Advancing Analytics to Improve Actionable Changes in the Opioid Overdose Epidemic

This is a notice of intent to award a sole-source contract and is not a request for competitive proposals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) hereby announces its intent to award a sole source contract to the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health, 4200 Fifth Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, for the procurement of services to develop a comprehensive framework-based simulation model using their existing FRED model. The statutory authority for this sole source acquisition is 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) in accordance with FAR Part 6.302-1, only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy the agency requirement. The NAICS code for this acquisition is 541690, Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services. The period of performance is for this procurement is 24 months. The purpose of this procurement is to develop a comprehensive framework-based simulation model to understand the underlying dynamics of the opioid overdose epidemic. The framework should be flexible enough to address the impact of difference intervention and a variety of research questions. Rigorous methodologies will be needed to accomplish this. It is anticipated that there will be substantial secondary data collection and linking efforts from existing data sources such as claims, dispensing, treatment, morbidity, mortality, survey, law enforcement, and cost. The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health is the only vendor with access to multiple national data systems that are critical to running the model (such as claims, dispensing, treatment, and law enforcement). The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health is also the only vendor with an existing modeling system that supports research on the dynamics of disease epidemics and the interacting effects of system level interventions, mitigation strategies, market factors (such as illicit drugs), and personal health behavior. This model is called FRED (Framework for Reconstruction of Epidemic Dynamics) and it can be adapted to the opioid overdose epidemic. This opioid-specific modeling tool will provide CDC and its funded states actionable public health data to guide their decisions about who, what, where, and when to intervene in order to have the greatest impact. FRED represents every person in a real geographic region as a separate individual each with her/his own unique social, familial, demographic, behavioral, and health characteristics. Individuals interact within realistic household, school, and workplace social networks. FRED was originally developed to simulate infectious disease epidemics, but has been extended to enable users to model a wide range of health conditions and to study how patterns of those conditions vary over time in a specific region. FRED is available through this web interface in the hopes of making large-scale agent-based models more useful to the policy-making community, the research community, and as a teaching tool for students in public health. No other vendor can provide a system with the unique features that will meet the government's requirement by being able to immediately add elements/factors related to the opioid overdose epidemic to the existing model without having to spend time and resources on development, testing, or creation. As a result of this synopsis, no competitive solicitation will be posted on FedBizOpps.com. We will only issue a solicitation to the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health. However, all responsible sources who believe they can meet these requirements, may submit their capabilities and/or qualifications to Tonya S. Justice, Contracting Officer, via email to TJustice@cdc.gov, no later than 2:00pm eastern standard time on June 6, 2018. Reference solicitation number RFP #75D301-18-R-67887 in the subject line of the email. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed action will be based on responses to this notice and is solely in the discretion of the Contracting Officer. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.