Progress

ABCs is progress.

A key feature of ABCs is its flexibility to respond to changing public health needs.

ABCs recognized the need for monitoring community-associated strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and recently began collecting MRSA case data and isolates to help better understand populations at risk and the spectrum of invasive disease. 

As the landscape of the U.S. population changed, ABCs added new sites to better represent the changing demographics of the country.

As an established network of public health laboratories, clinical laboratories, and people on the front line of health care delivery, ABCs can help respond to existing diseases and emerging pathogens. 

ABCs tracks invasive infections from these pathogens:
Neisseria meningitidis
Haemophilus influenzae
groups A and B steptococcus
Steptococcus pneumoniae
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

The data from ABCs are from a population of over 38 million people in the United States - from the northeast to the southwest, from babies to the elderly, from those in small towns to major cities, and across a variety of racial and ethnic populations - helping to project disease patterns for the entire country.

What is ABCs?
ABCs is surveillance - PLUS.

Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Emerging Infections Program Network (EIP), a collaborative network of CDC and state health departments with their academic partners.

As of 2005, ABCs is conducted in selected areas of: 
California, Colorado, 
Connecticut, Georgia, 
Maryland, Minnesota, 
New Mexico, New York, 
Oregon, and Tennessee.

Since 1995, the EIP has engaged in surveillance of foodborne diseases and respiratory pathogens. ABCs is a key EIP program which conducts surveillance for invasive bacterial infections.

For more information, visit the ABCs website at www.cdc.gov/abcs.

Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

ABCs is accuracy. 
While most “passive” surveillance systems rely upon reports from physicians, infection control practitioners, or laboratory staff, ABCs personnel  
actively review laboratory and medical records. Active review identifies nearly 
all cases of selected invasive bacterial infections, allowing for close to 100% detection of confirmed cases in the 
surveillance population. 

Careful, accurate chart review means that ABCs has high-quality data with: 
- demographic information, including age, sex, race, and ethnicity; 
- clinical information, such as type of infection, pregnancy status, and outcome; 
- risk factors for infection, plus underlying causes and prior illness; and, 
- characterization of bacterial isolates at reference laboratories. 

ABCs is achievement. 
ABCs data are used to establish public health policy, including guiding recommendations for the use of the pediatric pneumococcal conjugate 
vaccine (Prevnar®) and measuring the vaccine’s impact. In 2003 alone, it is estimated that nearly 25,000 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease were prevented, compared to the pre-vaccine years. As widespread vaccination continues, ABCs data will be used to continue to assess vaccine effectiveness.  

ABCs data were used to help establish the lifesaving 2002 guidelines for the prevention of perinatal group B streptococcal (GBS) disease. ABCs-driven policy has helped prevent over 39,000 cases of GBS from 1993—2003, significantly reducing the country’s leading infectious cause of infant morbidity and mortality. 

ABCs data were also used to develop the formulation and national recommendations for the meningococcal conjugate vaccine (Menactra®), licensed in 2005. 

It is anticipated that this vaccine will greatly reduce the number of meningococcal cases and deaths - and ABCs will be used to monitor this decline.

ABCs is information.

ABCs shares information through:

- an updated website with annual surveillance reports and shared methodologies, including disease incidence data, outcomes, and trends;
- presentations at national and international meetings; and,
- extensive publications in peer-reviewed journals and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The ABCs Isolate Bank (www.cdc.gov/abcs/Isolatebank) makes bacterial isolates with anonymized laboratory and clinical data available to researchers.