National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS, Water)

The National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS) is a web-based platform designed to support reporting of waterborne, foodborne, enteric person-to-person, and animal contact-associated disease outbreaks to CDC by state and territorial public health agencies. NORS launched in 2009 following a four year commitment by CDC to the planning, development, and launch phases of the project. CDC developed NORS for waterborne disease outbreak reporting in collaboration with the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve the quality, quantity, and availability of data submitted to the Waterborne Disease and Outbreak Reporting System (WBDOSS).

The launch of NORS represents an important shift in national waterborne disease outbreak reporting—a transition from paper-based reporting to electronic reporting of outbreak data. NORS will improve the ability to describe and prevent waterborne disease outbreaks at national and state levels through the collection of detailed information about deficiencies and risk factors associated with water exposure. These data, along with historical outbreak report data transferred into NORS, will be more readily available for review and analysis to state health officials. This should enable waterborne disease outbreak investigators, researchers, and health policy makers to evaluate and implement effective measures designed to prevent illness and reduce the burden of waterborne disease in the United States. Public health professionals at state and local health departments who report waterborne disease and outbreaks to CDC can access additional resources for NORS on the Forms and Training pages. State and local health departments are asked to review the information on these pages before they begin reporting waterborne disease outbreaks in NORS.

Information on NORS foodborne materials can be found at NORS (Food).