Capacity and Implementation Team

Team Lead: Gwen Biggerstaff, MSPH

CDC’s Capacity and Implementation Team (CIT) builds capacity and promotes partnerships among the national network of epidemiologists and other public health officials who investigate multistate outbreaks of foodborne, waterborne, zoonotic, and other enteric illnesses in the U.S.

CIT’s goal is to provide guidance and support to this network to identify and implement successful strategies to improve surveillance, detection, and response activities for multistate outbreaks of enteric diseases.

The Capacity and Implementation Team:

• Coordinates the Foodborne Diseases Centers for Outbreak Response Enhancement (FoodCORE) Program to improve detection of and response to foodborne, waterborne, zoonotic, and other enteric disease outbreaks at the local and state health department level.
• Coordinates the OutbreakNet Enhanced program which provides support to state health departments to improve their capacity to detect, investigate, control, and respond to foodborne disease outbreaks.
• Supports the development, implementation, evaluation, and promotion of strategies and model practices for the investigation, control, and prevention of enteric disease outbreaks.
• Helps integrate and coordinate activities between the Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence and the FoodCORE program.
• Coordinates planning the biannual Integrated Foodborne Outbreak Response Management (InFORM) Conference.
• Plans and conducts regional OutbreakNet meetings in coordination with PulseNet.
• Coordinates, plans, and facilitates OutbreakNet quarterly meetings.
• Helps direct the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Cooperative Agreement funding allocation for state, local and territorial health departments to perform outbreak surveillance and response.
• Provides technical assistance to build and strengthen public health capabilities to investigate multistate outbreaks of enteric diseases.