CDC Bioterrorism Grant

In late 1999, The Ohio Department of Health, Bureau of Environmental Health and Toxicology was notified that it would be the recipient of a Bioterrorism Cooperative Agreement from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The Grant that Ohio received has four main areas:

Focus Area A: Preparedness and Prevention
The increasing global threat of biological or chemical terrorism affirms the need for public health planning at the local, state and federal levels. The Ohio Department of Health and its planning partners continually assess Ohio’s capacity to detect, diagnose, and mitigate the effects of bioterrorism and identify the steps needed to effectively prepare and respond.

Focus Area B: Detection and Surveillance
Early detection of an unusual or unexplained illness or injury possibly due to bioterrorism saves critical time needed for public health professionals and emergency responders to effectively respond. State and local health agencies in Ohio must improve surveillance systems while simultaneously developing new mechanism for detecting, evaluating and reporting suspicious events that might represent covert bioterrorist acts. Partnerships with critical front-line elements such as hospital emergency departments, laboratories, poison control centers medical examiners, EMS offices, clinics, hospitals, health care maintenance organizations, state and local health agencies and pharmacies are necessary to ensure early detection and reporting of unexplained illnesses and injury.

Focus Area C: Diagnoses and Characterization of Biological and Chemical Agents
Agent identification and confirmatory diagnoses of potential bioterrorism agents is critical to ensure prevention and treatment measures can be implemented quickly. Since few of the agents thought likely to be used as biological weapons represent major public health problems in the U.S., current capacity to diagnose them is limited. The Ohio Department of Health Lab, located on the campus of Ohio State University, is a member of the multi-level Laboratory Response Network (LRN) for Biological Terrorism. This links public health agencies to advanced capacity facilities that collectively maintain state of the art capabilities for a wide range of biological agents.

Focus Area E: Health Alert Network – Response and Communications Systems
A comprehensive public health response to bioterrorism involves epidemiological investigation, medical treatment, and prophylaxis of affected individuals and the institution of disease prevention or environmental decontamination measures. The Ohio Department of Health, in partnership with CDC, assists local health agencies by providing resources and developing expertise for investigating unusual events and unexplained illnesses.

Planning and response partners need access to up-to-the-minute emergency information. Health activities must be coordinated through a state of the art communications system. Effective communication with the public via the news media is also essential to limit terrorists’ ability to induce public panic and disrupt daily life. The Ohio Department of Health is working with CDC and Ohio’s public health system to build a modern electronic infrastructure for public health communications. This effort will support case reporting, dissemination of diagnostic results, and will also provide bioterrorism preparedness and response training to epidemiologists and laboratory personnel, emergency responders and personnel, health care providers, and health and safety personnel.

Last Updated: 5/7/01

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