CDC's Global Efforts To Address Emerging Diseases

The 1992 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States posed several challenges to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the nation's prevention agency, and CDC responded by developing a strategic plan, released in 1994, entitled Addressing Emerging Infectious Disease Threats: a Prevention Strategy for the United States. The plan contained four primary goals: (i) to improve surveillance efforts to better detect, promptly investigate, and monitor emerging pathogens, the diseases they cause, and the factors influencing their emergence; (ii) to foster applied research to integrate laboratory science and epidemiology to optimize public health practice; (iii) to strengthen prevention and control through enhanced communication of public health information about emerging diseases and prompt implementation of prevention strategies; (iv) to improve the national infrastructure needed to fulfill these goals by increasing local, state, and federal public health capacity to support surveillance and implement prevention and control programs. These four goals became the pillars of the CDC program in emerging infectious diseases. The CDC is working closely with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World health organization (WHO) regional office for the Americas, to implement a regional plan to address emerging infectious diseases. The convergence of thinking by world leaders in health offers a tremendous opportunity for meaningful international collaboration in addressing the global challenges of emerging infectious diseases.