Current Projects

Epidemiology/ Laboratory Reporting

Currently, a limited number of state health department foodborne disease epidemiologists receive daily reports from their public health laboratory, including a line-list of new reportable isolates, with associated serotype, PFGE and demographic data. Because programs with this capacity have a history of identifying and successfully investigating a high proportion of multistate foodborne disease outbreaks in the country, as well as in-state outbreaks, CIFOR wanted to design a system for developing daily combined epidemiology/laboratory reports, using a standard format which will also allow future communication and sharing of reports between jurisdictions. The effect of this new system on improving timeliness of outbreak detection and successful investigation will be assessed after one year. If successful, such systems can be applied more widely.