The California Emerging Infections Program (CEIP) uses resources provided by CDC to markedly enhance surveillance for and epidemiologic/laboratory studies of numerous high priority infectious diseases in three counties in the San Francisco Bay area (Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties). The population-based surveillance for influenza, healthcare- associated infections, foodborne illnesses, reproductive tract lesions caused by human papilloma virus, and numerous other infectious diseases is used to establish burden of disease;make national projections;detect and respond to outbreaks;assess risk factors for infection;and determine the effectiveness of various disease prevention programs and strategies(eg vaccination;screening and chemo-prophylaxis;health education;and improved food handling and manufacturing processes). CEIP staff greatly expand the capacity of participating local and state public health agencies to perform such work;incorporating the expertise of academic partners at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health;using common protocols, procedures, and case definitions in concert with emerging infections programs elsewhere in the United States and CDC to assure the quality;representativeness, and using the data collected to improve infectious disease prevention and control activities in the United States. The additional resources being requested here are critical to allowing the CEIP to expand its work on high priority projects relating to influenza and healthcare associated infections in the hemodialysis setting, among others, and to improve data collection, data management and analysis, and data interpretation for a wide range of surveillance activities relating to numerous other infectious diseases acquired in the community and in both inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings.
Disease surveillance is the core public health function that allows public health officials to monitor disease trends in the population;detect and respond to outbreaks;establish priorities for use of scarce resources;and measure the effectiveness of disease prevention and health promotion activities. The activities being proposed and the resources being requested in this proposal will strengthen the ability of public health agencies in the catchment area to perform all of these important functions throughout the project period and help create systems that will remain in place after the project ends.
