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MEASLES OUTBREAK RESPONSE

In March 2026, I collaborated with reporter Elise Takahama to visualize the scale and urgency of the public health response to a measles outbreak in Snohomish County, Washington.

My work translated complex response efforts into clear, reader-friendly graphics. An overview infographic highlights the magnitude of staff time and resources deployed—designed to quickly orient readers skimming the story. A county-level map shows which areas meet the vaccination threshold needed to prevent outbreaks, while a cluster diagram illustrates how rapidly measles can spread through households, schools, and communities—especially among unvaccinated populations.

View the infographics and interactive map below, or read the full story in The Seattle Times.

An infographic shows how even one measles case can trigger an immense amount of work for public health teams, including making hundreds of contact-tracing calls, running emergency trainings, tracking data, testing people and communicating with the public. At the Snohomish County Health Department, which is responding to an ongoing measles outbreak, it’s taken a lot of team coordination.
A cluster diagram shows how measles exposures can balloon. In Snohomish County, a single infection exposed more than 500 people to the virus, including 179 whom public health teams contacted about potential infection risk because they were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown. At school, another 300 or so students were exposed, but were vaccinated against measles. By the end of February, the county had recorded 14 cases.

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