Emerging Infectious Diseases: Consensus on Needed Laboratory Capacity Could Strengthen Surveillance

In November 2000, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation issued the report, "Assessing Core Capacity for Infectious Diseases Surveillance." The report was an important step forward in developing an analytic framework that could be used to help create consensus on core capacities needed at each level of government for effective national surveillance. The report identified gaps in the core capacity for infectious diseases surveillance and identified investment priorities for closing these gaps. While the report identified as one of the gaps the lack of a clear set of standards that defines the critical surveillance needs and associated capacity requirements at all levels of the system, the work of producing such a set of standards remained to be done. In the context of preparing to distribute cooperative agreement awards for public health emergency preparedness and response, CDC worked with HHS to get consensus from a broad array of public health partners and organizations on critical capacities, including critical benchmarks that must be met, and enhanced capacities related to bioterrorism, other infectious disease outbreaks, and other public health threats and emergencies. Laboratory capacity is included in this effort. However, some of the capacity definition is at a fairly general level.