They’re calling it the Arbor Day Tornado Outbreak of 2024, and even in Midwestern states like Iowa and Nebraska known for severe weather, the storm that hit on April 26 was historic. Damaging or destroying hundreds if not thousands of homes and businesses across the region, this cluster of twisters was deemed the strongest in eastern Nebraska or western Iowa in almost a decade by the National Weather Service.
Andrew Delicata, a program manager with the State-Funded Project team at the CDC Foundation, has served remotely with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services since 2021. With an educational and professional background in survey development for market research, Delicata now applies those skills to public health, specializing in data-driven analysis that tracks community health issues like opioid overdoses, evaluating public health programs for effectiveness and helping direct emergency responses.
Surveys Key to Collecting Public Health Data
Delicata's developed a particular talent for building and managing online surveys, spreadsheets and databases via REDCap, a secure web application built specifically to support online and offline data collection. Short for Research Electronic Data Capture, the versatile application is free to nonprofits and governments, and widely used by universities and public health agencies around the country.
“The range of projects we’ve been using it for in Nebraska ranges from transferring paper forms into electronic ones to contact tracing and case investigation,” he explained.
Gathering and reporting accurate health information from the field is essential so resources can get to the people who need them most. Two weeks after the Arbor Day storm, around 20 volunteers from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Public Health, the Three Rivers Public Health Department and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services planned to conduct an emergency survey in the tornado-affected areas of Washington County, using electronic tablets. “They wanted to do some data collection related to the disaster, to ask folks if they’d heard warnings on the day of the tornado, what damage they sustained and what assistance was needed,” Delicata said.
This radar image from the National Weather Service shows severe weather near Omaha.
Data engineer Andrew Delicata was called in to assist with the emergency survey.
Volunteers gather in advance of survey collection.
Informing Disaster Response
Leading the UNMC team was Kristina Kintziger, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health, who told the UNMC website, “We are here to support this effort on the front lines of public health."
Rapid needs assessments are crucial after disasters.
-- Kristina Kintziger, PhD, University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health
But with communications and electricity out, the field team was having trouble with the tablets’ software. Using paper surveys, then transferring the data into their electronic systems for review, could delay getting aid to storm victims. So Andrew stepped in with REDCap.
“On a Thursday at 4:00pm, I got a call to ask if I make the survey accessible for offline use in the field the next morning,” Delicata recalled. So that evening, he communicated with IT to make sure the REDCap app was downloaded onto the volunteers’ tablets, uploaded the survey, opened accounts for the volunteers and then made sure the lead of the onsite training had the right information.
This image, courtesy of the National Weather Service, shows destruction after the April 26, 2024 tornado.
A tornado touches down in Nebraska on Arbor Day, 2024. Image courtesy of the National Weather Service.
This post-tornado survey helped gather information from the community.
The initiative is critical in helping public health professionals understand the needs after a disaster, according to Kitzinger. “We want to understand what our community is experiencing,” she said. “We also want to understand how prepared the community is and how we, as public health practitioners, along with emergency responders, can support the community in being more prepared.”
The data collected with help from Delicata will no doubt aid in that effort, though he disagrees: “I can only take as much credit as the software.”
