Tuesday, January 14, 2025
1/14/2025
Project Abstract COVID-19 drastically changed the public health infrastructure and the approaches of the Arizona ELC core projects that were operating simultaneously. Multi-purpose epidemiology, laboratory, and health informatics support for disease detection, surveillance, and investigations is being requested to build capacity to detect and respond to public health issues, and to increase the use and effectiveness of surveillance data for monitoring public health programs. In the past decade, the number of outbreaks and infectious disease cases reported to the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) has increased dramatically. This has resulted in gaps in responding to emerging diseases and public health priorities. Funding is being requested to retain staff members in order to improve disease surveillance and response across all the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Cooperative Agreement program areas. These staff will work on several projects areas including: enhancing outbreak investigations; improved monitoring, reporting and integration of surveillance data; coordinating state healthcare-associated infections monitoring and prevention; increasing collaboration with local health departments, stakeholders and binational partners to improve effectiveness of public health programs; working with local health departments to increase the timeliness and completion of investigations of infectious diseases; testing clinical and environmental samples to identify microbial agents in support of outbreak investigations and disease surveillance activities; and enhancing evaluation of infectious disease program areas. Proposed activities include a combination of cross-cutting epidemiology, laboratory, and health informatics activities, in addition to a cadre of disease-specific activities. Implementation of proposed activities will result in improved disease detection and prevention in the state of Arizona. Specifically, anticipated outcomes include a reduction in the number of disease cases and outbreaks in Arizona through increased awareness of infectious disease threats and prevention strategies; improved relationships between public health stakeholders; and increased capacity for laboratory testing, epidemiologic surveillance and investigation, and integration of electronic messaging into surveillance systems.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).