Book Description

"Achievement of comprehensive, effective domestic and international biosurveillance is compromised by jurisdictional complexity and inefficiencies. Federal biosurveillance policy oversight should be established in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) with the National Security Staff (NSS) as the lead entity identified to coordinate investments, interagency collaboration, and program implementation including those activities in support of the President's Global Health Initiative. An outside representative advisory group should be established to facilitate key stakeholders' interface with White House policy and technology coordinating groups. Methods and metrics used in acquiring biosurveillance data are highly variable. This impedes data sharing and analysis, and recognition and response to health threats. Efficient, comprehensive aggregation and analysis of actionable biosurveillance data should be promoted through support for implementation of IHR 2005; integration of human, animal, food, vector, and environmental surveillance systems into a national biosurveillance strategy; and expansion of biosurveillance to include environmental aspects that are the greatest threat to human health, including water, food, animals, and vectors. The current biosurveillance workforce is inadequate to address existing challenges to biosecurity let alone those that are anticipated to arise with increasing data, globalization, and synthetic biology. The federal government should promote and ensure a sustainable interdisciplinary workforce with investments in expertise, especially in public health informatics; social and behavioral epidemiology; environmental, human and animal health; vector biology; and disaster response. The federal government should continue to invest in a new generation of research to develop and build on innovative technologies in molecular and cellular sciences, engineering, chemistry, physics, information technology, mathematics, and communications that will enhance the efficiency and sensitivity of regional, national and global biosurveillance. Understanding the baseline and variance of human and animal health using these emerging technologies with clear processes to select the best approaches and scale them will allow for the creation of the functional equivalent of a national and international immune system that can protect the public in real time."--Page ii.