Infectious disease prevention and control is a core responsibility of state and territorial public health agencies. These agencies implement interventions, policies, and programs to protect individuals, communities, and even the economy.
Infectious disease prevention protects communities from communicable diseases, such as measles, tuberculosis, influenza, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and emerging pathogens. Through surveillance, policy, outbreak response, and communication, state and territorial health departments safeguard not only health, but economic and workforce stability as well as community resilience through coordination at local, state, national, and global levels.
ASTHO is committed to supporting the infectious disease prevention efforts of its members and other public health and healthcare professionals with expert insights on the latest information and innovations in the field.
What Is Infectious Disease Prevention and Control?
Infectious disease prevention and control encompass measures and interventions to limit the spread of communicable diseases. Transmission modes vary, but public health interventions focus on identifying and breaking the chains of transmission to:
- Prevent further spread of disease.
- Mitigate individual and community impacts.
State and territorial health agencies are responsible for monitoring disease trends, implementing control measures, coordinating with federal and local partners, and ensuring compliance with health regulations. Tools to ensure effective detection, investigation, and response to communicable disease outbreaks include:
- Legal authority.
- Strong, coordinated data infrastructure.
- A well-trained workforce.
- Effective public health policy.
“When it comes to infectious disease, a large group of people can be impacted very quickly. So, we must act promptly and determine, ‘What can we do to stop this?’ And we can see an almost-immediate impact through many different interventions that, in a way, come together as one.”
– Ericka McGowan, Senior Director, Emerging Infectious Disease, ASTHO
How to Prevent Infectious Diseases
Many factors contribute to preventing and controlling infectious diseases and protecting populations. Prevention measures help people stay healthy, and infectious disease prevention ultimately relies on individuals to take small but important actions that can influence individual, community, and population health.
Individual measures may include staying current with vaccinations, proper hygiene, and handwashing. In addition, systems-level prevention strategies that state and territorial public health agencies may implement include:
- Immunization programs and vaccine policy implementation.
- Laboratory capacity.
- Epidemiologic investigation.
- Workforce capacity in disease intervention and contact tracing.
- Healthcare-associated infection prevention programs.
- Emergency preparedness and response coordination.
- Public and provider engagement and education.
Policies and Programs
Infectious disease policies are designed to prevent the spread of illness in places like school, childcare, work, community and religious organizations, and healthcare settings, providing guidance for:
- Hygiene: Standing up expectations for handwashing, cleaning surfaces, and other disease prevention behaviors.
- Sick leave: Outlining policies and expectations for reporting illness, staying home when sick, and safely returning to work.
- Vaccination: Requiring or recommending immunizations (i.e., vaccine requirements for healthcare, school, or childcare entry).
Public Health Surveillance and Monitoring
State, territorial, and local health departments, along with partners in healthcare, look for signals in the community that may indicate a potential increase in an infectious disease — also known as public health surveillance and monitoring. This is a tool that helps public health departments identify where, when, and how to prevent, control, or stop infectious disease outbreaks.
Surveillance can include disease reporting by healthcare providers and laboratories, wastewater monitoring, and cross-jurisdictional data sharing. This data is collected and used to help identify cases and populations at risk for exposure or disease transmission.
Communication and Education
Communicating about new and emerging or re-emerging infectious disease threats and educating the public, healthcare providers, and policymakers are vital roles for state and territorial health agencies. Additionally, health agencies must work with medical professionals, the media, and community partners to raise awareness about infectious disease outbreaks in their communities.
Why Is Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Important?
Infectious disease prevention and control is an important function of public health agencies to preserve individual and community well-being, as many infectious diseases spread quickly and can have varying (but sometimes debilitating) impacts. Infants, the elderly, immunocompromised individuals, and other high-risk groups may be disproportionately vulnerable to infectious disease and suffer more severe complications if they contract an infectious disease.
Infectious diseases can also have downstream social and economic impacts. For example, measles outbreaks lead to missed time at school for children infected with or exposed to the disease, which results in caregiver time, loss of productivity, and reduced income and spending. There are also financial and other associated costs to public health — with recent research estimating an average cost of $766,013.80 for public health agencies per measles outbreak (including the resources required to initiate an investigation and mobilize a response).
Further, certain infectious diseases, such as those with the potential to become a pandemic, have global impacts that drive an even higher cost, in lives, money, and resources to control them. Fortunately, state and territorial public health efforts to prevent infectious disease result in huge savings across the board.
How Does ASTHO Support Infectious Disease Prevention and Control?
ASTHO serves as a national voice representing state and territorial public health, ensuring federal policy, funding decisions, and national strategies reflect infectious disease priorities. It has multiple teams dedicated to supporting infectious disease prevention and control. Together, they play a crucial role in helping state and territorial health agencies track and respond to emerging infectious diseases, implement effective infectious disease infrastructure and policy, and more. Key activities include:
- Providing strategic guidance on emergency policy and programmatic issues affecting state and territorial public health infectious disease efforts, through ASTHO’s Infectious Disease Policy Committee, which:
- Evaluates federal, state, and territorial policy impacting national infectious disease programs.
- Elevates state and territorial perspectives in national policy discussions.
- Provides subject matter expertise and strategic insight on surveillance, outbreak response, immunization policy, workforce, and infrastructure.
- Offers perspectives from the field about emerging infectious disease topics.
- Maintaining crucial partnerships with the Association of Immunization Managers, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, and others in the field, to:
- Share situational awareness.
- Align and coordinate policy approaches.
- Enhance outbreak response capacity nationwide.
- Serve as a bridge between state public health and national funders/stakeholders.
- Co-leading and facilitating The Council for Outbreak Response: Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial-Resistant Pathogens to improve practices and policies related to outbreaks of these pathogens.
- Supplying technical assistance and producing capacity building resources (e.g., INSPIRE: Readiness) around infectious disease prevention and control.
Get in Touch
Working to enhance your health department’s capacity to prevent and control infectious disease? ASTHO’s Infectious Disease unit is here to support your efforts. Take a look at ASTHO’s infectious disease prevention resources, and reach out for direct assistance by emailing infectiousdisease@astho.org.