Global Health Security: How CDC Works to Stop Outbreaks Where They Start

Global health security is the work of helping countries build strong, resilient public health systems that can prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease threats. In a connected world, CDC argues, a disease threat anywhere is a threat everywhere: outbreaks can cross borders, disrupt economies and threaten stability, and they can upset American lives and livelihoods even if they never reach U.S. shores. CDC treats global health security as a matter of national security, with its staff abroad as part of the first line of defense for stopping outbreaks where they begin.

Image from CDC’s page.

What CDC does abroad

CDC has more than 60 overseas offices, running programs that address hundreds of diseases, health threats and conditions that are leading causes of death, illness and disability. Its experts support emergency responses, and help countries keep local outbreaks from becoming global crises by:

• strengthening laboratories so deadly pathogens are detected quickly;
• improving surveillance to track emerging threats;
• training disease detectives — field epidemiologists — to investigate and contain outbreaks fast;
• training health workers, improving diagnostics and the transport of specimens, and strengthening health systems.

Because of its long presence and trusted partnerships, CDC staff are often the first people host-country governments call when an outbreak starts. The agency works with other U.S. government agencies, ministries of health, international organizations and local partners, and says its help has substantially improved partner countries’ readiness for infectious disease threats.

The Global Health Security Agenda

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) aims to strengthen the world’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease threats. More than 70 countries have signed on to its framework. The United States made a strong commitment to its first five years and continues to support its strategic priorities. Its targets for 2028 are for countries to take more ownership of global health security and to improve in its technical areas.

A related framework, the International Health Regulations, requires every country to detect, assess, report and respond to public health events.

Sources

Based on "Global Health Security," Global Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.