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Quitugua Teresa

Description

Objective

The National Biosurveillance Integration System (NBIS) is a consortium of federal agencies, whose joint objective is to enhance the identification, location, characterization, and tracking of biological events potentially impacting homeland security. Together, the consortium members benefit from a joint awareness of potentially significant biological events that are unfolding or imminent, based on information shared among the group. This presentation describes the framework, activities and benefits for NBIS participants, and invites participation by other agencies.

Submitted by hparton on
Description

Chartered by the 'Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007' ® (Public Law 110-53), the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) is housed within the Department of Homeland Security. The mission of NBIC is to enable early warning and shared situational awareness of acute biological events and support better decisions by federal agency partners and the agencies of state, local, and tribal governments. It does this through the rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking of biological events worldwide (whether they occur in the human, animal, plant, or environmental realms) that may have an impact on the U.S. homeland. During the spring of 2013 there were human disease outbreaks caused by two emerging novel viruses: Avian Influenza A (H7N9) virus in China and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in multiple countries in the Middle East and Europe. During these two events NBIC leveraged its expertise in enhancing collaboration and shared situational awareness among federal agencies.

Objective

To demonstrate NBIC's innovative approach in facilitating information sharing among U.S. federal agencies during the recent outbreaks of H7N9 influenza and MERS-CoV.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on
Description

For a number of years, the federal government has provided biosurveillance in various domains within different departments and agencies. Congress recognized the need for a means of integrating these separate information sources into a more useable resource by chartering NBIC within the Department of Homeland Security.

Objective:

Enhance knowledge of the vision, mission, strategic goals, and objectives of the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC). Learn about innovative biosurveillance projects ongoing in NBIC.

 



 

Submitted by Magou on
Description

NBIC is charged with enhancing the capability of the Federal Government to enable early warning and shared situational awareness of acute biological events to support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking. A key aspect of this mission is the requirement to integrate and collaborate with federal and, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) government agencies. NBIC develops and disseminates a variety of products to its stakeholders, including daily reports, ad-hoc reports, analytic collaborations, and leadership briefings upon request. Stakeholders interact with and utilize NBIC’s products in different ways, depending on the mission and jurisdiction involved. Specific collaborations with individual stakeholders are most frequent and evident during major infectious disease events, such as the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders PHEIC. Collaborative efforts and known outcomes among varying levels of government are described in detail below in order to highlight NBIC’s integration focus and capabilities in this role.

Objective:

An important part of the National Biosurveillance Integration Center’s (NBIC) mission is collaboration with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments for the purpose of enhancing early warning, shared situational awareness, and related decision support for infectious disease events. Several such collaborations occurred at multiple jurisdictional levels during the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders Public Health Event of International Concern (PHEIC). The collaborations and their known outcomes from this major infectious disease event are described below, and NBIC stands ready to support similar efforts for future events.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

NBIC integrates, analyzes, and distributes key information about health and disease events to help ensure the nation’s responses are well-informed, save lives, and minimize economic impact. To meet its mission objectives, NBIC utilizes a variety of data sets, including open source information, to provide comprehensive coverage of biological events occurring across the globe. NBIC Biofeeds is a digital tool designed to improve the efficiency of analyzing large volumes of open source reporting and increase the number of relevant insights gleaned from this dataset. Moreover, the tool provides a mechanism to disseminate tailored, electronic message notifications in near-real time so that NBIC can share specific information of interest to its interagency partners in a timely manner. NBIC is deploying the tool for operational use by the Center and eventual use by federal partners with biosurveillance mission objectives. Core functionality for data collection, curation, and dissemination useful to other federal agencies was implemented, and NBIC is incorporating custom taxonomies for capturing metadata specific to the unique missions of NBIC partners.

