Public Health Preparedness: Experts Identified Actions to Improve Surveillance for Emerging Disease Threats

What GAO Found Emerging infectious diseases are infections that are new (e.g., COVID-19) or have existed but are reappearing in an area (e.g., measles), according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As the federal lead for public health, HHS partners with thousands of entities at all levels of government to conduct surveillance for emerging infectious diseases; doing so through continuous data collection, analysis, and sharing of health data needed to plan for and respond to such threats. Experts on a roundtable GAO convened suggested a range of actions that the federal gover