June 14, 2010 — For the next new infectious threat—or the next phase of the ongoing H1N1 influenza pandemic—public health decision makers need better data about who’s infected and who’s severely sick. And they need it sooner, said experts who met at HSPH on June 14 and 15 to compare notes on lessons learned in the year since the worldwide pandemic was declared.
The two-day event marked the first annual symposium of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD), co-sponsored by the Center for Public Health Preparedness. Pictured is Professor Marc Lipsitch, director of the center.
More than 120 people gathered for the surveillance postmortem—top international decision makers; people who run or help to run U.S. surveillance systems; and academic and governmental number crunchers who estimate the current state of the epidemic, project its future course, and identify key parameters such as severity, transmissibility and the identity of high risk groups.
Click here to review slides from the event.
–Carol Cruzan Morton
photo: Suzanne Camarata