Objective:

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) is deploying a scalable, flexible open source data collection, analysis, and dissemination tool to support biosurveillance operations by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its federal interagency partners.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

An epidemic of ebolavirus in West Africa, which was first identified in March 2014, is now the largest Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak on record. On 8 August 2014, the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). As of 4 September 2014, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria have reported 3,707 cases (2,106 confirmed, 1,003 probable, and 598 suspected) of EVD with 1,848 deaths (50% case fatality) to the World Health Organization (WHO). Five U.S. citizens have contracted the viral disease – one LiberianAmerican and four medical-aid workers working in Ebola-afflicted countries.

Objective

To categorize and assess the international and domestic health impacts of the 2014 West African Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.

Submitted by rmathes on
Description

Unaccompanied alien children (UAC) are undocumented migrant children who come to the United States unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. The number apprehended UACs originating from the Central America counties of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have increased since FY 2012. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2014, more than 57,000 UACs have been apprehended; double the number that was apprehended in FY 2013. The majority of UACs were apprehended and processed in the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector of South Texas. The CBP facilities were not designed to house or care for children for extended periods. Resources and personnel were significantly strained in the management and care of UACs.

Objective

To categorize and assess the health impacts of the 2014 surge of unaccompanied alien children to the Lower Rio Grande Valley Border.

Submitted by rmathes on
Description

NBIC integrates, analyzes, and shares national biosurveillance information provided from capabilities distributed across public and private sectors. The integration of information enables early warning and shared situational awareness of nationally significant biological events to inform critical decisions directing response and recovery efforts.

The 2014-2015 HPAI H5 outbreak in the U.S. was the largest HPAI outbreak in the country’s history and resulted in the culling of millions of domestic birds and significant economic losses through loss wages, direct production losses, cost of recovery, consumer price increases, and trade restrictions.

NBIC worked closely with liaisons from USDA/APHIS and DOI/ NWHC over the course of the outbreak to integrate information from both agencies and open source reporting into reports and data sets providing early and sustained shared situational awareness to over 1400 federal, state, and local authorities.

Objective

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) coordinated information sharing with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS) and the Department of Interior (DOI/ NWHC) to integrate information and provide shared situational awareness of the 2014-2015 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak in the U.S. across all levels of government.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

As the lead for coordinating domestic incident management across all Federal departments and agencies, Department of Homeland Security is responsible for identifying emergency response resources. The 2014 Ebola – Zaire outbreak in West Africa that became a Public Health Emergency of International Concern highlighted the need to understand the current and potential availability of diagnostic assays for a number of viral hemorrhagic fevers that may require similar response actions. A concatenated list of publically reported potential viral hemorrhagic fever diagnostic assays was therefore compiled. Etiologic agents in the families of Arena-, Bunya-, Filo-, and Flaviviridae were included in the analysis. This list identifies assays in various stages of development that could be submitted, at some point, to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) should such a need arise.

Objective

Provide a succinct review of potential developmental and commercial viral hemorrhagic fever diagnostic assays published in peer-reviewed literature and open-source platforms.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Description

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) has the responsibility to integrate, analyze, and share the nation’s biosurveillance information provided from capabilities distributed across public and private sectors. The integration of information enables early warning and shared situational awareness of biological events to inform critical decisions directing response and recovery efforts. In addition to its interagency partners, NBIC supports the Office of Health Affairs and DHS components responsible for safeguarding U.S. ports of entry. More than 150 U.S. international airports process an estimated two billion passengers and 50 million metric tons of cargo arriving in the U.S. from more than 1,000 international airports located outside the U.S. Entry and customs screening are points where travelers from international destinations pass; a logical location for assessing health of incoming travelers in order to identify and control import of diseases of emerging diseases. NBIC examined peer-reviewed literature, region-specific disease spectrum/frequency, and air travel patterns to assess options for ports of entry health screening as well as the challenges and potential benefits for active screening programs.

Objective

NBIC analysts evaluated the options and effectiveness of airport symptom-based health screening programs available during emerging disease outbreaks occurring outside the U.S.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on