Use of Modeling to Inform Decision Making in North Carolina during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study.

Organizations from a diversity of sectors across North Carolina (including public health, education, business, government, religion, and public safety) have used decision-support modeling to inform decision making during COVID-19.Decision makers wish for models to project the spread of disease, especially at the local level (e.g., individual cities and counties), and to help estimate the outcomes of policies.Some organizational decision makers are hesitant to use modeling to inform their decisions, stemming from doubts that models could reflect nuances of human behavior, concerns about the accuracy and precision of data used in models, and the limited amount of modeling available at the local level.