The Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) is a multidisciplinary collaboration of 8 diverse national associations and 3 federal agencies whose goal is to improve methods at the local, state, and federal levels to detect, investigate, control, and prevent foodborne disease outbreaks. The CIFOR member organizations represent epi, lab and EH public health and regulatory agencies involved in foodborne disease surveillance and outbreak response. The food industry is represented on the CIFOR Industry Workgroup. CIFOR developed a new 5-yr strategic plan in 2015.
METHODS:
CIFOR identifies barriers that hinder rapid detection of and response to foodborne disease outbreaks and develops projects to address those barriers. Workgroups composed of CIFOR Council members and other experts are formed to manage the projects. A new CIFOR process using formal Development Teams was created in 2015.
RESULTS:
New CIFOR products include the Outbreaks of Undetermined Etiology (OUE) Guideline for PC and mobile devices (on line November 2015); C-MET, the "CIFOR metrics entry tool" for state and local health departments for the 16 CIFOR Metrics with Target Ranges (C-MET online December 2015), and the 50 CSTE training awards for state and local health departments for the CIFOR Guidelines Toolkit, Second Edition (RFP December 2015). The new CIFOR strategic plan will be explained.
CONCLUSIONS:
CIFOR serves as a unique bottom’s-up collaboration of local, state, and federal officials and industry staff who have produced a number of widely used and respected documents and tools. The latest products described in this presentation provide additional high-functioning models, guidelines, training, and tools that are practical and useful in day-to-day activities of outbreak detection and investigation teams at all levels of government. The OUE Guidelines will help laboratorians store clinical samples in difficult investigations and will ultimately help investigators find etiologies in a greater percentage of foodborne outbreaks. C-MET will enable state and large local jurisdictions to anonymously and annually enter their CIFOR metrics data and compare it to their past performance and to national averages. The CIFOR Toolkit trainings will enable jurisdictions to conduct thorough self-assessments of their illness detection and outbreak investigation activities and to identify recommendations in the Guidelines that address needed improvements. In summary, this presentation will highlight the usefulness of these CIFOR products and demonstrate the continuing public health value of a multidisciplinary collaboration of experts from local, state, and federal levels, now in its 10th year.