Foodborne diseases centers for outbreak response enhancement (FoodCORE) –year two of identifying and addressing gaps in state and local health departments response capacity

Background: Each year foodborne diseases (FBD) cause illness in approximately 1 in 6 Americans, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. Decreasing resources impact the ability of public health officials to identify, respond to, and control FBD outbreaks. FoodCORE addresses gaps in FBD outbreak response by improving capacity in three core areas: laboratory, epidemiologic, and environmental health activities. Methods: FoodCORE centers work collaboratively to develop and implement model practices for surveillance and rapid, coordinated, and standardized response to FBD outbreaks. These model practices are designed to be replicable for application in other jurisdictions. During Year Two (Y2), 10/1/11–12/31/12, FoodCORE continued to use performance metrics based on the Council for Improving Foodborne Outbreak Response Guidelines to document the completeness and timeliness of response activities. Results: The current FoodCORE centers are: Connecticut, New York City, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin. During Y2, FoodCORE laboratories received over 7,617 Salmonella, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, and Listeria (SSL) isolates. Epidemiology staff followed up with over 98% of all reported SSL cases. 594 clusters of SSL illness were identified, a suspect vehicle was identified for 38% of STEC clusters and a confirmed vehicle for 17% of STEC clusters. Conclusions: FoodCORE promotes the evaluation and application of surveillance and investigation strategies to improve the detection, investigation, and control of FBD outbreaks. Identifying and addressing gaps in outbreak response can shorten the time it takes to identify a source of infection and pinpoint how and why contamination occurred to limit additional illnesses and prevent future outbreaks.