Each significant outbreak and epidemic raises questions that must be answered in order to better inform future preparedness and response efforts, such as:
- What are the systems and resources needed to characterize an outbreak?
- What systems and resources are needed to bring an outbreak to a close?
While we can anticipate these types of questions, the absence of dedicated mechanisms to record operational experiences and challenges can result in valuable, ephemeral data that are crucial for improving outbreak response not being consistently collected or analyzed. Participation in outbreaks by external experts can be instrumental in ensuring that this important operational information is documented, analyzed and shared with the broader public health community. There is a particular need for observers external to the response who can capture and analyze applied data about the operational response to outbreaksâeg, the systems and strategies involved in responding to the such events in order to improve our understanding of best practices for detecting and responding to these events. These can then be shared so that the entire public health community can access and incorporate lessons learned into their own preparedness and response plans. External observers can also help describe the important work performed by local responders during outbreaks and advocate for necessary preparedness and response program resources. The Outbreak Observatory is currently in a pilot phase and is looking for international and US partners who may be interested in collaborating with members of our team during their next outbreak response.
Objective:
The Outbreak Observatory (OO) aims to:
- Strengthen outbreak/epidemic preparedness and response activities through real-time, one-the-ground observations and analyses âIdentify best practices based on operational experience that are broadly applicable across outbreak response agencies
- Serve as an independent voice to advocate for policies that support preparedness and response activities based on expert assessment of the resources required to build and maintain necessary outbreak response capabilities Support local practitionersâ efforts to publish their experiences
- Sharing the firsthand experience of responders is critical for building outbreak preparedness and response capacity, and OO will serve as a dedicated mechanism to collect, analyze and disseminate this information