News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – State and local health departments have significantly improved their readiness for public health emergencies in the past few years, with laboratory capacity and emergency operations centers leading the list of improved areas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a major report released today.

(CIDRAP News) – A national consortium of groups that have a stake in managing foodborne illness outbreaks today released guidelines for outbreak response, a document that includes model practices for each investigation stage, giving local and state officials a baseline for assessing their current procedures.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal agencies that play key food safety roles recently held a public meeting to clarify the obstacles public health officials encounter in investigating foodborne disease outbreaks and to build support for measures to improve the process.

(CIDRAP News) – The distribution of more than $5 billion in federal funds since 2001 has greatly improved states' preparedness to deal with disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and other public health emergencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in a first-of-its-kind assessment.