News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The Obama administration today proposed a fiscal year 2013 budget that would use prevention funds to cover some preparedness and public health activities and count on user fees to support more of the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) food safety initiatives.

(CIDRAP News) – Public health programs that detect and respond to bioterror events and disease outbreaks are at risk from federal and state budget cuts, a threat that could worsen over the next year if automatic across-the-board cuts kick in, according to an annual preparedness report card released today.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a "Retail Food Safety Action Plan" aiming to improve how food facilities manage their food safety efforts and how public health agencies oversee them.

The plan calls for strengthening state and local food safety requirements for retail facilities and improving training for their workers, the FDA said in an e-mail statement yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Public health officials today announced the launch of the first national accreditation program for health departments, a move designed to create a voluntary national standard to measure and improve the performance across a range of health departments, from local to state.

The group of national and local leaders made the announcement at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

(CIDRAP News) – Hard-pressed local health departments (LHDs) shed another 6,000 jobs through layoffs and attrition in 2010, bringing the total job losses over the past 3 years to 29,000, according to a survey report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

(CIDRAP News) – Ending months of delay, a large bipartisan majority in the US Senate today passed a bill that aims to make the nation's food supply safer by giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more authority over food producers and requiring large producers and processors to develop detailed food safety plans.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Senate voted today to clear the way for floor debate of a major bill to strengthen federal regulation of food safety, keeping alive a chance of passage before this Congress adjourns in December.

(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.