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TFAH calls for improving America's capabilities to fight emerging infectious diseases through a well-funded federal effort, coordinated with international initiatives, to spur public-private breakthroughs in research, next-generation diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. The report features a series of recommendations, many of which reinforce those made by the Board on Global Health and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2003, including that the U.S. government should:

-- Partner with state and local governments to allocate the necessary

resources to build and sustain the nation's public health capacity

to respond to threats of bioterrorism and naturally occurring disease;

-- Further its leadership role to improve the global capacity to respond,

control, and eliminate infectious disease threats;

-- Enhance and promote the implementation of a comprehensive system of

surveillance for global infectious diseases;

-- Develop a comprehensive, multi-year, government-wide research agenda for

emerging infectious disease prevention and control in collaboration with

state and local public health partners, academia, and industry;

-- Recruit, retain, and train public health professionals capable of

identifying, verifying, preventing, controlling, and treating emerging

infectious diseases.

The report was supported by a grant from the de Beaumont Foundation.

Trust for America's Health is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority.