Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC)
ELC Celebrates 25 Years of Service to U.S. Public Health Agencies
1995 – 2020
Strengthening the Nation’s Capacity to Respond to Domestic Infectious Diseases for a Quarter-Century
Since 1995, the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) Cooperative Agreement has been critical to U.S. health departments’ ability to combat infectious diseases. While beginning with only 10 recipients, that number incrementally grew, reaching the current complement of 64 jurisdictions in 2012. For a quarter-century, the ELC cooperative agreement has provided hundreds of millions each year to all 50 states, several large local health departments, and U.S. territories and affiliates to detect, respond to, control, and prevent infectious diseases. This graphic shows the years specific jurisdictions joined ELC.
The ELC program celebrates 25 Years of service to U.S. public health agencies across America in 2020.
Next Generation ELC Cooperative Agreement: Priorities in 2019 – 2023
In August 2019, starting a new 5-year period of performance, ELC funded 64 jurisdictions to detect, prevent, and respond to the growing threats posed by infectious diseases through three core areas:
- Surveillance, Detection, and Response:
- Enhance investigation and outbreak response
- Improve surveillance and reporting
- Strengthen laboratory testing for response
- Improve laboratory coordination and outreach to improve efficiency
- Enhance workforce capacity
- Enhance coordination between epi-lab
- Advance electronic information exchange implementation
- Sustain and/or enhance information systems
- Enhance laboratory testing for surveillance and reporting
- Prevention and Intervention:
- Implement public health interventions and tools
- Implement health promotion strategies
- Implement public health best practices, guidelines, programs, and policy
- Surveillance data used to inform and prepare intervention strategies
- Communications, Coordination, and Partnerships:
- Facilitate information dissemination to the public regarding infectious disease surveillance and prevention strategies
- Enhance collaborations between state epidemiology and laboratory as well as regional/local public health departments
- Strengthen partnerships between public health, hospital infection control, and clinical labs