Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC)

The Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) builds upon the program that was initiated in 1995 as one of the key activities under CDC’s plan to address emerging infectious disease threats. The purpose of this NOFO is to protect the public health and safety of the American people by enhancing the capacity of public health agencies to effectively detect, respond, prevent and control known an emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases. This is accomplished by providing financial and technical resources to (1) strengthen epidemiologic capacity; (2) enhance laboratory capacity; (3) improve information systems; and (4) enhance collaboration among epidemiology, laboratory, and information systems components of public health departments.

Specific ELC Programs and Projects may have additional eligibility requirements associated with them. If so, these will be noted in the project-specific attachments.The Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (ELC) is a cooperative agreement to build the governmental public health system capacity to address emerging infectious disease prevention, detection, and response of our nation. Capacity built and sustained in health departments with jurisdictional authority for public health helps prevent disease through better surveillance of known and emerging infectious diseases, which leads to more rapid response to disease outbreaks and better development, implementation and evaluation of public health interventions.The ELC program targets partnerships with states, and some of the nation's largest local health departments, U.S. territories and affiliates because these governmental organizations are constitutionally empowered and are responsible for the protection of the health and welfare of their respective communities. Governmental public health agencies execute this responsibility through their unique access to health information, laboratory samples, and their legal powers to investigate diseases through interactions with patients, the health care system, other governmental agencies (e.g., environmental agencies, emergency response agencies), and the law enforcement abilities of state and local government. In addition to these legal authorities, eligible applicants must have functional infectious disease detection, prevention, and control programs; and already existing public health outbreak response infrastructure and capacity. Established capacity and infrastructure to detect, prevent and control infectious disease outbreaks are critical requirements, to enable recipients to act expeditiously to implement the activities in this cooperative agreement.