The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) is applying to continue to be part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Emerging Infections Program (EIP). In 1995, MDH began as one of the four original EIP sites, and we have consistently been a productive and leading EIP site ever since. The purpose of the proposed work is to provide high quality scientific information to monitor emerging infectious diseases through active, population-based surveillance, conduct applied epidemiologic studies, implement and evaluate public health intervention studies, inform public health policy, and serve as a flexible partner able to rapidly respond to emerging threats. MDH plans to continue with core EIP surveillance functions, including: ABCs (select bacterial pathogen surveillance, effectiveness studies for vaccines, guidelines, and other prevention measures); FoodNet (surveillance for enteric pathogens to determine trends and risk factors); FluSurv-NET (surveillance for hospitalized cases of influenza and vaccine-effectiveness studies); RSV-NET (surveillance for hospitalized cases of respiratory syncytial virus infection and special studies); COVID-NET (surveillance for hospitalized cases of COVID-19 and special studies); healthcare associated infections (HAI) (surveillance, antimicrobial resistance, risk factor studies, HAI prevalence, and antimicrobial use studies); TickNET (surveillance for Lyme disease and other tickborne diseases, risk factor studies, prevention and control evaluation); and, surveillance for unexplained deaths and critical illnesses of possible infectious etiology. MDH proposes to expand EIP activities to include data modernization and infrastructure, enhanced surveillance for prion diseases (e.g., Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), and mpox vaccine effectiveness evaluation. Funding is requested for epidemiology, public health laboratory, and information technology staff and supplies. MDH has consistently been and will continue to be a
leader in carrying out routine EIP functions, such as collecting and providing high quality data and clinical isolates, while also actively developing study protocols, providing overall scientific leadership, training public health students and clinicians, and disseminating important public health findings. We will continue our long-standing external partnerships with collaborators from the University of Minnesota Schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine; Minnesota infection preventionists (APIC-MN); the Mayo Clinic; and local and Tribal public health agencies. All this will be done under rigorous oversight by MDH EIP leaders, many of whom have 20-25 years of EIP experience. EIP work will be accomplished while observing protection of human subjects in research provisions, and pre-established measures of effectiveness will be met consistently.