Welcome

The Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) is a multidisciplinary working group convened to increase collaboration across the country and across relevant areas of expertise in order to reduce the burden of foodborne illness in the United States. The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) co-chair CIFOR with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne illness affects one in six Americans annually. Of the estimated 48 million who become sick from a foodborne illness each year, 128,000 thousand people are hospitalized and 3,000 individuals die. Many organizations are involved in efforts to mitigate the effects of these illnesses on public health. Outbreak identification and investigation is one of the key areas where multidisciplinary public health professionals must collaborate. CIFOR was created to develop and share guidelines, processes, and products that will facilitate good foodborne outbreak response.

Featured Clearinghouse Tools:

CIFOR Toolkit Focus Area 8: Environmental Health Investigation

Are you currently or have you ever participated in an environmental health investigation? CIFOR has developed a worksheet to assist agencies/jurisdictions staff with collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information from the implicated facility or production site to determine the etiologic agent, mode of transmission and vehicle, source of contamination, contributing factors, environmental antecedents, and food supply chain. The tool is available in the CIFOR Clearinghouse. Click here to access it.