Outbreak Response Team

Outbreak Response Team Overview

CDC's Outbreak Response Team collaborates with the national network of epidemiologists and other public health officials who investigate outbreaks of foodborne, waterborne, and other enteric illnesses in the United States. It works in partnership with U.S. state and local health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and PulseNet (a national surveillance network made up of state and local public health laboratories and federal food regulatory agency laboratories that perform pulsed-field gel electrophoresis on bacteria that may be foodborne). The Outbreak Response Team works to ensure rapid, coordinated detection and response to multistate outbreaks of enteric diseases and promote comprehensive outbreak surveillance. It also seeks to improve the collaboration and partnership among officials in local, state, and federal agencies who work with foodborne and diarrheal disease outbreak surveillance and response.

In 2011, we monitored 15–40 potential food poisoning clusters each week, and investigated more than 200 multistate clusters. These investigations led to 17 recalls including more than 36 million pounds of ground turkey that may have been contaminated with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Heidelberg.