The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is awarding about $32 million to states and local health department programs to improve program integration and enhance their ability to detect, investigate, and report foodborne, waterborne, and fungal disease outbreaks. Of the total, $12 million is funded through CDC’s Antibiotic Resistance Solutions Initiative.

The grants support the following activities:

• Improving states’ ability to detect, investigate, and control enteric disease outbreaks through 36 OutbreakNet Enhanced sites and FoodCORE centers, including eight new OutbreakNet Enhanced sites.
• Enhancing antimicrobial resistance surveillance through the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, including expanded whole genome sequencing and enhanced patient interviews. These advancements will allow for a better understanding of risk factors and outcomes associated with antimicrobial resistance.
• Training state and local public health workers to prepare for, detect, and respond to outbreaks of foodborne infections and improve surveillance through PulseNet. Building on ELC investments in 2016, every state public health lab will work towards performing whole genome sequencing on foodborne bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, Vibrio, and Shigella, and on updating systems for data analysis.
• Enhancing Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence activities, including outbreak investigation consultation, training epidemiologists on whole genome sequencing, developing more online trainings, and providing more classroom courses.