus groups to share their perspectives on the topic of infectious disease modeling, Frounfelker said. Further, McAndrew was a featured speaker with the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE).
“I can speak to how incredibly thankful researchers and the faculty are to have opportunities like this, and to try something new,” said Frounfelker. “It is an incentive to try things that are a bit more innovative or different. I’m incredibly appreciative of the financial support.”
Gifts to the Dean’s Strategic Initiative Fund support the development of new research, such as the work by McAndrew and Frounfelker, as well as spark new ideas, foster collaboration across disciplines and enable the collection of preliminary data. Moreover, this support creates unique research and learning opportunities for faculty and students, driving impact in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. For more information about opportunities for giving at the College of Health, visit give.lu/coh
