The Newcomers Cohort (North Carolina)

Rachel Woodul is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography and a Research Assistant at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rachel’s research interests include epidemic modeling, disease ecology, and infectious diseases, with a particular focus on pandemic influenza.

She employs geographic information systems (GIS), spatio-statistical and epidemiological analysis, and ecological frameworks to understand transmission dynamics and population-level impacts of epidemics and pandemics.

Her recent research has focused on simulating the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in a modern population, pandemic hospital capacity modeling, and modeling vulnerability to mortality during a pandemic.

“I work as part of the NCCOVID-19 team with Dr. Paul Delamater at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. NC COVID-19 provides up-to-date estimates and future forecasts of SARS-CoV-2 infections, COVID-19 cases, and (coming soon) COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in North Carolina.

“We created this site largely because we were unable to locate information about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 in North Carolina that we thought was important for understanding past, current, and future transmission and risk,” Rachel said. “I believe the most important aspect of this project is making epidemiological data available to the public in ways that are both easily understandable and useful for gauging risk. What we know about this pandemic changes every day, so we update the site every day to ensure that North Carolinians have access to the most up-to-date information about things that matter to them, like transmission in school districts and rates of vaccination.”

A few words from those who nominated Rachel:

“Rachel is basically running the only resource for COVID-19 in NC, and I honestly don’t know where we’d be without her!”

Click here to visit the NC COVID-19 site.

Click here to visit Rachel’s Twitter page.