Outbreaknet Enhanced – Increasing Outbreak Response Capacity of Health Departments

BACKGROUND:  Each year foodborne diseases cause illness in approximately 1 in 6 Americans, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.  Decreasing resources impact the ability of public health officials to identify, respond to, and control foodborne disease outbreaks.  OutbreakNet Enhanced, a CDC program started in August 2015, was established to address gaps in foodborne disease outbreak response by improving epidemiologic capacity in state and local health departments.  OutbreakNet Enhanced sites are building collaborative surveillance and response programs to conduct rapid, coordinated, and standardized investigations of foodborne disease outbreaks.

METHODS:  OutbreakNet Enhanced sites were selected by competitive review process to receive funding and technical assistance to improve foodborne disease outbreak response. Priority areas for improvement are detection and rapid interviewing of Salmonella, Shiga-toxin producing E. coli, and Listeria (SSL) patients; the ability to detect and respond to foodborne disease outbreaks of other etiologies is also expected to improve. Each OutbreakNet Enhanced site partnered with an Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence (CoE) to complete a project to improve outbreak surveillance and response in their jurisdiction. Performance metrics, focusing on SSL, were developed based on the Council for Improving Foodborne Outbreak Response Guidelines and existing metrics used by the Foodborne Diseases Centers for Outbreak Response Enhancement (FoodCORE) Program.

RESULTS:  There are currently 11 OutbreakNet Enhanced sites: Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, and Virginia. These sites have used funds to hire additional epidemiologists and student workers for interviewing foodborne disease patients as well as travel to trainings and conferences. During the first grant year, August 1, 2015-September 31, 2016, all sites will also complete a collaborative project with a CoE in order to address a specific foodborne disease related need in their jurisdiction. CoE collaborative projects include epidemiologic skill trainings, foodborne disease outbreak response evaluations, development of online foodborne illness complaint systems, and production of a foodborne disease investigation training video series. OutbreakNet Enhanced sites also collaborate with other comprehensive food safety and outbreak response capacity building programs such as FDA-RRT, PulseNet, FoodNet, and EHS-Net.

CONCLUSIONS:  OutbreakNet Enhanced promotes the evaluation and application of surveillance and investigation strategies to improve the detection, investigation, and control of foodborne disease outbreaks.  During their first year, OutbreakNet Enhanced sites are implementing work plans to address gaps in foodborne disease outbreak response by increasing their capacity and by forming collaborative partnerships with other state and federal programs.