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Operation Outbreak

Making Outbreak Education Accessible, Engaging, and Scalable: A Brand and Digital Transformation

A blue circular graphic with a black center shows "2025" in bold. Around the circle, in black text, it reads: "COLLABORATING TOGETHER SINCE." The background has a dotted border design.
  • Tech
  • App
  • Branding
  • Website

Goal

Operation Outbreak is an interactive educational experience focusing on the spread of infectious disease. The experience was ahead of its time, bringing pandemic-preparedness exercises into classrooms in 2015. This foresight earned coverage in USA Today, Popular Science, The New York Times, Forbes, Wired, National Geographic, and TIME. Despite offering a world-class immersive learning experience, the program’s positioning did not match the strength of its mission and vision. NJI stepped in to strengthen the brand, refine the messaging, and enhance the digital experience.

Results

NJI completely revamped Operation Outbreak’s brand, building a cohesive identity system that extends across every brand touchpoint. The branding system became the base for a website and app experience overhaul. Language was simplified and restructured. Refreshed and elevated videos, an improved gradient system, and step-by-step graphics helped to clearly show the experience. The result is a more immersive, intuitive experience for students and clearer insight for organizers navigating complex public health concepts.

Strategy

Explaining such a complex learning experience can easily get trapped in nuance. NJI’s approach was to focus on the audience perspective and to be direct. With that foundation in place, audiences can then choose where they want to dive deeper. The clarified approach and stronger story made the experience more approachable, and credible.

The clients expanded our engagement beyond the classroom and asked us to help them engage emerging audiences like public health professionals and biodefense experts, positioning Operation Outbreak for broader reach and long-term impact.

NJI remains a close partner in scaling Operation Outbreak’s digital experience to inspire and prepare the next generation of public health leaders.

52%

Increase In Pages Per Session

20%

Drop In Bounce Rate

3+

Minutes Increase in Session Duration

NJI’s work advances Operation Outbreak’s mission to prepare the next generation of public health leaders for future pandemics. “We could have predicted a lot of what happened during COVID based on simulations.” — Pardis Sabeti, Infectious Disease Professor at Harvard University, Co-Founder and CEO, Operation Outbreak

A person holds a smartphone displaying a health app with a smiling face and "HEALTHY" on the screen, showing vaccination status and health pass in a pink case—part of a global awareness campaign for public wellbeing.
Three young people wearing white lab coats and ID badges stand side by side, facing the camera, representing PATH against a bright teal and purple background as part of a global awareness campaign.
Two blue lanyards with "REPORTER" name badges, a yellow whistle, and the word "NEWS" lie on a wooden surface—ideal props for an experiential marketing or global awareness campaign led by PATH.
A woman with long brown hair, wearing a black top and holding a small item, stands indoors and smiles at the camera during a PATH global awareness campaign. Other people are partially visible behind her.
Six smiling teenagers pose indoors, holding up smartphones toward the camera for a global awareness campaign. Dressed casually, some wear school or sports logos as they kneel and stand on a gym floor, highlighting Health Advocacy against a dark backdrop.
A young person in a white lab coat talks on a corded phone, looking to the side. Several people are in the background, some wearing red shirts, in what appears to be a busy experiential event or global awareness campaign.
Two smartphones display health status apps, highlighting PATH's commitment to Health Advocacy: one shows a green "HEALTHY" status, the other a red "SICK" status, with virus icons floating around both—capturing the impact of an experiential event.

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